Now that the second grade class has finalized and delivered their My Favorite Things project for their "adopted grandparents" at Dogwood Village, they will have a chance in computer lab today to explore more fun math activities. They can use this link throughout the summer to practice math with these games.
Today students will begin a new project that they will present as a gift to their "adopted grandparents" at Dogwood Village. On one of their first visits of the school year, students asked their "adopted grandparents" a series of questions about their favorite things. They will take that information and use Pixie to create a gift for their adopted grandparents over the next few weeks. Below is an example of the cover of one project from a previous year.
Today second grade will have a chance to explore some fun math activities that will also help them review math skills they have learned through the year. They can use this link throughout the summer to practice math with these games.
Each half of the class is meeting for a full period for this computer activity about graphing. The beginning of the class was a brief review about the benefits of graphing. During math in their classroom, students previously sorted a small bag of Legos by color and graphed them on a worksheet. They took the same data and entered it into an Excel Spreadsheet to create a bar graph and then looked at other ways to present the data (e.g. column, line, pie, bar, doughnut, etc.)
Today I will introduce the class to the concept of spreadsheets. They will learn that spreadsheets are used for information that is laid out in tables and that people use spreadsheets to sort, calculate, and graph. The students will learn 4 new vocabulary words – worksheet, column, row, and cell. We will also do an exercise in which they will start Microsoft Excel, learn to navigate a spreadsheet, identify cells, and enter data which will create a recognizable picture.
Today the students will be completing the Fun With Fonts activity using features for text in Microsoft Word. They will systematically change the way fonts look including use of bold, italics, underline, font size, color, justify, and changing fonts. They will also practice saving the changes they make to the document in their personal folder.
This week students will learn about the computer file system. We will discuss how they save their work papers at school, and compare how computers store information using storage devices such as a hard drive. We will talk about the importance of organizing things and how confusing it would be if they just threw all their papers into the bottom of a backpack. The same thing is true for the computer. You need to store the files in an organized way to make it easy to find it again. We will discuss how computers folders are set up the same way as a small "paper filing cabinet system." We will also discuss when to use “save” and “save as” as well as the importance of saving things in their “personal folders” instead of on the computer they are using, and how the Network Server works in our school. After this discussion, the students will work with text in Microsoft Word. They will learn how to systematically change the way fonts look including use of bold, italics, underline, font size, color, justify, and changing fonts. They will practice saving the changes they make to a document in their personal folder.
Tomorrow marks the 112th anniversary of Dr. Seuss' birth. Since 1998, the National Education Association (NEA) has designated March 2 as Read Across America day. In honor of Dr. Seuss' birthday this week, students will play educational games and learn more about Dr. Seuss' many books as they explore the Seussville website.
Today second grade students will have an opportunity to continue to practice their beginning coding skills. They will have a choice between the Lightbot coding activity introduced during our Hour of Code week or other favorite introductory coding activities on the Code.org website.
In celebration of winter, the students are going to design their own intricate snowflakes using a free online tool. This is reminiscent of cutting out snowflakes from folded paper. This activity works on fine motor and mouse skills. It is always one of the favorite computer activities! They are writing snowflake poems in the classroom to accompany their snowflakes.
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