Second Grade FOCUS News
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May 18, 2012
Today was our last day of second grade FOCUS. Our class time was cut short due to a previous agreement to attend the fourth grade FOCUS class "Living Museum". It was very cool to go up to each student dressed as a famous person and hear their story. After that, we rushed to our lab to finish our presentations, which we were not able to do. So, I loaded all of the videos here on the website. Click the tab to the left that says "PhotoStory Videos". Yes, we do have a few kinks here and there, but we are learning. ;) What caused the tiny images (that didn't appear until after the video was made) is when you save the image from a website, you must open the picture to its biggest size or you get a smaller version of it. Live and learn, right? Again, have a wonderful summer. I loved teaching your children! Take care, Ms. McDaniel
May 17, 2012
Tomorrow is the last day of FOCUS for the year! I can't tell you how much I have enjoyed teaching your children. They have held on tight as I have furiously taught them about many technology tools. We finished up this week with McDaniel's Store on Wednesday and PhotoStory 3 presentations on Thursday and Friday. I will try to load the videos on this website as soon as I can. Have a wonderful summer and keep learning! Technology rocks!
April 20, 2012 NO FOCUS next week. They need me to help with testing so I have to cancel class. We will start back Monday, April 30th. This week we continued researching our animals and also learned how to save pictures from Internet resources and put them in a folder. When we come back, we will be able to quickly load all the pictures into a PhotoStory 3 presentation. It's like a quick and easy PowerPoint. If we have time, we will add voice overs. Technology rocks!
April 9, 2012 MCDANIEL'S STORE IS FRIDAY! Bring donations!
Please bring donations of old but good toys, books, or videos. I will price them with our left over store inventory. Friday, students will use their fake money to buy things. Today, we reviewed our New Year's Resolutions and posted our progress. New gifted students set goals to work on for the last weeks of school. Go to our Thinking Page tab on the left and click on the title to get to our WallWisher Wall.
March 23, 2012
Report cards come home today. You will see a rubric for the PowerPoint project that we just completed. Look at the rubric as you view your child's presentation. They are loaded on the left. PPT is short for PowerPoint. Enjoy! Our next project will be research again but this time on our favorite animal. Students will use blogging, Kidspiration to brainstorm, Internet research sites, and compile them for a PhotoStory 3 presentation. Gathering and using images properly from the Internet will be the new learning. I hope to have time for every student to do voice overs on this project. Technology rocks!
March 20, 2012
Check out the updated Photo Gallery tab!
Blogging homework is due this Friday. Go to the Blog tab and click on comment. Make sure you give me your best thinking and writing to describe your favorite animal. Also, edit careful before you submit. Yes this means reading over it and making sure you spell everything correctly and add your punctuation: periods, capital letters, etc.
Thank you for doing this by Friday! :)
March 19, 2012
Our PowerPoints are done! It was fun presenting them to the class. I will send home the grading rubric with the report cards this Friday! We had two students' projects go to the Gwinnett County Student Media Festival: Sydney and Amani! Congratulations!
Feb. 28, 2012
Welcome new FOCUS students! They are off to a great start creating PowerPoint presentations about their favorite book. The old crew is doing theirs on The Whipping Boy. It is my hope that I will have some excellent projects, so I can enter them in the Student Media Festival. The deadline is just a couple weeks away, but our time is limited in the lab due to benchmark testing. I hope to update our photos very soon. Thank you for sharing your children with me. They are wonderful!
Jan. 23, 2012
This is the last week we have to finish our novel study, so I gave students reading homework. By Friday, they need to have finished the last three chapters of the Whipping Boy and completed the last posted question. Please encourage them to think and write their response with depth. Again, I will be scoring these posts.
Jan. 9, 2012
Welcome to 2012! Last week we viewed a BrainPop video on New Year's customs around the world. It was so much fun to see some of the cool things that other countries do. We also continued reading our novel, The Whipping Boy, and reviewed our grading sheet to record our areas of weakness. This sheet came home in your child's report card.We are about half way through our Type to Learn program, so I brought out the boxes to cover our hands so we can't cheat and look at the keys for the final lessons. This week we will continue blogging with the Whipping Boy and also post our New Year's Resolutions on the Thinking Page. If you haven't listened to our podcasts yet, please do. The one at the top is the whole group reading a chapter aloud. On the Podcasts link on this website, you will hear each student read the poem, Snowy Day. Enjoy! My future plans are to finish up the Whipping Boy in two weeks, and then create podcasts about the book to hopefully enter in the Media Festival. Our deadline is the end of February.
