Mr. Funke's Blog

Kinderarten spent some time exploring the 5 senses online with a couple of fun science web sites.

1st graders continue to work on their Solids and Liquids comic project. Some classes are still taking pictures while others have moved on to importing their pictures into Comic Life and organizing and labeling them there.

2nd graders are starting to flip projects. Those who started with and have finished their map projects are now working on measuring sound and light around the building using laptops and Pico Boards.

Have you seen our new podcasts? Mrs. Labbe and Ms. Seveska’s classes are working on creating daily podcasts about their school day. Ms. Seveska’s is up and running and we expect Mrs. Labbe’s to begin sometime today or early next week. These podcasts are created and published by students with minimal assistance from the classroom teachers.

3rd grade is close to finishing up their Simple Machines Quiz Games. Just a couple more questions to go and programming the correct answers before we can post them to the wikis.

4th grade took some time to work in MyAccess this week while we prepare for a virtual field trip to the Southeast Region of the United States next week.

Kindergarteners took more time to explore Tumblebooks in computers this week.

First graders are working on an exciting 5 senses project. This week, we’ve been taking pictures of solids or liquids around the building with our class sets of iPads. Once we have enough pictures, we’ll be putting them together into a comic book page about solids and liquids.
Second graders continue to work on their community maps. Many classes have finished and will start the light and sound activity than many of the other classes finished a couple weeks ago.
Third graders are working on a fun Simple Machines game project. Look for it to be posted and playable online in a few weeks.
Fourth graders spent one last week on Rock Riddles. We’ll be taking a virtual field trip to a region of the United States in the next couple of weeks.

Kindergarteners used Kidspiration for a creative little drawing project this week. Using the pattern blocks in the math section, they created a number of different illustrations which they were then allowed to print and take home.

1st graders learned how to use Tumble Books this week. Tumble Books can be accessed through the Vernon Area Library web site and allows students to read and have books read to them online.

2nd graders continue to work on their Light and Sound and Map and Community projects. Our Light and Sound groups took the data they collected last week and graphed it using the Create a Graph web site. Our Map and Community groups are starting to finish up their projects. Most of them should be done by next week.

3rd grade used BrainPop to learn about Internet safety for one more week. We will be starting a new project next week.

We missed a couple 4th grade classes this week due to a field trip but the rest of them continued working on their Rock Riddles. Most of them should be finished next week.

We only saw 2 kindergarten classes this week so we returned to Treasures, which we haven’t used in a while, for a week of extended reading activities.

1st grade also worked with Treasures this week completing the activities from Book 2.

2nd graders are working on two different projects right now. Guntly, Labbe, and Seveska are working on a wrap up activity for their light and sound unit. Each class was split into five groups and asked to predict which rooms in the building (Library, Office, Gym, Lunchroom) would be the loudest and brightest. They had to rank each room 1 through 4 (1 being the loudest or brightest). Then, using laptops and Picoboards along with a simple measurement program written in Scratch, each group measured the light and sound in each room and wrote down their results along with the actual rankings. Next week, we’ll be graphing their results in a spreadsheet.

Novak, Lamour, and Tincknell’s classes are working on a map activity. Using a template in Pages, each student is creating a small town, using clip art to add buildings to the map. They need to think about the kinds of buildings that a community would need to operate and where they should be placed in the community.

3rd grade started learning about Internet safety through BrainPop videos and quizzes. Feel free to watch and discuss them with your children at home.

4th grade is starting to put the finishing touches on their rock riddle projects. Many students finished their projects this week. Look for them in the hallways soon and see if you can guess the rocks before looking at the correct answers.

Kindergarteners had a field trip this week so I only got to see a couple of classes. We celebrated the impending holidays with some free choice time.

Our first grade classes who had finished up their slide show projects also took some well earned free choice time this week while the other classes finished their projects. Look for them to show up online shortly after break.

2nd graders spend one last week learning about Internet safety through a series of BrainPop videos online. We’ll be starting some map and light and sound projects when we return.

3rd graders finished up their food chains and posted them to their wikis. Once finished, we spent a little time working in Study Island.

4th grade is almost done with their rock riddle projects. We should finish them up in a week or two after break.

Kindergarteners worked on a Transportation sort in Kidspiration this week. Each student sorted a group of vehicles into the terrain they travel on (air, land or water).

