Spreadsheet Lesson Review

The project I reviewed was “Dictionary Adventures!" created by Ms. Donene Rognile for a second grade class in developing language arts skills. The object was to make the dictionary more fun as they practiced dictionary skills in making a class dictionary about themselves to be place in their room library. She organized the children into groups to work in centers of twenty-five minutes each. The centers were: working with a dictionary, taking digital photos, games, and working with the computer. (She said there were five children to one computer, probably only one in the classroom.) The children learned how to look words up in the dictionary, alphabetization, wrote descriptions of themselves, looked up definitions of words, etc. Spreadsheets were used in discovering the definitions of words. Some of these were designed as “no fail” problems so there was not a pressure of “getting everything right”. She also designed some memory matching games with the words and definitions. She listed some extended activities at the end of the presentation: creating a class newsletter, putting together an original children’s book – as a round robin activity of writing, illustrating, etc., making a class portfolio that could be put on a disk and sent home at the end of the year.

The teacher said the children thoroughly enjoyed this project, increasing their skills with the technology used, and that it crossed all ability levels to engage the children in the learning process.

Even though this project was for second graders who can read at a much higher level, there are elements of it that would be great for kindergartners. They could make the class dictionary with pictures of themselves and their names. A list of sight words to be learned could be provided that they could sort by first letter in alphabetical order. A combination of another lesson I reviewed called “Does brand name popcorn pop better?” by Carol Sayles for 2nd grade math, where information about the class was graphed, would go very well together. Some of the things they graphed were: favorite sandwich, breakfast, cookie, drink, what color of eyes, times moved, can you swim, ride a bike, what is your eye color, number of people in family, etc. This information, along with each child’s picture, name and a short biography (with help from the teacher), and a list of sight words to learn for the year, all put into a class book, would make an interesting and fun project.
Here is the website for the Dictionary presentation: http://edtech.boisestate.edu/elearn/newbridges/cds/Dictionary/dictionaryopening.htm

Mrs. Fronk's Kindergarten Netiquette

Kindergartners will have rules to follow when using the internet. These rules will be posted by the computers and read to the kindergarteners often until they know them by heart. Close monitoring of the children as they use the internet is always a priority to ensure their safety, but these rules will "stick with them" whenever they are online - at school or at home.

Click here to see the rules: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dhpd7rtc_6gt2mrsg8&hl=en

The "Jigsaw Teaching Strategy"

In using the cooperative learning strategy called “Jigsaw” in a kindergarten room of twenty-five students and five computers, I have come up with various project ideas that would help the children learn word processing skills. With the children sitting five to a table, rotation by tables would occur at “centers” time – the computers being one of the centers. Various projects would be worked on, two in a week, in which the children would type in the answers to the area of the project they were assigned to.
Possible subjects: measuring, math calculations, science (eg. parts of an insect or flower), letter and/or number fill-in, reading with simple words and pictures, sequencing, art matching, recognition/definition, etc. This would be Day One. (Note: with the kindergarten day being short, the projects would be very basic aimed at reinforcing simple principles while increasing their computer skills. The project would become more challenging as their knowledge and skills grew).
Day Two: Collaboration of expert groups at the computer area (the children would still sit where they did day one for the rest of the time.) And go back to the original group to share and complete the project by writing down all the answers on a worksheet, then entering it in on the computer.
The next two days would repeat the process with a different project with the fifth day of the week reserved for a different lesson. For the second two days, children would sit in different places (and, again, different places on the fifth day), so there is a mixing of all children in the class. It may be best to start Jigsaw with just one project per week so that the children get the hang of it, then go to two per week, then go to class presentations with one member per each group “sharing” the results of the whole group – reserved for a Friday. In about a twelve to thirteen week period, all the children would get a chance to be a “presenter” to the whole class.
As an advantage, the children would get to know each other and learn social skills – a major purpose of kindergarten. It would be challenging for the teacher to implement, but once the children caught on, they would be great. The computer skills would come automatically from following through with the lessons. The disadvantage, as stated earlier, would be the short kindergarten day. In order to get everyone on the computer in one day, that would be five centers projects, possibly two too many.
The Jigsaw method would be a great way to start off kindergarten with a cooperative, fair and friendly foundation, working together with their peers in a way that would help them to be successful through the rest of their school career.