Coding is a skill that all students need for 21st century careers. There are many neat new programs that teach the foundation for programming. The programs use blocks with commands that students connect together to achieve the goal.
Scratch Jr. is an app where children can program their own stories and games. They learn to solve problems, design projects, and express themselves creatively.
Google Sites are a great platform to communicate both locally & globally. They are easy to set up for your students and easy to link information both individually for your students as well as setting up a group or classroom page. Our classrooms are busy places of learning and we feel strong about giving back to our Community & teaching our students at a young age the feeling of giving. We begin teaching the Core Democratic Value of common good in early elementary BUT until we DO it, the meaning can get lost. Google Sites is a great tech tool to implement for your Community Service projects & beyond!
Students will connect virtually with one or more community members such as police chief, city manager, librarian, or mayor in order to discuss their roles and responsibilities. Students will keep track of what they learn in order to create a poster describing the person and everything he/she does to help the community.
In first grade students begin learning about basic nutrition and how to grow plants in a cup or small planter. In this lesson, the students will take it a step further and students will learn how to create a community garden and share the food. The students will use brainstorming apps to plan the garden and create a poster to advertise the garden.
Padlet is an online post-it-like board that you can use as an easy collaboration platform for students. Padlets can be created by you or students. Once created, student can share ideas and comment on other students as well.
The students are going to have their own chance to participate in a continuous story. One student starts the story and is given a certain amount of time for telling it. Another student will continue the story and each student will have a chance to add to it. The teacher will use ePals and submit their idea to find another classroom to collaborate together in the story. The students will learn about each other's cultures and lives through the storytelling.
Students learn about their home state by creating it using Mr. Nussbaum’s Map Builder 2. This site is great for creating just about any land map imaginable!
Thomas Edison is a famous inventor. His work with the telegraph and telephone led him to invent the phonograph, which recorded sound as indentations on a sheet of paraffin-coated paper. Students can listen to his first recordings at the NPS (National Park Services) archives. Students will learn how to create their own recordings at the Online Voice Recorder.
MyStoryBook is a user-friendly website that allows students to create their own stories. Tools are provided to help design and create stories. Once completed they can be saved.
Lucidchart is a visual platform for creating flowcharts and graphic organizers in real-time. Students under the guidance of teachers can use the free version.
Creating a story is not an easy task. What should I write about? Who will the characters be in my story? What will happen? These are all questions that every author needs to answer before their story can take shape. Storybird is an online community that provides original artwork to inspire students. The artwork sparks their imagination and supports story creation. Collaboration can take place when students invite others to work on their story with them.
Students will be directed to an informational article and/or video on different content areas & will be asked to use a note-taking chart to give credit for the author’s work & to restate in their own words.
Students will begin to learn how to do basic research using Michigan eLibrary's World Book's Early World of Learning. This basic encyclopedia is meant for non-readers as the text is very basic and the site will read everything aloud for those who cannot read yet or prefer to listen. Students will learn about creepy crawlies and where they live, eat and other interesting facts about them.
First graders whether at home or school will be online using the Internet and need to know the basic rules of staying safe. ABYCA has a very good age appropriate video to share with young students on five rules to stay safe. There is even a quiz at the end to test their knowledge after viewing the video.
In 5th grade, students can begin researching and interviewing others on topics for a weekly or monthly newsletter for the school. The students will learn interviewing techniques as well as become better writers.
Students will use knowledge of coding to code through various holiday programs from Code.org and Google.
Decomposition one of the four parts of Computational Thinking breaks down problems into smaller parts so that it is easier to understand and solve them.
Seesaw is a web-based and application platform where students can post pictures from the classroom, annotate, speak their mind, and create electronic portfolios that connect school and home. Parents are able to see student work as soon as it is posted.
In this activity, students will take a common problem and use the design process to come up with a solution.
According to Eastern Michigan University, composing at a computer is a unique activity that many students will need time to master. Students have played games and may know some of the keys on the keyboard. Before students actually begin composing, they need to learn about the different keys on the keyboard without focusing on their writing skills and typing. Students need to learn how to create spaces between their words, type capital and lower case letters, delete text, save and print a document.