St. Christopher School

1^st Grade – Students have been focusing on keyboarding skills. The next set of projects will focus on the Very Hungry Caterpillar book by Eric Carle. We will have a discussion about the stages of a butterfly’s life, and then students will create a picture of each stage using KidPix. The final project for the unit will be a butterfly ornament that can be hung in a window; the light shines through the ornament mimicking a stain glass effect.

2^nd Grade – The students completed the Quilt Blocks to make a paper quilt and they did a great job (see pictures). The final step to this masterpiece is a video of the students work; the video will include the quilt blocks and the students voices reciting their acrostic poems. The students continue to work in Dance Mat Typing to practice keyboarding skills. Upon completing Dance Mat, they graduate to Mavis Beacon Keyboarding.

3^rd Grade – During the last quarter, the students focused on keyboarding skills and word processing skills using MS Word. They are now moving onto PowerPoint to learn how to create presentations. 3L is producing a book report using a chapter book of their choice and 3G is creating an autobiography of a famous African American. They will also learn to to cite work from resources using from the library and internet, and learn how to find the basic elements found within a story (setting, characters, summary, etc.) to create a good book report.

4^th Grade – The students finished the States project using PowerPoint. Next, they will learn how to use a spreadsheet in MS Excel. The projects in Excel include: creating a multiplication table and how to build arrays using a spreadsheet.

5^th Grade – The students finished the Planet project using PowerPoint. They deomonstrated how to use animated transitions and inserting sounds. They did a great job with the presentations, and had a lot of fun creating them. Next, they will revisit spreadsheet in MS Excel. The projects in Excel include: creating a multiplication table and the Skittles project so they learn how to use the program to make graphs. This is one of the favorite projects in the computer lab.

6^th Grade – The students are still working on the Weather/Technology project. Once they are done recording their production of the News and Weather, they will learn how to video edit using iMovie. They will use music or create their own using Garageband.

PreK and K – PreK teachers are now scheduling time to bring the students into the computer lab. The children primarily work on mouse skills playing games on PBS Kids, and they also did a lesson using Crawford the Cat to reinforce the importance of hand washing. They also work on listening skills while learning how to play the games.

The Kindergarten classes also visited the computer lab and will be back again this month. The children primarily work on mouse skills playing games on PBS Kids, and they also did a lesson with Crawford the Cat to reinforce the importance of hand washing. They also work on listening skills while learning how to play the games.