Exploring the Internet

Second grade is moving on to the pioneers an Oregon Trail.  As they study heading west in the 1800's, we also begin to explore using the Internet to independently research information about the pioneers.  Starting with what the Internet is and how to keep ourselves safe, we realized that what is true in the physical world is also true in the digital realm as well.  Between both classes we were able to come up with four guidelines for staying safe on the Internet:

1. Tell our parents when we are going on to the Internet.

2. Stick with people and places we know, check with parents or teachers before checking out an unknown site.

3. If we stumble across something inappropriate, we will let a teacher or parent know.

4. Treat others the way we want to be treated.

Here is a great resource for kids on Internet safety provided by PBS.

Once we had our guidelines down we were able to focus on good search techniques.  We started by identifying some of the different parts of a browser including the address bar and search engine.  We then discussed how to start a search.  We choose to use pioneers as our search term.  We then began reading through some of the sites that the term found for us.  By reading through the information we were able to find a site on pioneers that would give us good information.

After some discussion about .coms, .nets, .orgs, .edus and .govs we were ready to explore the site we found.  One of the first things we noticed is that not all sites, although they may contain great information are written on a second grade reading level.  As the class continued and students broke up into groups, this became a larger problem.  Each group was give a topic and was tasked with finding a site that provided information.  The challenge was increased because the students were not allowed to use the site we had found together, Thinkquest.

As a class, we discovered the need to sometimes change our search terms, as well as how many sites we may have to sift through before finding one that provided good information.  We also touched on how to separate out reliable sites.

This is the beginning of a long journey for our second graders. As they grow throughout the years, they will continually work on refining their research skills.  However, it is always very exciting to be a part of the beginning of something, and I was super excited to watch our second graders begin to take on this research and claim ownership over their learning.

The World Of Scratch in Second Grade

It's that time of year again.  Some people think Spring, but I know that it is actually a great time to introduce Scratch.  Scratch, as some of you may already know, is a program developed by MIT to help children learn the basics of computer programming.  While exploring animation through the use of blocks, children use creativity, problem solving and each other to make their visions come to life.  Scratch also offers wonderful opportunities to learn co-ordnates on a graph, the use of variables, speed and timing, audio recording, integers, the list goes on.  If you haven't had the opportunity to explore this program, I invite you to download it for free at home.
We start with having children animate the letters of their name.  This gives the students a chance to become familiar with the environment. We then move on to animating lunes, short poems the second graders create with Catalina.
Below is a sampling of some of the animations created in our class.  I've mixed in no particular order the name project and the lune project.  Due to limited space not all projects are posted.