Dec. 16, 2011
Go to our Podcasts tab and listen to us read a snow poem. Oh, wouldn't it be nice to have a white Christmas? Keep dreaming, right? :)
Dec. 15, 2011
Would you like to hear us read outloud? Click on the link above with the sound icon. I tried out using my new iPhone 4S to record their voices in preparation for podcasting later. The quality is quite good, so I'm going to let them use my phone to record. Enjoy listening to them read chapter 9 of The Whipping Boy. I will be grading their blogging responses to questions 1-4 using a rubric similar to their Thinking Page posts. The most points come from their depth of thinking with a few points off for spelling, punctuation, and grammar. I did allow students class time to make up their homework, but I prefer for them to do it at home in the future. Please let me know if you have Internet problems. A note from you would be fine. I hope all of you have a wonderful and safe holiday. See you next year!
Dec. 9, 2011
This week, we continued to blog about our book The Whipping Boy. If you don't see your child's comments, then they didn't do their homework! The only exception is Amani, who's comments are not transferring over. I'm still working on this. It's very obvious that most of the students are taking their blogging very seriously and writing very detailed and edited responses. I'm impressed! I will give a grade next week on their combined blogs, so if your child needs to catch up, they have a little bit of time.
Dec. 1, 2011
We started our Blog today! Check it out. Go to the Blog tab above. Click on the Comments. Technology Rocks!!
Nov. 30, 2011
Over the past few weeks, students did a book study on Molly's Pilgrim by Barbara Cohen. We reviewed how to make connections with our reading and learned how to post on the Thinking Page, an electronic sticky note board. This week we learned how to use the library's Destiny software to find books in our Fountas and Pinnell reading levels. I've found with gifted students that sometimes they are reading books that are too easy or too hard. We discussed "just right" books, and I made them make a list using the advanced search feature on the computer. To check our typing progress, we charted our levels on Type to Learn over the past month to see our growth. Next, we're going to do a book study on the Newbery Winner, The Whipping Boy, by Sid Fleishman. This will be a good project for the next couple of weeks, since we won't be able to use the lab due to Benchmark Testing.
Nov. 4, 2011
For three days last week, I was able to attend the GaETC technology conference in Atlanta. I've collected tons of ideas to help integrate technology into our curriculum. Your students will be the benefit of my new knowledge as I try out new technology tools with them. This week, I will use a new posting board called Wallwisher. It's a collaborative sticky note concept where anyone with a computer and your Wallwisher address can post to the wall. I plan to use it this week as part of our new Reading Workshop sessions. We will use it as a "Thinking Wall" to predict about stories and to share ideas about other literacy elements. The free tool is a bit limited in the amount of text you can write, but for this age level, it will be fine. The security is intact as I will moderate all posts. This means that I see and approve all posts before they are made public on the wall. Feel free to try it out. I made a parent page just for you! The student page is located as a new page tab at the top of this website called "Thinking Page". I still plan to have a class Blog, but I believe this posting page will be a great warm up to blogging. http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/mcdanielparents
One more thing...I got aproval for this typing website that is so much fun, and students can do it at home. Try it out. It's also on our Class Links page. http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/typing/
Oct. 24, 2011
We are back to working on our Fungi Reports. Students used online media resources to answer their research questions from their Kidspiration graphic organizers/webs. Now they are writing their reports using MaxWrite software. To help them edit, this software will read back what the students wrote. A little parrott does it. It's so much fun, and helps them "hear" their errors. With these reports, I also get to teach them good writing technique, which is something I love to do. On a side note, the students continue to work daily on their typing skills using Type to Learn for the first ten minutes of class.
Oct. 14, 2011
For the past two weeks, we have worked on creativity, since we were kicked out of our lab for benchmark testing.:) It was so much fun learning about COFFE (Creativity is Originality, Flexibility, Fluency, and Elaboration.) Using graphic organizers, games, and other activities, the students learned how strong or weak they are in these different parts of creativity and made goals on improving.
Sept. 30, 2011
As you all know, we finished the Prezi, and I emailed it to you. Here is the link to enjoy all year. I plan to do another Prezi with the class at the end of the year to see the progress that they've made. Currently, we've been working on fungi research. Using Kidspiration, the students created a web of questions that they have about fungi. Now they are using online media resources to find the answers to their questions. They also learned how to find images and copy them to a folder. Finally, they will use MaxWrite to write a paragraph about fungi, insert images, and draw an image. I would love to also make a PhotoStory presentation with them, if we can find enough images. If you have a digital camera at home please see if you can take pictures of mold, yeast, and or mushrooms. If we can get about 20+ pictures, we can make an awesome PhotoStory video. This is a free software offered by Microsoft. Have a wonderful fall weekend!
Sept. 15, 2011
This week, students created a Kidspiration template about themselves. We are going to export it as a JPEG (picture) file into our Prezi. Today students explored a new encyclopedia resource called Pebble Go. The at-home-use log in information is on the links page of this website. I just learned about this new online software the school purchased this morning. It's amazing, so I had to share it with the students today.
Sept. 9, 2011
Today we finished scanning our self portraits to put in our Prezi. Yesterday, we learned how to use a digital camera and load the images into the computer. Here is the web release form for you to print, sign, and return to me. As soon as we get these, I can post our pictures and projects here! Thank you.
Sept. 8, 2011
This is our new FOCUS 2nd Grade Website! Here I will keep you updated on our learning activities and projects from class. Before I can post your child's pictures or projects. I will need to have you sign a website release form. This needs to be done even if you signed the release form for the school.
August 22, 2011
Welcome to the FOCUS program in Gwinnett County Public Schools! I have been teaching gifted students for ten years, and look forward to working with this new group of students.
This year we are going to try something a little bit different. Students will come to my lab upstairs every day from 9:00 to 9:45. Our primary focus will be on technology projects that enrich their second grade AKS. Students will learn how to type using the Type to Learn program which is self paced. Also they will learn how to use Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and many other technology tools. Students will come to me during their language arts block, but we will also focus on special research projects that integrate with science and social studies. It is my hope that they will be able to present their projects to their regular classroom as a learning tool. I also plan to include a gifted enrichment packet for students to use in their regular classroom of analogies, Mind Benders, and other thinking skills activities. Please feel free to email me with any questions or concerns.
[email protected]
Today was our last day of second grade FOCUS. Our class time was cut short due to a previous agreement to attend the fourth grade FOCUS class "Living Museum". It was very cool to go up to each student dressed as a famous person and hear their story. After that, we rushed to our lab to finish our presentations, which we were not able to do. So, I loaded all of the videos here on the website. Click the tab to the left that says "PhotoStory Videos". Yes, we do have a few kinks here and there, but we are learning. ;) What caused the tiny images (that didn't appear until after the video was made) is when you save the image from a website, you must open the picture to its biggest size or you get a smaller version of it. Live and learn, right? Again, have a wonderful summer. I loved teaching your children! Take care, Ms. McDaniel
May 17, 2012
Tomorrow is the last day of FOCUS for the year! I can't tell you how much I have enjoyed teaching your children. They have held on tight as I have furiously taught them about many technology tools. We finished up this week with McDaniel's Store on Wednesday and PhotoStory 3 presentations on Thursday and Friday. I will try to load the videos on this website as soon as I can. Have a wonderful summer and keep learning! Technology rocks!
April 20, 2012 NO FOCUS next week. They need me to help with testing so I have to cancel class. We will start back Monday, April 30th. This week we continued researching our animals and also learned how to save pictures from Internet resources and put them in a folder. When we come back, we will be able to quickly load all the pictures into a PhotoStory 3 presentation. It's like a quick and easy PowerPoint. If we have time, we will add voice overs. Technology rocks!
April 9, 2012 MCDANIEL'S STORE IS FRIDAY! Bring donations!
Please bring donations of old but good toys, books, or videos. I will price them with our left over store inventory. Friday, students will use their fake money to buy things. Today, we reviewed our New Year's Resolutions and posted our progress. New gifted students set goals to work on for the last weeks of school. Go to our Thinking Page tab on the left and click on the title to get to our WallWisher Wall.
March 23, 2012
Report cards come home today. You will see a rubric for the PowerPoint project that we just completed. Look at the rubric as you view your child's presentation. They are loaded on the left. PPT is short for PowerPoint. Enjoy! Our next project will be research again but this time on our favorite animal. Students will use blogging, Kidspiration to brainstorm, Internet research sites, and compile them for a PhotoStory 3 presentation. Gathering and using images properly from the Internet will be the new learning. I hope to have time for every student to do voice overs on this project. Technology rocks!
