1st Grade Graphing with Kidspiration

First grade students have been exploring graphing in math as one way to organize and make sense of data.  Students in Ms. Estrada's class used a table of their favorite colors to make a bar graph using Kidspiration. The math view gives students grid paper and simple shapes to work with, so they were able to make a colorful bar graph that matched their table data.  Students worked cooperatively in partners to create their graph, then together added two observations that they could make such as "blue was the favorite color because it got the most votes" and "yellow and purple have the same number of votes."   Pretty awesome!

3rd Grade Creates Cartoons- en Español!

Third grade students have been putting their language skills to use! They are writing comic strips in class using Kidspiration software to show their use of new vocabulary words.  It's pretty amazing that only after two years of Spanish, our students are writing stories in a second language!  We are lucky to have Senora Imperial- our Teacher of the Year- helping us learn both the language and the culture!

3rd Grade Investigates Communities

3rd grade students recently wrapped up their Sharing the Planet unit.  Their central idea was "Human and geographic factors shape communities."  Lots of different learning activities helped build student understanding of this idea.  

Students worked in groups to research various landforms on PebbleGo (one of our library research resources).  

Then,  they created a visual representation that included the important facts and information from their research and presented it to their class.

Students worked in groups and used Kidspiration (mind mapping software) to create Venn diagrams where they compared different types of communities such as rural, urban, and suburban.

Students interviewed a family member about the community they currently live in or where they grew up in order to learn about how that community developed.  Students created a timeline and presented it to the class.

Keith Abbott, a parent and local minister, shared photos and spoke to all of 3rd grade about how the hurricane in Haiti affected the community.

2nd Grade uses Kidspiration to Help Solve Problems

Second grade students used Kidspiration software to show their understanding of the central idea and lines of inquiry for their unit on How We Organize Ourselves.  Their central idea was: Societies respond to problems with actions.  
Students were given the following fictional situation: A new kid, Johnny, comes to Chandler Oaks from another state.  There was a hurricane, so Johnny and his family had to evacuate their home.  He only had time to pack one bag and had to leave many of his favorite things at his old home.  He feels homesick, because he left everything familiar behind and doesn't know anybody at his new school.  They are living in a hotel, and his whole family has to stay in the same room.  He’s not really sure what will happen in the next few weeks.

Student's needed to identify the problem, and some possible actions- both good and bad. They then described one action that they thought might help solve the problem. Students used Kidspiration to help them organize their thinking (one of the research skills) and to communicate clearly in writing (one of the communication skills).  Check out this example:

5th Graders Become Environmental Consultants

Here are some great examples of learning about resources in the 5th grade  IB unit Sharing the Planet. Students learned about resources by exploring the central idea, “Using and conserving resources alters our relationship with communities and environments.” At the end of the unit, students were given a problematic situation they had to solve.  They became consultants for fictional communities and were asked to evaluate the use of resources in that community.  They looked for strengths and weaknesses and then developed an action plan to help the community move forward in an environmentally responsible way. These are examples of students looking at resources that are used in everyday products, researching and organizing our information in Kidspiration and Prezi, writing letters to companies to gather information on their impact and choices, and creating and action plan for a community. 

Kidspiration helps 4th grade organize their family tree

4th grade students used Kidspiration software to help organize and  illustrate their family tree.  In their IB unit Where We Are in Place in Time, students are exploring the central idea "Sharing personal histories fosters intercultural connectedness."  Mapping their family tree was a great place to start.  Students shared their family tree with their class to facilitate discussion about where we come from and how our own culture can connect us to others.

Ms. Herold's Class Uses Kidspiration

 

Ms. Herold's class used Kidspiration to show their understanding of light, heat and sound energy.  First grade students worked cooperatively with a partner to look through the picture gallery to find things that produced heat, sound or light.  Students made lots of connections and even noticed that fireworks would belong in all three categories.