4th Grade Missions just in time for Christmas

Mrs. Stanek's class finished their Mission Reports the day before their party. I don't have space to put up all the reports, but I do have the space to put up all their drawings. Ms. Stanek says she is always amazed every year by the striking differences in drawing styles these pictures show.

Rancho students have now read 3, 517 books or 58,193,367 words.
Tomorrow is our last day of class before Christmas break. I hope that no matter how you celebrate the holidays, you have a safe and restful two weeks off, with as much family time as possible.
See you back here in January!

Rancho Lab December update

It's been a busy few weeks. Here's a few highlights.

Our district is in the process of upgrading its information infrastructure. During this upgrade, Math Blaster broke. No one could play for four days. The kids were heartbroken,and I was frantic. Without going into details, I finally finished reinstaling it on all lab computers today. I learned more than I wanted about Server migration, but it does mean it will never be broken this long again. Quite the learning experience.

The fifth grade classes are in a race to make their State Boards the best they can be. That means they are here in the lab every spare moment they have. The projects I have seen so far are beautiful. I 'm hoping I can post pictures of many of them on the blog so everyone gets a chance to see them.

The fourth grade classes have been busy building Power Point presentations. I posted some of them on the Blog where I could contact a parent for permission. One class even did a presentation for the NUSD School Board. It was taped. Let me know if you would like a copy.

Second and Third grade classes have been using Type to Learn and Kid Pix. In Kid Pix, they're learning how to change font styles and sizes. They are simply amazed at how much they can do on their own. In addition, they're writing Haiku and Acrostic Poems.

First grade classes will start to come to the lab in January.

Finally, we're up to 3,152 books and 52,489,439 words.

Happy Thanksgiving

We're off all next week for Thanksgiving. Click here to see what the fifth graders learned about Thanksgiving this year.
My family always cooks an eighteen pound hen turkey that has been soaked for a day in the famous Chez Panisse brine that I found in the SFgate Thanksgiving Guide years ago. Where would we be without the Internets?
I hope everyone has a happy,happy Thanksgiving holiday and comes back ready and rested for school next Monday.
This weeks Reading stats:
2,658 books read. 42,980,297 words read. 91% participation over the last thirty days. 65% of all students taking Accelerated Reader quizzes scored 85% or better. Rancho kids are truly amazing students.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

A slide show project from Mrs. Langford's class

Here is yet another student's work from Mrs. Langford's class. This is the first year that the fourth graders have created PowerPoint presentations, and they are very excited about this. They like choosing the transitions and the animation schemes the most. However, SlideShare doesn't preserve either the transitions or the animation schemes when I upload the presentations to the web. I'm looking for another solution, but for now I will continue to use SlideShare.

Indian Tribes Of Californiarancho

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

I wanted to add that I apologize for the length of time between posts of student work on the blog. This is the first time we've done this as a school, and we're still working out the kinks. We're trying to insure that we are respectful of the student's right to privacy while still giving them the pleasure of being able to show their work to their parents, relatives and friends... I'm confident that as the school year gets older, we'll get faster.

More software we use at the Rancho Computer Lab

Today, a young gentleman in Mrs. Kreuzberger's class asked her if she could tell him how to find an online version of Kid Pix. It was a reminder to me of how much the educational software business has changed over the last few years, and how much today's children and their parents might not know about the great software that is out there.
Kid Pix was originally developed here in Novato by Brøderbund Software. In the great consolidation of the educationalsoftware business of the late '90s, They were taken over first by The Learning Company, which in turn was eventually taken over by Riverdeep. Riverdeep now owns most of the old classic educational software that we use in the lab. But because their focus is on online learning and educational publishing, they don't do a good job of promoting them(in my opinion).
You can buy Kid Pix online for 19.99 from Riverdeep. The Kids all love it, and it helps them learn how to use a mouse and begin to type. Plus they already know how to use it. They'll probably get bored with it in fifth grade. At that time, you consider either donating it to the school or passing it on to some one
with younger kids..it's what the trade calls an evergreen classic.

Halloween at Rancho

This morning we held the annual Rancho Halloween Parade. The children were very excited about dressing up, as were many of the staff. I 'm showing some of the staff in their costumes for those of you who couldn't attend:

This week we're learning how to use Tom Snyder's Graph Club to discover that you can display the same data many different ways. We did a survey of which holidays the children liked best, and then used the data to make both a pie chart and a bar graph. Oddly enough, the holiday with the most votes was Halloween...

Have a happy & safe Halloween!
P.S. Rancho students have now read 1876 books this year!

The reading pace continues to be brisk.

