TALLMADGE TALK

Miss Kilbarger and Mrs. Bennett, Title 1 teachers, service 2nd and 3rd grade students in reading. One of the main focuses with our students is reading fluency. Fluency is the ability to read “like we talk”. A fluent reader is able to read words smoothly and accurately. Fluency is NOT about reading as fast as you can. It’s about reading with expression and paying attention to punctuation marks. A good pace for a 2nd grader is around 87 words correct in one minute (according to research). By the end of 3rd grade, students should be reading around 100 words per minute. One of the best ways to increase fluency is through repeated readings. This is reading the same passage multiple times, with the goal of reading more words correctly each time. Just as with any sport or musical instrument, the only way to become better is with practice. Encourage your child to spend a few minutes each night practicing those reading skills!

The first half of the school year has gone by very quickly! The students have covered quite a bit of ground in all their classroom subjects and specials classes, and Tech is no different. A breakdown of some of the things we have been working on per grade level is as follows:

Kindergarten, First Grade, and Second Grade (in varying levels of difficulty/aptitude): Familiarizing ourselves with/reinforcing the Chromebooks and technology in general; answering the questions “what is a computer” and “what can they do/how do they work?”; utilizing the touchscreens in the form of application navigation (in First Grade, encouraging the students to use their touchpads as much as possible, trying to get them away from over-reliance on the touchscreens), technology and learning games; utilizing the district-provided application Learning.com to help the students learn placement of letter and number keys, how to capitalize letters using the Shift key, some light spelling and typing skills, and navigating other Chromebook resources; reviewing the main parts of the Chromebooks that we use every day (touchpad, screen, keyboard, and what each does); discussing the importance of Internet safety then quizzing ourselves as a group to insure we understand how important Internet safety is; learning how to use our computers to color and paint (Kindergarten and 1st grade); using an online application/website to learn to do specific paint assignments and not just random scribbles (2nd grade).

Third, Fourth, and Fifth Grades (in varying levels of difficulty/aptitude): Through the use of the trivia game Kahoot, re-familiarizing ourselves with Lancaster City Schools Student Technology Agreement, as well as important computer terms; the importance of safe Chromebook and especially safe Internet use by watching district-approved Netsafe videos and then quizzing ourselves as a group to insure we paid attention and followed along; using Typingclub.com and Typing.com to learn to familiarize ourselves with Home Row and proper placement for typing practices; playing a fun typing game called Z-Type to help us learn to type faster, and realizing that not all people type as fast as others, and that’s okay; coming up with Jeopardy Questions and making a Jeopardy challenge for their classmates in other classrooms in their grade level based on what they have been learning in their classroom studies; learning the basics of Google Drawings and how to use the shapes button to: create colorful mandalas using our Chromebooks (3rd grade), create posters of our favorite films without copying the original posters (4th grade), making fun/interesting cards through learning how to layer images on top of each other to create a more complete looking finished product (5th grade); in 3rd-5th grades we also started a new tech class reward program called “Techbucks” designed to encourage and reward good behavior, attentiveness, and kindness during technology class time. Each student automatically accrues one Techbuck each week we are in school (even if it’s a partial week), and then they can earn more for various things, like being kind, paying attention, staying on task, or have some taken away for not paying attention, refusing to do the lesson for the day, acting disrespectful toward the teacher or their classmates, etc. They can use these Techbucks for various rewards, like a little bit of free time at the end of tech class, or enter a monthly raffle for a cool prize (only one winner drawn per month).