Slideshow of Technology Lesson

Technology Lesson Slideshow

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After looking at a classmate's powerpoint, I learned that even when a lesson is passive, pictures can still be used as a motivating factor to enhance lessons.

Tech Lesson

I taught my 1st graders a lesson called "Lucky Letters." In it, students were given several letters from which they were to create as many words as possible. This was a good writing exercise, as well as a good way to get the children thinking about forming words and spelling them correctly. I decided to use a powerpoint to give some examples of how we can form words together, as well as to give some examples/nonexamples. From the list of examples/nonexamples, students were asked to tell me which ones were nonsense words, and an animated X came on top of the nonsense words to affirm their answers. I ended up using the powerpoint for a little long for 1st graders, but overall, I think they had fun coming up with interesting words!

Technology Lesson Idea!

My first graders are currently working on becoming familiar with coins and adding them. I found an incredible website that would provides “emanipulatives,” including emanipulative coins and dollars. Students can drop coins into different groups, including two columns, part-part-whole, and 4 boxes. They can also click on a button that calculates the amount the boxes of coins are worth. This allows them to compare values of groups of coins, as well as gives them practice to become more familiar with coins. In my classroom, we don’t have computers available to students for individual practice, but we do have projectors that can be connected to laptops—this would be a great group activity as the teacher selects coins according to the students’ desires, and then questions them to predict, for example, how much each part of a part-part-whole problem is worth before revealing the answer, or to get students to try and find out which coins can be combined to create another value of coins. This would be extremely helpful for students who need extra practice with the coins. Here is the website! It includes other great emanipulatives! Enjoy!http://www.eduplace.com/kids/mw/manip/mn_k.html

Ancient Civilizations Virtual Tour

This might be easier to see as an actual post instead of a link on the side of my blog:
http://sites.google.com/site/ancientworldcivilizations/my-files

Technology Inventory

My first grade classroom is almost bereft of technology. The little-used overhead projector is the most high-tech thing in the room. They are allowed to go to the computer lab once a week for a little while. Technology is definitely not something that is part of their regular routine, and even if it was more available, I don't think it could be squeezed into their literacy/math packed schedules!

I honestly wonder if this lack of technology isn't better for those first graders. I have loved our tech. assignments we have had so far, but they seem to be more applicable/useful for older students, as well as for science, which is a subject 1st graders touch on only briefly throughout the week. These young students are still getting the hang of the whole school thing as it is, and throwing in technology that early may be overwhelming for them. There could be some occasional technology uses that would be nice to access, such as demonstrations on Google Earth, but these would be rare and time-consuming, since they would require a class trip to the computer lab, assuming it is available. I would love to hear appropriate, simple tech. uses in my classroom!