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Mrs. McBride's
Journal
4/21/05 My
class has been working on the B2B projects. We were so excited
by the NJN closeup. this enable us to show off the great things
that we are working on for B2B. We have been utilizing Kidspiration
character maps to write character traits about bullies and also
character traits of buddies. We have been reading many
stories that are about bullies their r and their short comings.
We have discussed how a buddy can help them. They have use
the stories as encouragement and a spring board to invent/ create
their own stories -bad bully situation that turn out to be buddy
/friend situations. Some of the children worked on character
maps for a story like Loud Mouth George and the Sixth grade Bully
and found situation that describe the character trait of both the
bully and the buddy. This type of organizing has help my students
tremendously with their reading and writing as well as their higher
order thinking skills, such as synthesis. They have been more
interested in writing and have become more familiar with the computer
key board. I see great success in all. I have even observe
my students being more thoughtful and kind toward one another.
They have definitely matured into good citizens. No Bullies
in my class.:)
3/1/05 I was so
please by the brilliant work my students did with a project that
we worked on for Black history month. Our school hosted a Black
history bulletin board contest. Our class participated in
this challenge and activity. In order to celebrate
the rich part of African American heritage they completed a project
The objective was to complete a three component project
1.do research on a famous black inventor or high achiever.
They were expected to focus one one individual that they were assigned
and research four facts about them then write three sentences for
each fact. Their research was done utilizing the Scholastic web
site. WWW.scholastic.com/activities/bhistory/index.htm. 2.
Then they were also expected to complete their own creative work
either invent their own invention, poem or rap/song. 3.
Student were also expected to complete a a three paragraph essay
on what dreams they had for their community, country and world.
Each student worked diligently on this project. They used
graphic organizers from the Kidspiration program and word processing
tools to complete their individual heart felt dreams.
They used all the Language Art Literacy components that help make
their literacy effective. It was a real success thanks to
all the students' creative work, great resource information and
the supplies from the star-W program. They were fortunate to recieve
a wealth of Black History knowledge and won the bulletin board Grand
Prize award. In addition, our Principal, Ms. Brown and Vice principal,
Mrs. Lantz gave our class a pizza party. I am so very proud
my fourth grade class of 2004-2005.
7/16/04
The last
few days we have covered a great deal of material. We had
Bob from Alpha Smarts- Dana come in and instruct us on many ways
to implement the Dana's in our classroom. Great inservice!!
The Kids will love it. I believe that they spend more time
writing and not get lost in the graphics that other programs have
like kidsPix. Art introduced Hyperstudio and we spent most
of the morning on the hyperstudio tutorial. It is a great
program but I think I definitely need to spend more time on this
before I feel confident teaching this to my students. I am
happy that Art installed a tutorial. I also helped Jen and
Olivia put together a letter for the StarW StarTech
Summer mentor camp. Today, Jen, Olivia and I had a conference
with Ms. Brown and Mrs. Lantz about our Discipline record
keeping and our Point system. She was very interested and receptive
to our idea. We also came up with the school rainbow
to start the school year out all students will begin with a 100
point and their name will be placed on our star student rainbow
each grade level will be color coded this rainbow will be
display
in the
front lobby for the school. The goal of the rainbow is to
maintain good discipline. We feel that the student must maintian
90 point in order for their name on the rainbow. We create
a teahcer discipline point form. We also up dated our web
page with a number of bullying writing prompts and other worked
on bullying books and rea
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3/26/04
My students are eagerly working in my room.
I now am teaching to the reading part of Literacy to the fourth
graders. I am very fortunate now that the Ask 4 is over I
have more time to spend in small flexible reading groups. Five students
are in a group. They are grouped according to their ability.
My students are working in learning centers, Technology-
computers, listening and leveled guided reading. This
gives each child a chance to explore technology at his or her pace,
while also achieving more fluency and comprehension during
small group guided reading lesson. During learning centers
the children must complete a vocabulary assignment. They first
must define the words and put them in their notebooks prior to computer
time. This is usually completed after the Monday Lesson. The
Vocabulary, Skills and Genre are introduced on Monday. Students
are utilizing technology three time a week. Tuesday, Wednesday,
Thursday. Their Assignment is to complete a Vocabulary New
Word graphic organizer. This is found on Kidspiration.
They absolutely love this and working in centers. The greatest
factor is that everyone is actively learning. This activity affords
more time with my groups reading trade books which the kids love.
They love to read to me, they are building their fluency and comprehension
at their level. My students enjoy the listening center as well.
They listen to the weekly theme story on tape and other stories
on tape. While in the computer center they are also exploring
other ways to understand vocabulary and reading concepts through
technology and the Kidspiration program. Kidspiration is a
wonderful vehicle for learning at their pace and with many different
concepts graphics to choose from. The children are eager to explore
graphics that fit their learning style. Examples of their work can
be found displayed on our classroom bulletin board. I'm working
on placing a few examples in my journal. So look for them
soon. We all love Kidspiration although I only have the program
on five of my eight computers, although we have managed fine in
the five student group. I hope to some day soon have
the program on all my classroom computers.
5/6/04
My students are working
on the thematic unit Creative Minds in the Literacy program.
They objective is to think creatively and create a invention that
will be helpful to their lives or others. The student's were
very excited about this lesson and all were eagerly working on their
inventions. Many students utilized the tools from the kidspiriation
program to create a visual and step by step directions of how the
invention works and how it is useful.
Examples soon to come
5/8/04
Today is a great day.
We are in our 5 hour Star-W work shop. We have just
learned how to import Rubrics from the rubistar.4teacher.org.
It is a super site. I wish I had this when I was grading my
students inventions and the ASK4 writing stories .
Thanks again Marilyn and Art we're learning so much.
5/14/04
This week my students
are working towards a better understanding of the graphic organizers
on the Kidspiration program. They are reading the thematic
unit Creative Minds. The objective on the kidspiration program
is to creatively organize five different graphic organizers
that will help them (the student) understand either the focus skill
or the theme of the story with in the unit. They must finish
and publish five graphic organizers that have been a help to them
while reading the Creative Minds Theme.The Organizers will be graded
on the rubric found on my teachers page. A few children
have ask to use KIDS PIX. I mentioned that they will be able
to explore that program next week but the Rubric graded Organizer
will only be graded base on the Kidspiration program. I am
anxious to see which program the children found the most useful
for their learning style.
5/20/04
“I
have seen a tremendous amount of creativity and academic growth
in my classroom. My students are improving their reading and writing
skills through the advancements in technology. The programs
that STAR-W has awarded are all very kid friendly;
every child is extremely interested in learning. We have
a great team of dedicated teachers using and applying this grant.
Everyone is very supportive of one another and share their new ideas.”
“The
STAR-W grant has enabled all the teachers and students to explore
new
horizons
that may not have been available
to them. We have been fortunate to have the support of great
team of leaders in technology. I would like to give a special
thanks to Marilyn Cohen, Atlantic
City 's Technology Coordinator,
who made this fantastic opportunity possible by writing the STAR-W
grant. I would also like to thank Art Wolinsky
, the STAR- W mentor for all his time and effort in making the program
a success.”
5/21/04
Art was at the school
on Thursday, he was a great help. I thought I lost my Bio.
When I was editing and updating it I lost all material, but thanks
to Art he was able to retrieve it. He has a back up of all our work
in his file. He informed me that it is saved in the computer that
originally published the work. Thank Goodness I really didn't
want to rewrite my biography. I tend to get little long winded
anyway. I feel so much better that I have published a lesson
for students based on what they have learned about Kidspiration.
See My Teachers page and
the students and the
lesson is Kidspiration graphic organizers.
It's humble but it's a start. It really wasn't as difficult
as I envisioned. I just need to keep up on it, the more practice
the better I become with the technology.
7/7/04
Day 1 of Star-W.
We discussed the Big6- Problem solving strategies. We discussed
our theme project- Bullying to Bullets. But today Day
2 we brainstormed new ideas and agreed Bullying to
Buddies would be the the best project title. Brook found
a way to link her pages to all her calendar pages and then to all
the fourth grade teachers pages. This is a time saver. Now
we all are working on cleaning up our pages. We all are sharing
one anothers work. Brook thanks for your help.
Jen and I are adding picture prompts to the each month. We think
five picture prompts will be a great start foe each month.
7/12/04
Today we discussed the
Bullying project and worked on the Kia Kaha ( Stand Strong) Whole
school approach. We broke up into three groups and brainstormed
ideas that would be most benefical to our project. Obe group
worked on Survey, another made a few anti bullying activities.
My group worked on a plan which would enable adminstrators to keep
all discipline referral on a data base. Infromation would
be logged in on children who are habitual discipline problems.
But first we discussed what constitutes an referral. And should
there be certain inteerventions that should done first by the teacher
before a trival referral is written.We discussed First a teachers
inservice to understand and implement the Accurate record keeping.
The consensus was that we should only keep this within the
3rd, 4th, 5th grade classes the Star W group. Let the games
begin.
7/13/04
Today we
discussed our tenentive discipline plan with Ms. Lantz.B We
got a blank copy of the discipline star- Base. Later we discuss
the idea with both Art and Marilyn- Our thought was that it
must be a whole school discipline record keepong so this would enable
us to keep track of interventions that were successful.
Marilyn said that she would have Linda fomr the Data center come
speak with us later this week regarding some possibilities.
We spent a great deal of todays work brainstorming interventions
and a point system to track positive behavior and negative behavior.
We feel that for our plan to truly be effective it must be
a whole school effort. We came up with some great interventions
program such as the golf program, Sister-to Sister, after-school
enrichment, etc. If a child has numerous infraction
or a certain amount they would be placed in a intervention
program and must maintain a good attendence in the program so that
we can help manipulate the negative behavior and transend it into
positive. Non Bullying) We also finished our I-movie
RE: bullying Lisa. HAPPY BIRTHDAY BROOK!
7/16/04
The last
few days we have covered a great deal of material. We had
Bob from Alpha Smarts- Dana come in and instruct us on many ways
to implement the Dana's in our classroom. Great inservice!!
The Kids will love it. I believe that they spend more time
writing and not get lost in the graphics that other programs have
like kidsPix. Art introduced Hyperstudio and we spent most
of the morning on the hyperstudio tutorial. It is a great
program but I think I definitely need to spend more time on this
before I feel confident teaching this to my students. I am
happy that Art installed a tutorial. I also helped Jen and
Olivia put together a letter for the StarW StarTech
Summer mentor camp. Today, Jen, Olivia and I had a conference
with Ms. Brown and Mrs. Lantz about our Discipline record
keeping and our Point system. She was very interested and receptive
to our idea. We also came up with the school rainbow
to start the school year out all students will begin with a 100
point and their name will be placed on our star student rainbow
each grade level will be color coded this rainbow will be
display
in the
front lobby for the school. The goal of the rainbow is to
maintain good discipline. We feel that the student must maintian
90 point in order for their name on the rainbow. We create
a teahcer discipline point form. We also up dated our web
page with a number of bullying writing prompts and other worked
on bullying books and reading prompts. Brook was a great help
to all she's a wiz. Great Job everyone.. We did theLoti
Questionaire. Art had rewards for us he had some real goodies a
few of his book and a few programs he handed out at the end of the
day.
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