Getting I.T. Right! Instructional Technology at Fern Bluff Elementary 

After receiving the Smart Slates last January, our teachers and students are getting more comfortable with the interactive devices and we are seeing them used widespread now. Our first grade team is studying shapes right now and asked me to create some custom notebook files for them to use. All of the first grade classes have put them to use. And our second grade is currently using theirs to interact with lessons on homophones as well as fractions. The students are loving it and are asking for more!

Ms. Lippe’s 3rd graders are studying landforms and were in the lab yesterday using STEMscopes to go on a webquest. Among the items they were searching for on their quest were: descriptions of isthmus, valley, canyon, plains, and mountains; where the world’s highest mountain is and its elevation, what kind of landforms are found in the state of Texas, and more.

Our PE department is utilizing “Fuel Up to Play 60” this year, which encourages youth to eat healthy and move more. Healthy eating helps students get the nutrients they need to help improve their academic performance, and being physically active can help students improve self-esteem, cognitive function and test scores. Here is one of our classes using the netbooks to sign-up for their accounts on “Fuel Up to Play 60″.

Our kindergartners are currently studying penguins, and during this week or next are getting the opportunity to go on a virtual fieldtrip to the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, in Columbus Ohio. Interacting live with a instructor at the zoo, the students get to see the penguins, learn about them, and ask questions. Among the things the program teaches them are: what characteristics make a bird, where are penguins found, why they are black and white, species comparisons, what and how they eat, and more. The students also engage in some hands-on activities where they dress up as a penguin (complete with white & black feathers, flippers, webbed-feet, and a beak), practice rolling an egg using only their feet, and get to compare their height next to largest and smallest penguin species (Emperor and Little Blue respectively).

Ms. Driskill’s Kindergartners are putting their Lakeshore Interactive software to good use, for whole group instruction, and for interactive centers where students get instant feedback on their learning. Pictured are two students using the Smart Podium in the classroom (not being displayed on the projector) as a center to work on rhyming sounds. They drag over the ball on the bottom to one of the three columns trying to match sounds, such as “clock” and “sock” or “plug” and “bug.” If they get it correct the ball stays in the column under the appropriate match…if they get it incorrect the ball shoots out of the top and goes back into the queue of balls to try again. The teacher can set which words to work on for rhyming, or let the program choose them randomly. They also have access to programs that will help them work on beginning sounds and other language skills. Fern Bluff is piloting the use of these programs that give our educators instant interactive learning opportunities (without having to create interactive flipcharts from scratch) and can be used with any interactive whiteboard system (Smart, Promethean, etc.).

The students in Mr. Benfield’s 5th Grade class are stoked about working on their math skills, thanks to the site MangaHigh! For this generation of kids that spend so much of their free time on social media, playing things like “Farmville” on Facebook, MangaHigh is a perfect way to meet them at the digital divide and get them enthused about learning. Forget traditional math worksheets and textbook problems that involve only the student and his/her teacher…these kids want to connect with the world and see how their skills match up! Besides competing with their classmates, students and classes can compete with other classes around the world using the challenge feature of MangaHigh. Right now Mr. Benfield’s students are competing with students at “Bristol Grammar Junior School” in the United Kingdom, testing their knowledge on addition, subtraction, division, prime numbers, fractions, equations and more!

MangaHigh is not just another site offering math games. The site offers material that is TEKS-aligned (state stardands), provides excellent feedback on student performance (and how they compare to other students around the world), taps into social media, provides remediation, can be individualized for Response to Intervention (RTI), and it is FREE!

The dynamic duo of second grade teacher Elizabeth Carneiro and her student teacher Kate Hoffner have worked with their students to create the first edition of their class newspaper: The Fern Bluff Times. Inspired by the education courses that she is taking, Ms. Hoffner decided to have the student fulfill their TEKS requirements for writing a non-fiction piece by drafting articles for the newspaper. As a class they studied various “real” newspapers for elements like headings, sub-headings, and design layout to learn the components they would need to know to create their on newspaper. All of the students typed their own articles and created drawings for different sections. They included non-fiction, fiction, arts, entertainment, advertisements and other items just for fun. Some of the students served as editors, checking each article for accuracy, and deciding on how to layout all of the elements. After they were done with their mock-up version of the newspaper they recruited some outside help to assemble the newspaper in Quark, and have it printed professionally (thanks to YES Printing).
Click here to see a PDF version of the newspaper: hoffner_newspaper 

Ms. Barrett’s 4th graders have been working hard on creating graphs by hand. Today they learned how to use Microsoft Excel to easily create various graphs showing the difference between estimated grocery prices and actual grocery prices.

Ms. Rodriguez’s 4th graders have been studying about Peg Kehret, a woman who has overcome polio to become an award-winning author. Many of the students chose to use the program “Inspiration” to create unique concept maps/time lines about her.

Parents-
If you can’t make it to Fern Bluff every morning to see the live broadcast, you can still watch a recording of it almost every day on the Fern Bluff website. Just look under the Quick Links section on any page for “KATZ Broadcast“. Our in house broadcast system KATZ gets its call sign from the school’s mascot: the bobcat.