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| Introduction |
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 Overview  |
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| Narratives |
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| Exhibits |
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| Reflection |
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Researching the Alphabet
I was fortunate enough to have worked in Mrs. Adams' classroom during the fall and winter semester this year. This allowed me to see the students' strengths and weaknesses over the entire semester. Mrs. Adams and I noticed that the children were having difficulty expressing themselves with writing. This prompted us to use this opportunity to integrate technology into our curriculum in order to help students to become better writers. Using traditional methods we have been working on the students' ability to write creatively with much success. In accordance with the reading program that the first grade teachers employ at Howard, we decided to encourage the students to use the computers to plan, organize and research topics that they will eventually present as a slideshow to the kindergarten class. The MITTEN project has inspired us to extend what usually ends with a short book report on a very limited topic.
Using the Michigan Standards and Benchmarks as a guide, we decided that we would explore two key parts of the guidelines that the state recognizes, the students will:
* Begin to develop and use strategies for planning, drafting, revising, and editing a variety of text forms. Examples include identifying characteristics of their audience, mapping, and proofreading.
* Identify and use resources that are most appropriate and readily available for investigating a particular question or topic. Examples include knowledgeable people, field trips, library classification systems, encyclopedias, atlases, word processing programs, and electronic media.
What we used:
* KidSpiration was used to create our concept maps as well as our KWL charts.
* Yahooligans.com was used to research each students' topic
* Appleworks was used to type out five facts for each topic
* Digital cameras were used to document the students' progress and activity.
* PowerPoint was used to create a slideshow to present to the kindergarten class.
Click Here to download PowerPoint viewer.