March 20, 2012
Check out the updated Photo Gallery tab!
Blogging homework is due this Friday. Go to the Blog tab and click on comment. Make sure you give me your best thinking and writing to describe your favorite animal. Also, edit careful before you submit. Yes this means reading over it and making sure you spell everything correctly and add your punctuation: periods, capital letters, etc.
Thank you for doing this by Friday! :)
March 19, 2012
Our PowerPoints are done! It was fun presenting them to the class. I will send home the grading rubric with the report cards this Friday! We had two students' projects go to the Gwinnett County Student Media Festival: Sydney and Amani! Congratulations!
Feb. 28, 2012
Welcome new FOCUS students! They are off to a great start creating PowerPoint presentations about their favorite book. The old crew is doing theirs on The Whipping Boy. It is my hope that I will have some excellent projects, so I can enter them in the Student Media Festival. The deadline is just a couple weeks away, but our time is limited in the lab due to benchmark testing. I hope to update our photos very soon. Thank you for sharing your children with me. They are wonderful!
Jan. 23, 2012
This is the last week we have to finish our novel study, so I gave students reading homework. By Friday, they need to have finished the last three chapters of the Whipping Boy and completed the last posted question. Please encourage them to think and write their response with depth. Again, I will be scoring these posts.
Jan. 9, 2012
Welcome to 2012! Last week we viewed a BrainPop video on New Year's customs around the world. It was so much fun to see some of the cool things that other countries do. We also continued reading our novel, The Whipping Boy, and reviewed our grading sheet to record our areas of weakness. This sheet came home in your child's report card.We are about half way through our Type to Learn program, so I brought out the boxes to cover our hands so we can't cheat and look at the keys for the final lessons. This week we will continue blogging with the Whipping Boy and also post our New Year's Resolutions on the Thinking Page. If you haven't listened to our podcasts yet, please do. The one at the top is the whole group reading a chapter aloud. On the Podcasts link on this website, you will hear each student read the poem, Snowy Day. Enjoy! My future plans are to finish up the Whipping Boy in two weeks, and then create podcasts about the book to hopefully enter in the Media Festival. Our deadline is the end of February.
Dec. 16, 2011
Go to our Podcasts tab and listen to us read a snow poem. Oh, wouldn't it be nice to have a white Christmas? Keep dreaming, right? :)
Dec. 15, 2011
Would you like to hear us read outloud? Click on the link above with the sound icon. I tried out using my new iPhone 4S to record their voices in preparation for podcasting later. The quality is quite good, so I'm going to let them use my phone to record. Enjoy listening to them read chapter 9 of The Whipping Boy. I will be grading their blogging responses to questions 1-4 using a rubric similar to their Thinking Page posts. The most points come from their depth of thinking with a few points off for spelling, punctuation, and grammar. I did allow students class time to make up their homework, but I prefer for them to do it at home in the future. Please let me know if you have Internet problems. A note from you would be fine. I hope all of you have a wonderful and safe holiday. See you next year!
Dec. 9, 2011
This week, we continued to blog about our book The Whipping Boy. If you don't see your child's comments, then they didn't do their homework! The only exception is Amani, who's comments are not transferring over. I'm still working on this. It's very obvious that most of the students are taking their blogging very seriously and writing very detailed and edited responses. I'm impressed! I will give a grade next week on their combined blogs, so if your child needs to catch up, they have a little bit of time.
Dec. 1, 2011
We started our Blog today! Check it out. Go to the Blog tab above. Click on the Comments. Technology Rocks!!
Nov. 30, 2011
Over the past few weeks, students did a book study on Molly's Pilgrim by Barbara Cohen. We reviewed how to make connections with our reading and learned how to post on the Thinking Page, an electronic sticky note board. This week we learned how to use the library's Destiny software to find books in our Fountas and Pinnell reading levels. I've found with gifted students that sometimes they are reading books that are too easy or too hard. We discussed "just right" books, and I made them make a list using the advanced search feature on the computer. To check our typing progress, we charted our levels on Type to Learn over the past month to see our growth. Next, we're going to do a book study on the Newbery Winner, The Whipping Boy, by Sid Fleishman. This will be a good project for the next couple of weeks, since we won't be able to use the lab due to Benchmark Testing.
