Another week of station work!

It's almost the winter break holiday...and you can feel the energy in the air!  This week we are finishing up our Design Station work, including our Prezis on the Engineering Design Process.  We had a few housekeeping tasks to complete as well, including a survey about how we use technology both at school and at home for the district.  

At the end of this week, we are starting a very exciting Station on Robotics!  The students will be exploring coding by using the Circuit Playground Express, and using Microsoft Makecode to make their Circuit Playground come alive!  Along with the exploration, the students will be learning vocabulary related to robotics, such as "while loop" and "block coding," reading an article about designing robots, and continuing to practice our typing skills in Typing Club.  

Over break, if you have access to a computer at home or at the library, students can keep up with their techie skills by working in a few suggested websites!  

1. www.code.org  The students have all been working on coding already, and can see their progress by logging in with their Google account. 
2. Typing Club  Here you can access the Typing Practice lessons that your student uses.  
3.Scratch Coding Games  Coding is super fun when working in Scratch! This website allows you to create your own project or game.  

You don't have to be alone when you use technology.  If you have a device at home, work with your students to explore coding!  We have been learning so many new things, and it is great to give your student the opportunity to share with their family and friends. 

Our new unit of Station Work!

Last week we finished our first cycle of Station Work. What is Station Work, you might ask?  Well, for our stations, we are exploring different subject areas in 15 minute increment.  Last week, we worked on the station for Art and Music.  At the Fundamental Skills station, we worked on vocabulary related to coding in Quizlet, and recorded our highest score in the "Match" game, took a 3 minute typing test to see how we far we are towards our typing SMART goals, and read a Readworks article related to music.  At the Coding Station, we worked on our coding skills using www.code.org.   The final station was an exploration station, and we explored different ways that you can use technology to create art and music.  Two of the favorite websites from last week were Chrome Music Lab and www.bomomo.com.

This week, we are continuing to work in stations, but we are focusing on the Engineering Design Process.  We again are exploring vocabulary, typing and reading comprehension at our Fundamental Skills station and working on coding in www.code.org to continue improving our coding skills.  At our Exploration Station, however, we are working on using our research skills to learn about the 6 steps of the Engineering Design Process and showing what we learn by creating a Prezi.  Have your student share their finished Prezi with you!  You will be impressed.  

Next week we will be exploring Robotics, a station that should be a lot of fun for our last week before break.  I will hopefully get some great pictures of the students working with their robots that I can share!

We are back at work after the long holiday weekend!  It has been another busy few weeks, and we are about to transition into a new project again. 

This week, we are finishing up our Public Service Announcements.  The students worked in groups to share a message and create a PSA.  As part of our learning, we talked about the three persuasive techniques often used in PSA's, or ethos, pathos and logos.  There were many creative versions of these techniques shown in the work that we shared as a class.  The students are also writing a reflection on how well they felt they shares their message  as well as how they think that the other students in their class shared their messages.  It has been fun to watch what happens when students are allowed to share what they are passionate about!

This week, we will be starting to work at different stations to explore different technologies.  The students will rotate through 3 stations each class period, practicing fundamental skills such as typing, vocabulary related to technology and reading comprehension, working on coding with Code.org, and exploring creative ways to use technology through art and music.  To show their understanding, students will be creating a portfolio of their work.  I think that this will be a fun way to learn about technology before our winter break!

If you are interested in learning more about our coding unit, feel free to explore code.org
The students can access their account and progress by signing in with their Google account. 

We had a short but fun and productive week!  We finished up our Digital Citizenship Infographics that we are creating in Canva, and in small groups, the students shared their ideas on what makes a Responsible, Respectful and Safe Digital Citizen.  As a whole class, we combined our ideas and created a Digital Citizenship Contract.  The contracts included many great ideas such as "We will not plagiarize" or "We will not Cyberbully."  I have included a photo of a couple of our contracts below.  The students did a great job of sharing.

This week, we also played a game called Quizlet Live using the Digital Citizenship unit vocabulary that we have been learning, such as fair use, citation, wireless fidelity, plagiarism, and ethical.  The students worked in teams of 3 or 4 to beat their classmates as they matched vocabulary with their definitions.  Everyone had a great time and we will be playing again this coming week!

Thank you to everyone that stopped by and visited during conferences.  I loved meeting everyone in person, and it was great to share what we have been working on.  If you were not able to meet with me during conferences and would still like to visit, feel free to email or call to set up a time.  Generally, I am at the school each day until 4 or 4:30.  

The weather has officially turned, and we are trotting off towards winter!  Everyone should see grades in Skyward for their students first project, "All About Me Canva Poster."  There are also behavior grades posted that go with our first introductory unit.  Please let me know if anyone has any questions about the grades that they are seeing.  I am available by phone or email, and will be available during teacher's conferences as well.  Conferences will be held on October 24 from 3:30 pm-7:30 pm and again on October 25 from 8:00 am -noon.  If there is a time that works best for you, feel free to let me know and I can reserve the 10 minute time slot for you.  Otherwise, you will be able to sign up outside of the Digital Literacy rooms for a slot. 

This week, we finished our STEM Career projects.  The students worked on researching a STEM Career, by first taking an interest survey to see what career clusters are interesting to them.  There are STEM careers in each of the clusters, and the students did even more research to find a job that they were interested in learning more about.  To finish the project, the students used their research to make a mock "Facebook" profile of what they would be doing in 15-20 years at their STEM career.  It was a great project, and I have seen some very impressive projects already!  If your student hasn't quite finished their slides up, they are welcome to come to our room during Norski Time on Day 6.  It is designated for finishing up projects.   

At the end of last week, we started a unit on Digital Citizenship.  To kick off this new unit, we had a great discussion about social media and its uses this past week.  Next week, we will be exploring more of the vocabulary and concepts surrounding Digital Citizenship, while also working on an Infographic.  I am excited to see what the students will produce!  I think that they already have a great start on their infographics.

It's hard to believe that October is here! Last week, all the students shared their finished posters that they created in Canva.  The posters will be printed and displayed in our room for the remainder of the semester.  Some of the posters turned out really well, and I am very proud of the work the students did!  Not only did they learn a new program, Canva, they were able to use it to express some of their likes and dislikes. Grades for the posters will be posted in Skyward late this week and into next week, as well as behavior grades for September. 

Last week, we started a project on STEM careers, or as we learned in class, Science Technology, Engineering and Math careers.   The students filled out a career clusters survey to figure out which cluster of jobs they are most interested in, and from there, they chose a career.  This week, we will be researching our careers and putting that information into a mock "Facebook" profile of their job and what they will be doing at their job 20 years in the future.  I am excited to see what the students come up with! 

As always, you are welcome to call or email me with any questions that you might have.  I am more than happy to help!   

It is hard to believe that our second week of school is coming to a close!  First, let me take a moment to say thank you to everyone who has donated supplies to our classroom!  These supplies help us organize and keep our classroom clean, so thank you so much for your kindness and generosity. 

This week we learned about Ada Lovelace, the daughter of the poet Lord Byron, who was a pioneer in computer programming language.  She was born in 1815, yet still influenced the computers we use today!  Ask your student more about what they learned this week about this amazing woman!  

This week we also started working on a project in Canva.  Canva is a free graphic design program, and your students are creating a poster to share a little bit about themselves with the class.  Next week, we will continue to work on this project.  Towards the end of the week, each student will present their poster to the class.  You can check out your student's work by having them log into Canva.com.

Ada Byron Lovelace, the First Computer Programmer

1815-1852

Learn more! Click Below.

Ada Lovelace

Welcome to 6th Grade Digital Literacy!  The 2018-19 school year is off to a great start.  This week we are working on:
     -Logging in to our Chromebooks, and getting into Google Classroom
     -Learning about classroom rules and expectations
     -Learning about one another

We are also starting a project using Canva, a Google add-on that aids in design,  that will help us design a poster that demonstrates what we will learn about our classmates. 

Here is a picture of our classroom gorilla...make sure that you check out the daily joke/fun fact on the whiteboard!