Friday, Feb. 24

Hello,

I have been out yesterday and today because of an illness, but will be back on Monday. The students have started their new project on energy this week. They were in the computer lab on Wednesday and today. The groups set up their voicethreads accounts and will be ready to start putting images on it and recording their information on Monday. I wanted them to get a really good start on their research before they got started on the voicethread. This is a new computer tool for them, but is similar to Photo Story that they used for the last project. It is very user friendly and can still be accessed from home, so if someone is absent or needs more time, they can work from home. Voicethreads use images that the students find about their topic and then they record what they want to tell us about those images. The difference between this and Photo Story is that students can doodle on their images to point out specific areas, if needed, and there is no background music available. It is a very fun way to do a project, too. I hope that they like it as much as they did the Photo Story. Well, that is about it for this week. I wanted to get on here and let everyone know what was going on, even though I could not be at school. I will talk to you next week! Have a good weekend!

Monday, February 13

Good Monday morning!

Well, we have finished up the rocks/minerals projects and are viewing the last of them today. I have a few activities I want the students to complete using rocks and minerals and then we will be completely done with this topic. Once those are done, we are going to start our energy project. We will use a new computer tool called a voice thread for this project. It is a tool that can be accessed from home, so students can work from home, if they need to. The only part of a voice thread that needs to be addressed, if a student is going to use it at home, is that they need a headset with a microphone attached. They will be recording their voices again and putting in images to show their part of the project. I will give the directions, when we get to that point. There are four weeks left in this grading period. The last week of the grading period is when I will collect all the labs for extra credit. I will give them the list on Monday and they will be due on Wednesday. I always give the students two days to put them all together. After that, we have one more nine weeks grading period left to this school year. I can't believe how time is flying by us. Even the students have mentioned that this school year is going by so fast. Have a great week and I will talk to you soon.

Thursday, February 2

Today will be the second day for being in the computer lab and working on the rocks/minerals wiki projects. According to the note from my sub yesterday, the students had some trouble getting on the wiki yesterday, but we got it all straightened out today. They will be typing on their wiki pages today. We will be working on these projects Monday and Tuesday of next week, too, then start the presentations on Wednesday. That is our goal, anyway. I may have to adjust it, depending on how the research goes. I have a hands-on lab planned for the students, too, after their presentations, that should be interesting for them. They will have all the background information they need for the lab from the projects.

I still have some of the vocabulary words to cover with them, so we will be picking up those tomorrow and every Friday until they are all completed. If you remember, there was a 6th grade Science terms list that I was to cover with the students throughout the entire year.

Have a good weekend. Talk to you next week.

Tuesday, January 31

Hello!

We are starting our new project today - Tuesday. This one is over rocks/minerals. The students are working in their groups for the project and using the class wiki page to post their information. There is some confusion over the link for putting images on their pages, but I showed them how to do it a couple of other ways. The people at wikispaces have worked on the wikis and it looks a little different than it did last time we were on there. I had to play around with it before I found out what works with the images.

We will be in the computer lab tomorrow and Thursday, so that the students can get a good start on their research. They can look at home, too. It will be okay, however, I do want them to do most of it in the classroom, so they are not just sitting in here with nothing to do.

I still need to put the grades in the computer for their Photo story projects. It just takes time to go through all of them, since I am grading each students' part of the project. This next project will be graded the same way. I have told the students that I will need a copy of who is responsible for which part of the project. They are using today, after the video, to decide those parts. They will be ready to go tomorrow, when we go to the lab.

Well, this gets us caught up on what we are doing for the next couple of weeks. There will be an oral presentation at the end of this project, so the students can go over what they have found with the rest of the class. Have a great rest of your day. Email me, if you have any questions.

Monday, January 23

Hello to all!!

It has been several weeks, since I have been on here and what a wild several weeks it has been!!!! The students have been working on their photo story over the biome their group was assigned. It took some time to get the research completed and then more time to get their information recorded to the pictures they found. Some decided that they did not like the sound of their voices, and elected to be in front of the class to present orally. I gave them a checklist to make sure that they had ever part of the story in their's. There was one part about the biome that they were supposed to put first in the story and then the rest could go in whatever order they chose. Once the stories were completed, I put them on my flash drive and showed them to the class. I wanted the groups to email me their stories, but the program wouldn't let them. The computers were not set up for it. This worked out okay, though. Once we finish everything with these stories and this topic, we are going to review cells for a couple of days because their 2nd quarterly assessment did not turn out very well. After that, we are going to start on rocks and minerals. We have a wiki project set up for that. I am sorry that I have not been on here sooner, but it has been very hectic here and we have been busy learning a new program and learning about organisms. My goal is to be back on here once a week. So, I am going to be positive and optimistic and say I will talk to you next week! :-)

Friday, December 2

Hey!!! It is me again!!

We are changing our plans for next week. I am going to review with the kids on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. This will make our test on Thursday. The kids will have plenty of time to practice this way. I am hoping it will help them. I, also, changed the vocabulary quiz, too. I have deleted the quiz from this Wednesday and it will be included in on the test next Thursday. I have given the students the directions for what they need to be successful. They have the list of terms, too. I have the directions and words posted on the boards in my room. These words are so important and I am hoping this extra time and practice will help them. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at tphipps@minfordfalcons.net.

Thursday, December 1

Hello to all!!

After we started working on our activity for today, that we labeled LAB #4, I have decided that our test over genetics will be next Wednesday. We will finish our activity from today on Monday and then I have a review sheet that I want to do with them the rest of Monday and Tuesday. This sheet will be like what the test is going to be like. If something happens and we cannot through the review by the end of Tuesday, then we will move our test to Thursday. I want to make sure that we go over that review sheet very well, since the test will be modeled like it. Tomorrow is Friday and it will be our vocabulary day. Some of the students will be performing their songs for us. The others have already done so. I have to say that the songs have been very good, so far. I am looking forward to hearing the rest of them. Have a good weekend and I will be on here again next week!