Hello Everyone,
Hope you all had a restful Thanksgiving break. For my 3rd and 4th Grade families, please keep in mind that when we have holiday breaks, I do not expect typing homework logs the following week. Many people travel and may not have that access.
Kindergartners have completed the robotics unit by virtually seeing their BeeBots on the screen. They loved being able to see their actual instructions come to life (which is basically what programming is all about). Many students took it even further and added lovely patterns in the background and had their BeeBots go to specific colors. I hope they told you all about it. Next, they were introduced to our art program called KidPix where they created digital masterpieces and even got to record their own voices on their drawings. They loved hearing themselves.
First Graders delved deeper into the Microworld's Jr. program and created animation using the turtle graphics. Their animation included at least 3 moving objects, a background, a textbox and a recording which could be composed music of their own or their own voice recording. They became pros at opening up the turtles backpack and adding code into it. They did not even realize that they were programming the turtle. We had a showcase in class where students got to walk around and see their peer's animated turtle and had questions answered. Stop by and see their saved animation.
Second Graders completed their KidPix slideshows and shared with their peers using the smart board. They loved presenting their creation. Many students even added music and their own narration on each slide for a more dramatic effect. I was so proud to see the audience be so attentive and respectful as their peers were presenting. These kids have such great confidence in public speaking. We then began our programming unit using Alice. It's a wonderful 3-D graphics program where you can drag and drop code to make your objects move. Alice is available free to download. Just search for Alice and choose the elementary version.
Third Graders are continuing with their Pixie project. They each chose a topic of their choice to present it as a slideshow format. They love being able to search the programs' controlled Internet gallery of pictures.
Students are using many if not all of the options to create their slideshows. I can't wait to see the finished products.
Fourth Graders completed their dream homes using SketchUp. I was really amazed to see their creativity. I was equally impressed to see that many students created their own structures without the help of the Google search option. Our next unit will be an introduction to word clouds which is a great way of putting words into a graphical format. Stay tuned for that....
As usual please feel free to email me whenever you have any questions. Take care!
Rasha Sachdeva
