January 28th Prelab time prep work

Today, the students wrote the most they have written so far for the timeline project. Each month, I've approached it a bit differently so see what type of writing the rough draft would produce.
On Friday, I had the kids all think about their writing topic (we have the month charted as I had been doing on other months). I modeled for them how we'd get together with a buddy to do some peer discussion prior to the writing.
I chose my topic and told them what I was going to write. I said, "I'm going to write: In January, I learned about Martin Luther King." I then asked them if they wondered anything. Of course, they did. They had some excellent questions. Each time they asked me a question, I answered it out loud. Then I showed them by "writing in the air" what I intended to write. I asked them if that sounded better than my original idea. I then began my writing in my writer's notebook as they read it aloud. They were ready to begin. I let them choose a partner they thought they could work the best with. I had to be a partner with a student, so I wasn't able to go around and listen in. While they wrote, I did some check-in conferences. They were passionately writing and going back to their partners and asking more questions. Then we all gathered on the rug to share. Several kids asked clarifying questions of the students that shared (Liam wanted to know what MLK did that was so special when Mary-Kate shared hers). She went back to her seat and wrote some more.
I am interested in seeing what they do with this in the computer lab as they have more writing than they will be able to post in one sitting.
I also plan to have them work with their carebuddies (4th grade) next week to do some revising on a month of their choice.

January 6th Lab Time

I had great intentions before Christmas Vacation. I was going to have the kids reflect on December learning. I was going to have them think about what was the most memorable for them. I was even going to have them write about it in their writer's notebook. I never did any of those! time always gets away from us during those last few days.
I was a bit worried about what kind of writing we'd get today because they've been "removed" from December and school for several weeks. Second graders tend to focus on the here and now. Well, I was pleasantly surprised. We didn't even have time to do any prewriting (just prethinking). So I have everyone sit and think about 10 minutes before we went to lab about what they planned to write in their December timeline. 13 (out of 16 present today) kids raised their hands and said they already knew what they wanted to write about. Wow. The other three said they'd think about it on the walk down. I know, that's not really the best prewriting strategy, but each month, they have approached the writing in a different way, so I was interested to see what they'd produce.
Most chose to write about our last days of school: Polar Express day-complete with PJ's and hot cocoa, some wrote about frosting gingerbread cookies to go along with what they learned about Germany. Several wrote about our country tasting party. And some I didn't even get to check in with.
What I noticed today was kids are very intimidated by the squiggly read lines under their words. Now that they know what it means, they want EVERY word to be spelled correctly and they are constantly raising their hands to ask how to spell this or that. I've already had the discussion that they should look closer at the word and see if they can try spelling it a different way, then try it out and move on. They are not happy with that answer! I intend to do a lesson during lab time next week more specifically on misspelled words on the computer. The other issue I ran into today was the week before vacation, I taught them how to change their font size (because of a project we were doing), font, and color. Now they all had to play with that with their timeline, which I don't mind, but I had to keep reminding them to focus on their writing first, then play with the fonts after. It made me think of how we work as adults. I know sometimes, I like to play around with the font before I create something so I can see what it will look like while I work on it. As the newness wears off, this may not be such a distraction for them.
As far as technological problems, the computers were running very slowly. Again this doesn't seem to be an issue with my kids yet as they are not able to type very fast. The other problem was that most of them forget they needed to save to their folder before they could type. This was their failure to listen to me when I refreshed their memories using the DLP to model the process again.
Today I was happy when:
Kids wrote the while time, they were curious about spelling, they kept their index fingers on f and j (not all of them, but many!), they used one space between words instead of 12!, they used punctuation at the end of their sentences, some even used internal punctuation (Ana used parentheses correctly)!! Overall, it was a good day in the computer lab.

Kids Comments

As the month of December progressed, I overheard many kids commenting, "I'm going to write about his for my timeline!" I love that they are thinking about the timeline as they work!

