Monday, December 3, 2012

December activities:
December is a great time to read many books with snowmen, gingerbread men and holiday themes.  The Kindergarten and 1st graders love to listen to a book and then try their hands at illustrations that could go along with each book.  In 1st grade, we used the iPads and Doodle Buddy to illustrate a snowman after we read the story, The Biggest, Best Snowman, by Margery Cuyler.  We are also learning what the words title, author, illustrator, title page, cover, spine, spine labels, and copyright date (the year the book was born!).  Great job 1st graders.









The 2nd graders are continuing to hear a story read to them from our 2nd grade "series" list.  The first was Horrible Harry at Halloween, by Suzy Kline.  We created two Excel spreadsheets, one with our guesses for what Harry would be for Halloween and a pie graph for who liked the book, who thought it was just o.k. and who did not like it.


The 2nd graders are also using the app Bluster on the iPads to practice rhyming words, prefixes or synonyms.  They are able to work alone or with a partner.  Fun way to practice!







The 3rd, 4th and 5th graders are all typing.  The 4th and 5th graders are covering their keyboards with orange SpeedSkin keyboard covers giving them an extra challenge.



The 4th graders are also listening to The Not So Jolly Roger by Jon Scieszka and from that story we will be starting a research project using the Big 6 on something interesting from the book; Blackbeard, pirate ships, time travel, magic, etc.

Caldecott and Newbery medals come out in January, so we also will be reading and discussing the Caldecott and Newbery medal winners and what those awards mean.

image from google.com



Monday, November 5, 2012

November


The 4th graders have been busy learning Scratch.  It is a programming language to create animation.  If you don't have the Scratch program on your computer, it is a free download.


**Go to scratch.mit.edu/download and download the program.  It is a fun way to learn programming skills.

The learning projects are available on my wiki, http://mrsdufraine.wikispaces.com, under Scratch projects 4MC, 4ML and 4H.  Click on download and  usually if you click on the green flag in the upper right hand corner animation will occur!


The fifth graders have made great animoto shows.  Fun and easy.  Great job.


Here are some fun pictures from the library:
Choosing a new book is sooooo hard!




Love to read!
Books are great!

The third graders have started typing in the lab using Type to Learn 3.  We will also be using other fun online typing programs, such as Keyboard Rebuild  , BBC typing, Spider Typing and Online Typing.

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

October Projects

Happy Halloween!  For the month of October I always love to read books about Fall, Halloween and pumpkins, especially my favorite square pumpkin, Spookley.

The 1st graders listened to The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything and colored sequence pictures to match the story.  They pasted them into a book and colored their own designs on the books as well.  Thanks for the great Halloween decorations, 1st graders!



The 2nd graders created one slide of a PowerPoint presentation, with text and pictures creating an acrostic poem using the words Fall, Moon, or Leaf.  I put all the slides together to make a PowerPoint presentation for them.






The 3rd graders finished their PowerPoint presentations about Grace Lin and the summer reading book.  Great job learning PowerPoint.  The PowerPoints can be viewed from my wiki, http://mrsdufraine.wikispaces.com and clicking on the 3rd grade PowerPoint project links.

The 4th graders are starting a program called Scratch. Scratch is a programming language that allows the user to create animation. We will be creating a small animation about Halloween next week.

The 5th graders are learning another presentation software called Animoto.  It is a quick and easy way to create a presentation using pictures, text, video and music.  They will be creating a short Animoto project about Halloween, Fall or an interest.




Wednesday, October 3, 2012






The first graders are continuing to learn more about MS-Word.  In their own words, it is a great place to put "WORDS!"  They learned about clipart (a fun new experience), and added their names with changes to font (we call it style), color and size.  Great job 1st graders!

The 2nd graders created one slide of a PowerPoint.  It was an acrostic poem about the word MOON.  They created the poem and added clipart, and I created a PowerPoint of all the slides. 
Give this link a click to visit my website and view Mrs. Rafferty's class' PowerPoints.

Be sure to check out the newly designed Center School Website that I just finished, along with all the teacher websites, including mine!  
Center School Website 

The 4th and 5th graders have been experimenting with creating QR (quick response) codes.  We went to Wikipedia and learned what they were and then we had fun creating them on the Dell computers and reading them with the Scan app on the iPad.  Here is a fun one to scan, give it a try!
 Leave me a comment about where this qrcode takes you!  Is it a teacher site, a student site, or video or words????  Let me know.....

Here are some videos from library and technology:




Tuesday, September 25, 2012


Nice job on your MS-Word webs, 4th graders!
and now

the 1st graders are just beginning
to learn to open and close programs on their own.
This class we chose MS-Word.  They typed their name,
then changed how it looked using font, size and color!


 





Thursday, September 13, 2012

Welcome to Mrs. Dufraine's Library/Technology Blog
Our first month at school has been interesting and fun.  All students have now been to the library and computer lab at least once!   The Massachusetts Book Award books that I purchased over the summer have already been taken out and many students are talking about books that they read over the summer.

The new Kindergarten students are learning about the library and using Starfall to practice mouse skills and gain confidence in the computer lab.  They are great listeners of great stories in the library.

The 1st graders are busy listening to stories and learning where to find books in the library.  We talked about Kevin Henkes' books and most could find his books in the library.  We read Chrysanthemum and they will be trying to type their name into MS-Word.

The 2nd graders created great book covers about the summer reading book, "Where the Mountain Meets the Moon", and they are displayed in the library under the  Wonderful World of Reading area.  They will be moving on to  MS-PowerPoint to create a slide with an acrostic poem about the moon festival.



The 3rd graders are learning how to create a PowerPoint presentation on Grace Lin.  They went to the website, http://www.readingrockets.org/books/interviews/lin, did some research and are now creating their presentations.  Then we will start typing with Type to Learn.

The 4th graders are creating a web in MS-Word using cool wordart, clipart and shapes and arrows to describe what they enjoyed about the summer reading book.  We will be creating a QR code soon.

The 5th graders have created two acrostic poems, one using their name and one using a topic from the summer reading book.  What unique and fun poems they created!  These are displayed on the window of the lab. Please read and enjoy.  We are now working on creating a QR code and reading them with the ipads, using the website, http://qrcode.kaywa.com.