Have a happy & safe Halloween!
P.S. Rancho students have now read 1876 books this year!
Friday, October 31, 2008
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!
Have a happy & safe Halloween!
P.S. Rancho students have now read 1876 books this year!
Thursday, October 23, 2008
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.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
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.
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.
Monday, October 13, 2008
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.
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.
Friday, October 10, 2008
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
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