Friday, November 22, 2013

First Grade - Creating Problems Using Kidspiration

Mrs. Maggart's First Grade Class has been creating  math word problems and writing addition and subtraction number sentences. It is how they are creating word problems that makes this special. 

Mrs. Maggart will give the students an answer to the problem, and their job is to CREATE THE PROBLEM that will fit that answer. Using a software called Kidspiration, students are able to use the math tools in the program to create their problems.  Students are able to select the pictures or symbols from the vast library of graphics from the program and lay them out in a "story problem" format. 


Kidspiration has a vast assortment of math tools for them to use, where students can explore properties of number and operations, and develop computation strategies, such as they demonstrated here.

In fact, they could create limitless problems to have one another solve.  Here, students are also demonstrating the habit, "begin with the end in mind" - where they have the answer(result), but need to supply how we go about getting there.

Great job, First Graders! That's some great THINKING!




Monday, November 18, 2013

Grade 4 Composer Leader Reports

All 4th grader students are working on a composer research group project in Music class. They are synergyzing to collect information about the composer and then create a powerpoint presentation about that composer.

 Teravista is a "Leader in Me" school, with students practicing leadership skills and Steven Covey's 7 Habits throughout the day, on a regular basis. In addition to the research, students will explain how each composer was a leader in their field, and which of the 7 habits was demonstrated.
Synergizing during Research
Finishing touches on report-

Students will be presenting their findings to the class so we can all learn about the different composers. Some projects will also be featured and presented on the schoolwide Leadership Day in early February.

Students from Mrs. Brewer's fourth grade class are pictured here.

Checklist of facts-

Monday, November 11, 2013

Grade 2 Biography Research

Links for Biographies using Stichit
Stichit Link

Students in Grade 2 are beginning research on famous Americans. In order to get started, the librarian, Mrs. Uselman and the ITS, Mrs. Oliver, had the students log in to their Google Accounts for the first time. Students in Grade 2 have the Google Apps For Education accounts, allowing them to use Google apps, such as Google Drive for their presentations. This will enable them to work at home or school if they save to their Google Drive.

Mrs. Uselman used the site "Stichit" to supply them with three resources they could use for their reports.
Stichit is a website that provides one site for all the resources, keeping students focused on specific sites. That will help save time from the students to aimlessly searching for resources, and allows them to have only the sources that the teacher/librarian wants them to use.

Sources included Pebble Go, Kids InfoBits, and Britannica. If you click on the Stichit Link, you can follow how the sources are all linked together.