Thursday Lesson/December 16th

Many students have been asking how to make letters upper case and how to insert punctuation and how to make the words bigger. Today's lesson was surrounding these topics. Each student had to log in and open Open Office, our word processor. After that, they had to write their name and 5 spelling words they know by heart. We discussed they'd know if they know them by heart if the red squiggly line is there or not.
They immediately saw their name had the squiggly line. I showed them two ways to "fix" the first letter of their name: clicking the mouse after the first letter and hitting delete or highlighting the first letter (trickier as one letter is difficult for them to highlight). Then they learned how to hit the shift and the first letter at the same time. Many kids are always afraid to hold the shift button down. They do it so quickly, like the keys will bite them! I notice this every single year! So, I showed them to hold the shift down and keep their finger on it, then touch their first letter of their name. Success. We talked about how it's much easier to create your uppercase letters as you type. They entered to the next line and we practiced their name with uppercase at the beginning. they got it!
For font changes, I showed them how to highlight the word they wanted to change, then we played around with fonts and sizes. They enjoyed doing this and many were giggling as they used some crazy fonts and made their words huge and then tiny!
Today I was able to teach them the period and the exclamation mark. The period was easy for most after they found the key. I had to go around and show most of them on their keyboard as I wasn't explaining it very well-a visual on the projector would have been nice here. I will consider this for the next punctuation marks. The exclamation mark was more difficult as they had to control the shift as well as the key. I am also teaching them correct hand form on the keyboard and they are making a conscious effort to have their first fingers on "J' and "F". It's quite impressive to watch.
While this whole lesson may sound so simplistic, it's another step in the digital writing process for young learners. At first I wasn't sure it would be OK to combine the all these components into one lesson, but it worked out well and I saw quickly that we'd only be working on periods and exclamation marks. We'll cover the others another day.
My hope is for next week (the 3 day week before vacation) to have the kids write in their writers notebook their thoughts for their December entry so when we get back in January, it's ready to go.

First Lesson

9/30/10:

Thursday Lesson: I wrote how each part went in italics.

(The whole staff received an email in the morning warning us that the computer lab was experiencing extreme difficulties. It was slow, students were not able to simultaneously log on, and many computers were freezing in the midst of work. I emailed the librarian and asked if it would be a waste to bring my class down-she suggested I ask the T.I.. Her response was to try it and see what happens. I figured at the very least, I could model what our project would be and we’d come back to the room.)

• I modeled the whole lesson using the DLP projecting my computer screen. When practicing this by myself the previous day on several student accounts to make sure it worked, it looked easy. Doing it in front of the class made me realize just how many steps are involved to even be able to type! Students were sent back to their computer station with their user name and password written on a notecard.

Log onto Linnux using username and password

• All students were successful doing this except one new student. His username and/or password didn’t work. I asked him to look on with another student.

Go to Home Box

• One student didn’t have a home box. I’ll need to get some help from the T.I. to get it set up. I had this student move to my demonstration computer.
• The rest of the class was successful here, but several couldn’t double click quick enough to make it open.
• Some students began going on to next steps even after I asked them to put their hands in their laps if they had their home box open.
• I had to stop 3 times to remind them to stay with me as many were saying, “What do we go now?” because they had gone ahead of my directions. I was a bit grumpy at his point!

Link to Ms. O. Handout

• Again, most could open it, several had a difficult time double clicking on the icon.

Timeline-double click

• They double clicked on the icon for timeline and the Impress timeline I created opened up on their computer! At this point, the librarian came in and asked me if I had any issues. She was shocked when I told her we had no problems yet.

File-Save as

o Go to Name

Everyone was with me here.

o Click in front of timeline and type name

Several students had accidentally erased the name I had created rather than clicking in front of it. I went around and fixed those computers.

o Save in student folder

Here’s where several students went ahead again and clicked on the box in the left corner before saving. So, none of their work was saved. Lab time was over and it was time to go home, so I was not able to fix these during this time.

o Click Save

This is as far as we got today.

This portion of the lesson didn’t happen today: I thought they would have time to type on the template and then next week come back to it and revise.

When done save, and then exit

Look in homebox

Put paper you just wrote into dropbox

• Next week’s a new week and I will be thinking of a plan to keep kids with me, rather than rushing ahead. I also need to have them work on double clicking.
  
• I know each week will get easier as they become more efficient logging in and going to the templates. Today, I felt frustrated that I was one amongst 17 that needed help!