On October 13th, I reported 977 books read at Rancho. Today, that number is 1,484. You can say that translates to 50 books a day if you count weekends, 60 books a day if you just count week days. Either way, it's an impressive number of books.

The Most Popular Program in the lab

The most popular program in the lab this week is Math Blaster. I like Math Blaster because it's aligned to Standards and entertaining to the kids. Stealth learning at it's best. It also has some unattractive features, but that's for a different post.
At this point, all the students from 2nd grade on know how to find the icon of "The little man with the star":

Math Blaster has eight games: Juice Booth, Time Travel, Number Zapper Arcade,Animal Arena, Dunk Booth, Pie Throw, Roller Coaster, and Roller Coaster. Each one teaches a different mathematical skill.


The two most popular games are the Number Zapper Arcade and the Dunk Booth. In Number Zapper Arcade,
Here, you learn your basic math facts by shooting them down along with the rogue meteorites that are attacking your home base. It's interesting to note that a common problem in the lower grades is not in comprehension, but in the physical ability to shoot down the math facts. It requires real hand eye coordination.

The second most popular game is Dunk Booth. Here you have to discover the hidden pattern in a list of numbers on
the top of the screen. Every time you find the pattern, you use a sling shot to hit the target that shows that pattern to light up one of three bulbs also near the top of the screen. When you do this three times, the character in the middle of the screen falls into vat of water underneath. I am amazed that the kids never tire of doing this; it seems like every time the experience is as exciting and fresh as the first.

Parents often ask me where they can buy the software the kids use in the lab.

If you're a windows family, you can download a free trial at ZD Net downloads. There's no free download for Macintosh, but it's widely available on many websites for both platforms for approximately thirty dollars.
If you have an Intel Mac, be sure that you buy a version that says it is compatible with the newer Macs; many of the older games like Math Blaster only run in Classic mode on OS X. Classic is no longer supported by Apple...Which reminds me, in the Windows world, the same applies to Vista-it won't many of the older programs either.

A/R progress report

Just one month ago, we finished setting up Accelerated Reader on all the computers, and launched the program. As of today, the kids have taken an astonishing 977 quizzes.
That's approximately 50 quizzes per day. As I said, the kids really love the program.

If you want to know if a book at your local library is one your kid can take a quiz on, here's a website at which you can find that out:
The AR Bookfinder website. Just enter the name of a book, or an author-They have literally tens of thousands of books that will work with A/R.

If you happen to know the book title you want and are looking for it on line, here's a tip: Search for it on the MariNet Web Catalog. If it's in any Marin public library, you can have it sent to your library for free if you use your child's library card. One of the best deals in Marin.

PowerPoint at Rancho

California Native Americans

From: rogerpowelson, 2 minutes ago
The last two weeks, we have been teaching the Fourth grade classes how to make a PowerPoint presentation.
We chose a very simple project and format: Four slides on four types of California Native Americans. They were allowed to put clip art on the slides and pick their own transitions between slides. They had a great time doing this; they loved trying the different transistions. Here's one example of what they did:

California Native Americans

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

4th grade class project


SlideShare Link

What we did this week in the lab(Sept. 15-19)

This week we spent most of the training all the students at Rancho Elementary School on how to use Accelerated Reader. As many of you know, we use an online program called “Accelerated Reader”, abbreviated as A/R, to help encourage our students to read. A/R uses a combination of approved books, , Book Quizzes, and a reward system to make sure our students enjoy and excel at reading. At the heart of this system is the Rancho Library, with its good selection of well-cataloged books. The other important part of the system are the computers you see in every classroom.

At the start of the year, the teacher determines the level at which every individual student is reading. As you can imagine, there is quite a range in ability in every class. Every child is different, and develops at her own pace. It's important for us to match each child with the books that are they can read comfortably. A child who reads too high above or too far beneath her capability is a child who is not advancing to their full capability.
The student then reads each book on her own. She may read it in class or home, but she must finish it. When she has finished the book, she takes a test to determine how much of the book's content she has remembered.

Each child gets points for quiz she passes. The child then selects another book, and the cycle starts over again. As she reads more books, she receives more and more points. The children really like this system. Last year, the school as whole took over 7000 quizzes. Reading Experts agree that the best training for reading is to read more. This program helps Our students to be the great readers they are.

A new year, a new beginning

Two days ago I gave a report on our tech plan to the Leadership Council. During my presentation, I made a promise to start blogging this year on what we are doing in the lab over the course of the year. This week the upper grades are using Sunburst Technology's Type to Learn to improve their typing skills. There's a great article about the program on Technology and Learning Magazine's website.



Here's a screen shot of one of their favorite activities, Famous Figures: