Week 4

Happy Halloween to all TAG teachers and students. We were surrounded by witches, vampires, and princesses today, but we still managed to get a lot done:

K-14
We stepped back from the project for one day because students need more practice on the laptop. We decided that having students work on an ABC book was a good start. First, we taught the students the steps to open, edit, and save a keynote. Then, they practiced independently. Finally, we created a "how to" video of the steps. Ms. Ieong will have students do one or two letters every school day to give students more practice time. Once all the students have their photo permission slips turned in, she will post the video on this blog!

1-104
Students have their graphic organizers nearly done, so we introduced them to Garage Band. First, we took turns on the computer and recording our voice to make an introduction podcast. Then, students worked with their partners to practice recording and speaking into the microphone. By next week the graphic organizers should be finished and we can begin to work on our scripts!

2-204
The second grade has their research topics picked out. We began to gather pictures of our topics. Students learned to make a folder, name a folder, and save pictures from the Internet into a folder. This week Ms. Newman will have students research their topics so that we can begin scripting next week.

3-304
Third grade did a lesson on citing sources. We discussed why it was important to keep track of your resources as you are doing your research. We had a shorter period, so Ms. Catania was supposed to introduce students to storyboarding after lunch. Let us know how it went Ms. Catania.

4-404
In the fourth grade, students practiced logging on to the wiki. We learned how to create new pages and students set up pages for their subtopics. Then we discussed using post-it's to organize our group pages. We found that many students are relying heavily on prior knowledge, rather than conducting research. Many of the subtopics they picked seemed random. Mr. Amft will have students continue to work on their plans and guide them to ask good questions. Next week, each group will "pitch" their plan to the class and the class will give constructive feedback.

5-504
We were so happy Ms. Liebmann came from Boston for a visit, but it didn't stop us from working. Each of the groups had their website plans done or nearly done, so we had the groups "pitch" their ideas to the class. Some groups had really organized their ideas, while other groups were struggling. Like the fourth grade, these students were relying heavily on prior knowledge and need to get back into research.  We also did a review on citing sources. We discussed why it was important to keep track of your resources as you are doing your research and what information you needed. Students will continue to research their topics and gather information so that next week we can begin making our pages.