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