Use your imagination and think of an invention or an improvement on a current invention that would make life easier, safer or more fun.

Please keep your invention simple and ideas in the realm of reality – although magic chewing gum that renders the chewer rich is a wonderful idea, it isn’t feasible :)

Give your invention a name, say what is does and how it would improve your life.

Be ready with your ideas  by the next computer lesson, May 4th 2009.

Inventors and Inventions

Today in class we read the book “Diary of a Spider” by Doreen Cronin. Click ’search inside this book’ to get an idea of what the book is about.

I showed the children a slide show put together by a first grade class from another school, “diary of a Butterfly”so they have a good idea what’s expected of them.

We are going to make a power point presentation titled “Diary of a Frog”. Each student has been told what frog stage they should write about – let their imaginations run wild.

Stages given out – frog spawn, tadpole, tadpole with legs, frog

For homework, they need to write about ‘one day in the life of a frog’ due April 30th so they are ready to type it into the computer.

diary-of-a-butterfly - password same as the gallery

The following are a few of the ‘free’ programs I use and wouldn’t be able to live without:

• Picasa – Free photo editing software from google
• IrfanView – Photo viewer. Quick and easy to re size photos
• OpenOffice - software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. MS Word to expensive, and MS Works is lacking? This is the program for you!
• Word rescue and Math rescue – Really basic fun game to teach the younger children spelling and math
• AVG - Free anti virus program that does the same job as those who charge you a yearly free
• Ad-Aware – I scan my pc once a month
• Firefox – Internet browser. I prefer this over Internet Explorer
• Google Docs – Not a downloadable program, but beneficial to the older students. It allows students to create documents online, save them, and open them from any computer. In other words, if we start a project in the classroom and some don’t finish, they can upload the document to google docs and continue the project at home.
• Advanced system care – BE CAREFUL! Advanced SystemCare Free is a comprehensive PC care utility that takes a one-click approach to help protect, repair, and optimize your computer

Disclaimer -  I am not responsible for any problems you might run into if you choose to download any of the above programs.

Be sure to read the instuctions carefully, and help files if you run into any problems. Before installing any program you should always disable your anti virus program. If you choose to Download AVG make sure you uninstall your current anti virus program first.

Thank you all so much for your support, generosity and outpouring of love over the past 2 weeks. I truly appreciate everything that you have done for me and I am grateful and blessed to work at a school with such wonderful parents, children, faculty and staff.

I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and New Year!

All grade 3 students have been given a St. Christopher email address. In the new year we will be communicating with students from St. Christopher School in Wolverhampton, England

Today in class I showed the children how to access their email accounts by going to -  webmail.stchristophersi.com – The user-name is their first name followed by the first letter of their surname (no spaces) – they should all know the password.

If you have internet access at home, please have your chid sign in and send me a quick email – computers at (replace at with @) stchristophersi.com

Mrs. Dalton

Today the children began transferring the map of their neighborhood they created at home onto the computer using MS Paint. All are doing a wonderful job. Example below:

The second grade class began their ‘animal index’ card project during their last lesson. These are the instructions they were given:

Go to kidsplanet.org
Click on “Get the facts”
Research your animal and answer the questions on your index card
In the information box, tell where your animal can be found, and give 2 other interesting facts about your animal.

Things to remember:

1. Mammals-a class of animals that have backbones, are warm-blooded, breath air, and whose females have milk-secreting glands for feeding their young.
2. Reptiles- are air-breathing, cold-blooded vertebrates that have skin covered in scales as opposed to hair or feathers.
3. Birds-warm-blooded egg-laying vertebrates characterized by feathers and forelimbs modified as wings
4. Amphibians- are vertebrates whose young live in water but the adults live on land
5. Fish- are aquatic vertebrates that are typically cold-blooded, covered with scales, and equipped with two sets of paired fins and several unpaired fins
6. Insects- are a major group of arthropods and the most diverse group of animals on the Earth

They are typing the information into a template I already made up in Microsoft Publisher – example below.

We are currently completing an open ended story.  You have been given the beginning, and in your own words you have to finish the story. The story begins:

The hunchbacked figure beckoned to us to follow him, and we entered the castle, our teeth chattering. The hunchback turned and looked at us. He laughed softly and said, “Don’t fall behind. People have gotten lost in these hallways and starved to death before they were found . . . hee-hee-hee!” He led us into a huge room where a whole tree was blazing in the fireplace. I noticed some golden eyes glowing in the far-off corner. “Don’t be worried, my dear,” our host assured me, “that is just Fiona and she’s not one bit hungry. She ate an entire piglet just this morning.” At the sound of the hunchback’s voice, Fiona growled sweetly. “I will be back shortly with some hot chocolate. You warm yourselves by the fire until I return.” He turned sharply, and with narrowed eyes, warned us: “But do not attempt to leave this room, my dears”…

For those of you who were absent today, please familiarize yourself with the beginning of the story and have a good idea on how you wish to end it. It has to be completed in class next week, October 27th.