Nov. 4, 2011
For three days last week, I was able to attend the GaETC technology conference in Atlanta. I've collected tons of ideas to help integrate technology into our curriculum. Your students will be the benefit of my new knowledge as I try out new technology tools with them. This week, I will use a new posting board called Wallwisher. It's a collaborative sticky note concept where anyone with a computer and your Wallwisher address can post to the wall. I plan to use it this week as part of our new Reading Workshop sessions. We will use it as a "Thinking Wall" to predict about stories and to share ideas about other literacy elements. The free tool is a bit limited in the amount of text you can write, but for this age level, it will be fine. The security is intact as I will moderate all posts. This means that I see and approve all posts before they are made public on the wall. Feel free to try it out. I made a parent page just for you! The student page is located as a new page tab at the top of this website called "Thinking Page". I still plan to have a class Blog, but I believe this posting page will be a great warm up to blogging. http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/mcdanielparents
One more thing...I got aproval for this typing website that is so much fun, and students can do it at home. Try it out. It's also on our Class Links page. http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/typing/
Oct. 24, 2011
We are back to working on our Fungi Reports. Students used online media resources to answer their research questions from their Kidspiration graphic organizers/webs. Now they are writing their reports using MaxWrite software. To help them edit, this software will read back what the students wrote. A little parrott does it. It's so much fun, and helps them "hear" their errors. With these reports, I also get to teach them good writing technique, which is something I love to do. On a side note, the students continue to work daily on their typing skills using Type to Learn for the first ten minutes of class.
Oct. 14, 2011
For the past two weeks, we have worked on creativity, since we were kicked out of our lab for benchmark testing.:) It was so much fun learning about COFFE (Creativity is Originality, Flexibility, Fluency, and Elaboration.) Using graphic organizers, games, and other activities, the students learned how strong or weak they are in these different parts of creativity and made goals on improving.
Sept. 30, 2011
As you all know, we finished the Prezi, and I emailed it to you. Here is the link to enjoy all year. I plan to do another Prezi with the class at the end of the year to see the progress that they've made. Currently, we've been working on fungi research. Using Kidspiration, the students created a web of questions that they have about fungi. Now they are using online media resources to find the answers to their questions. They also learned how to find images and copy them to a folder. Finally, they will use MaxWrite to write a paragraph about fungi, insert images, and draw an image. I would love to also make a PhotoStory presentation with them, if we can find enough images. If you have a digital camera at home please see if you can take pictures of mold, yeast, and or mushrooms. If we can get about 20+ pictures, we can make an awesome PhotoStory video. This is a free software offered by Microsoft. Have a wonderful fall weekend!
Sept. 15, 2011
This week, students created a Kidspiration template about themselves. We are going to export it as a JPEG (picture) file into our Prezi. Today students explored a new encyclopedia resource called Pebble Go. The at-home-use log in information is on the links page of this website. I just learned about this new online software the school purchased this morning. It's amazing, so I had to share it with the students today.
Sept. 9, 2011
Today we finished scanning our self portraits to put in our Prezi. Yesterday, we learned how to use a digital camera and load the images into the computer. Here is the web release form for you to print, sign, and return to me. As soon as we get these, I can post our pictures and projects here! Thank you.
Sept. 8, 2011
This is our new FOCUS 2nd Grade Website! Here I will keep you updated on our learning activities and projects from class. Before I can post your child's pictures or projects. I will need to have you sign a website release form. This needs to be done even if you signed the release form for the school.
August 22, 2011
Welcome to the FOCUS program in Gwinnett County Public Schools! I have been teaching gifted students for ten years, and look forward to working with this new group of students.
This year we are going to try something a little bit different. Students will come to my lab upstairs every day from 9:00 to 9:45. Our primary focus will be on technology projects that enrich their second grade AKS. Students will learn how to type using the Type to Learn program which is self paced. Also they will learn how to use Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and many other technology tools. Students will come to me during their language arts block, but we will also focus on special research projects that integrate with science and social studies. It is my hope that they will be able to present their projects to their regular classroom as a learning tool. I also plan to include a gifted enrichment packet for students to use in their regular classroom of analogies, Mind Benders, and other thinking skills activities. Please feel free to email me with any questions or concerns.
[email protected]