1st graders are finishing up their about me slide shows. This week, we worked on transitions and sounds and exported them to iPod friendly movie files.  We have one class left to finish up early next week and then we’ll try to get them online.

2nd grade continues to talk about Internet safety.  This week we watched a video on cyberbullying and discussed it as a class while taking a BrainPop quiz with our Promethean voters.  This weeks video is a free one so feel free to share it with your friends and families who don’t have access to BrainPop at home.

3rd grade is finishing up their food chains and starting to post them on the wikis. Every class should have this done by next week.  Mrs. Finnen’s class used the iPads this week to create posters for their Futabaki pen pals in Moodboard. We’ll be sending those posters off to their pen pals hopefully next week.

4th grade continues to work on rock riddles.  Most students are working on writing their clues and gathering images for the final product.

Whoops! I forgot to update last week so let’s catch up on the last 2 weeks of computer class…

Kindergarteners learned how to use Tumble Books. Tumble Books is a great way for your students to read online at school and at home. Visit the childrens’ section of the Vernon Area Public Library web site for free access to a wide variety of popular children’s books online.

1st grade is putting the finishing touches on a simple slide show presentation about themselves.  For the last month, we’ve been practicing writing a sentence and drawing an illustration to go with it in Kid Pix. This week, we started assembling those pictures into a narrated slide show.

2nd grade is taking a break from working on the Write Your Own Story Wiki to learn about Internet safety.  Each week we’ll be watching a different BrainPOP video on Internet safety and discuss while taking a 10 question quiz (ungraded) using the Promethean voters.  This weeks video was on Netiquette.

Most of our 3rd grade classes finished their prairie food chains this week.  Look for those to be published to the class wikis soon.

4th grade is in the middle of their rock riddle projects.  Most students are finishing up their research and will soon be writing clues and looking for images of their rocks.

Kindergarten continued to explore Starfall.com and started learning about a new web site, Treasures, which features activities linked to our Treasures reading program.

1st grade worked on their last illustrated sentence. Next week, they’ll have an opportunity to finish any work they didn’t have time to during the first three weeks which also gives them a chance to practice opening and saving their files some more.

2nd grade worked on a number of different projects this week. Mrs. Labbe’s class uploaded their first November stories to the 2nd grade story wiki. They also included illustrations from the stories. We can’t wait to read the comments the other classes (and maybe some parents) will leave for them. Other classes finished up our Urban, Rural, Suburban ven diagram in Kidspiration and some were given a hands on introduction to Tumblebooks and Brainpop Jr.

3rd grade began working on a prairie food chain project. Each student has to illustrate a food chain on the Illinois prairie in Comic Life using pictures found on the Internet. Look for these to be posted on the wiki when they are finished.

Some 4th grades started work on their rock riddle project while others worked in MyAccess. Mrs. Pfeil’s class continues to do research for their African American history project.

We missed a couple Kindergarten classes this week because of Halloween celebrations so we took a little break with the rest to let them explore Starfall.com. Starfall is a great website with lots of educational games and activities for younger students.

1st graders continue to work on writing and illustrating sentences in Kid Pix. We’ll string them all together into a slide show once they’re all done.

2nd grade started learning how to add comments to their Write Your Own Story wiki. Each month, classes from both Tripp and Pritchett post stories to the wiki for each other to read. Positive constructive comments can be left at the bottom of the page. Feel free to leave your own. We’ll be changing the format a little bit this month to make it easier for each class to find comments about their stories.

Most of 3rd grade posted their Charlotte’s Web projects to the class wikis. Technical issues kept us from getting Mrs. Wacker’s class projects posted but we’ll get them up as soon as we can.

4th graders are getting ready to work on either their Rock Riddle or African American history projects. Both are research projects. Rock Riddles should be finished shortly after conferences while the African American History project will take us all the way into February.

1st graders are learning how to use Kid Pix to write and illustrate sentences. This will lead into larger projects that involve sequencing and storytelling.

2nd grade used Kidspiration this week to do a mealwork/milkweed bug assessment.

3rd grade finished up their Charlotte’s Web projects with a word cloud. Word clouds are a great way to make vocabulary more interesting. There are a number of word cloud generators online but I prefer Tagxedo and ABCYA.

4th grade finished up their road trip with the Tandys. Look for our rock riddle project to start up in the next couple of weeks.