Category: Projects

Posted in Projects, Salem City Schools

Third Graders Participate in a Global Penpal Project

Posted on by Tina Coffey

Have you noticed Third Grade’s bulletin board in the upstairs hallway at G.W. Carver? If so, you might have noticed all the colorful cards, letters, and brochures from schools all around the globe! The students in Mrs. Naves, Ms. Pillis’, Mrs. Hughes, and Mrs. Travitz’s classes have been participating in a global penpal project called, “From Me to You 2008” organized by Jennifer Wagner on the Technospud Project Website. Teachers from all over the world participated, from California to Maine, Canada to Hawaii, and even Australia! Each Third Grade class sent cards to 23 other classes (and to a Ronald McDonald House) and included a brochure (created by seven very creative third graders) that told the classes all about G.W. Carver and Salem, Virginia. In return, they are receiving cards from other classes, and learning all about places all over the United States and beyond. Students will even have a chance to view the location of all the classes on Google Earth (and learn how to use the ruler in Google Earth to measure distance)! If you haven’t had a chance to take a look at some of the things they have received, take a walk by Third Grade. If you want to learn more about this particular project, you can check out the project homepage here.

Also, if you think you might be interested in doing a global project, I highly recommend looking at some of the other ones on the Technospud Project Website. It looks like an exciting project for K-3 is about to start in March for St. Patrick’s Day (involving Lucky Charms and lots of Math) , one later in the Spring for grades 4-6 based on Prince Caspian (the 2nd book in the Narnia Series), and more! If you choose to do one, please let me know. I’d love to help!!

Posted in Fun, Ideas, Projects

Trip to NYC

Posted on by Tina Coffey

Last week I had a chance to go spend time in NYC. This was only my second time ever visiting, and really the first time I had a chance to check out some of the famous places there. Here’s a thirty second overview of what I saw:[kml_flashembed movie="http://widgets.clearspring.com/o/46928cc51133af17/4760bbef51b287d4" width="432" height="250" wmode="transparent" /]

I brought back some pics and short video clips of these places. I’d like to increase our collection of pictures and video clips for kids to use in digital projects without having to worry about copyright. Even though there are sites out there that allow you to download pics for educational uses, there are a number of reasons why doing this is difficult (or not safe) for younger students. Having a folder of pics that match SOLs that students can use freely would help. I’ll add the ones I brought back from NYC. If you have any other digital pics or short digital videos (especially ones that match SOLs) that you don’t mind sharing, please leave a comment here or drop me an email.

Posted in Projects, Salem City Schools

What We Learned from Virtual Scuba Diving Project

Posted on by Tina Coffey

I’m slowly (but surely) making my way around to the classes that participated in the Scuba Diving project with Meg Swecker. I’ve already made it to a few classes, and the students have had a chance to record what they learned on a collection of Mrs. Swecker’s pictures in Voice Thread. This VoiceThread will evolve as I finish making it around to the other classes.

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Meg and I also had a chance to sit down and talk about the project from our perspective as ITRT’s, and I also learned some of the other neat ways she extended this project with her students in Roanoke County . We recorded much of the conversation as a Field Report for the GenTech Podcast. If you’d like to listen, here’s the link.

Posted in Projects, Salem City Schools

Animal Magazine Covers

Posted on by Tina Coffey

Mrs. Prettyman’s Language Arts classes designed some awesome magazine covers on the laptops using Microsoft Publisher. Their covers were based on information they had gathered and used for an animal report! You can see them better “in person” outside her classroom door…so if you have a chance, check them out! What a creative way to get kids writing, Mrs. Prettyman!!

You can also seem them a bit closer if you click this link, and choose the “full” button.