We have put our animal index cards on hold for a week or so since they haven’t covered much of the information with Mrs. Drivick yet. They are still learning about the plant family.

What the children are doing in preparation is learning how to format text in Microsoft works.
Today they learned:

1. Highlighting
2. Increasing font size
3. Changing color of text
4. Change the style of the font
5. Pressing “enter” on the keyboard will take them to a new line

They wrote their name, and address and we printed them out for them to take home

Research Christopher Columbus, and answer the questions below in the form of a report card.
For each subject you will give Columbus a grade, and then give a justification for the grade.

Subjects are as follows:

1. Planning and organization
2. Contribution to History
3. Ethical Conduct
4. Leadership Skills
5. fulfillment of Expectations

The project will be handed to the 8th grade teacher and will count as a social studies mark.

Although this is a project to be done in computer class, you may do some of your research at home and make notes  in google docs.

Write an essay, size 12 font and include no more than 2 photos (please give credit to the photographer).  Imagine you are asked to tell someone all about Staten Island and it’s history. Some things you might want to include in your essay are listed below.

The history of Staten Island Island:

1. Life before the bridge – was the island congested – how did people travel around – were they able to visit the city – was there a ferry?
2. Life after the bridge – Did the population immediately soar – what was the impact on the Island?
3. Would you prefer to have lived on the Island before the bridges were erected, or after? Why?
4. Places of interest – If someone from out of town were to ask you about places to visit on Staten Island, where would you send them and why?

Sites of interest:

The Staten Island Ferry

NYC staten Island

The Verrazano Bridge

Wikipedia

Re-post:
My apologies to 5th grade, the original post was deleted from the server and I failed to noticed.

1. ½ to ¾ of a page in your own words – do not copy and paste from the internet.
2. Min. of one photo, save to the computer, then input it into your document

EXPLAIN:

1. Animal description
2. At least 3 characteristics
3. describe and explain a little about it’s biome
4. Name the kingdom and find its scientific name.

I’m still waiting on an email from some 8th graders with updated passwords. Please use the St. Christopher email address I gave you, if you use your personal email address and don’t sign your name, I have no idea who you are.

Grade 2 – In preparation for our ‘animal index card’ project, students visited kids planet. This is the website they will use to research information about the animal they will be given next week.

Grade 5 – The flash drives were handed out and they practiced saving files to the drive instead of the computer. They also learned how to rename a file if they made a mistake.

Grade 8 – Students were given their new St. Christopher email, and were shown how to navigate around the page. As homework, they must access the email from home by going to the webmail page and email me their new password so I can change it.

Don’t forget to finish your acrostic poem. This is the site we used in class to practice

It isn’t due until next Monday, but please don’t wait until the last minute to do it. Next Monday you will design the page using MS Publisher, and transfer your poem there so we can save and print it.

This year you will be given a St. Christopher email address and we will be working in google documents. Google documents is a great way to make your work available anywhere and share with anyone if you choose to do so.

I have already set up the email addresses and created an account for you at google docs. If you would like the login information and get a head start before your first computer class, please email me (click contact left hand side of the page) and I’ll send you the information.

All responses to the questions asked in the previous entry can be found here

Next week Tuesday 13th May we will be having a test on what we learned in computer class today. Please make sure you let those who were absent know what we covered.

1. Tabbed browsing – how to open a new tab in firefox

There’s an icon in one of the toolbars that allows you to do this

2. Copying a block of text from a website

Highlight the text, right click copy

3. Pasting text into a document

Right click, paste

4. How to search clipart

Type into a google search box making sure you use the word ‘clipart’. Click on the image tab after hitting search.

4. Inserting clipart into a document

Right click, copy image – NOT copy image location.

5. How to easily get to the beginning and end of a line

Use two keys on the keyboard. The home key takes your cursor to the beginning of the line, the end key takes your cursor to the end of the line

6. How to wrap the text around a graphic.

Right click on the graphic, format object/image/graphic, then click ‘tight’ or  ’square’.

To all my students and their families, I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Mrs. Dalton