Brian’s TRT Blog

Recent happenings with your colleagues and what is going on in their classrooms:

Mrs. Allen’s sixth grade class is researching the Civil War via a web quest and the end result will be a scrapbook presented to “President Lincoln”. Future plans include a video project with Mr. O’Donnell’s class where students will be “reporting” on “recent” Civil War battles.

Mrs. Barrett’s first graders learned word processing skills by typing reports on amphibians, reptiles and mammals and imported pictures from Word Clip Art. Also, other teams made Wordle pictures by naming all the different examples of each category of animal. You can see their work on the bulletin board outside her door.

Mr. Greishaw (Math specialist) will be working with Voicethread reviews in Math classes. See his work below:

Mrs. Hawkin’s students are reviewing for the Math SOL by making Voicethreads also.

Mrs. Craig’s students are continuing their blogging in class.

Mrs. Santora gave up a Saturday to attend the ActivVirginia (Promethean) conference in Richmond and came back with a wealth of ideas!

Mrs. Nutt and I presented at the ActiVirginia conference. See our presentation here: Go.

Olive Branch second graders and Mrs. Diddle are reviewing for the Social Studies SOLs by using ActiVotes in room eight.

Miss Webb took her students on a Virtual Field Trip that she created for reviewing her most recent SOL in preparation for the tests in May.

Mrs. Brewster’s fifth graders will be learning through their lunch period by taking data on decibel levels in the cafeteria and will graph results using Vernier science equipment. They’ll also be using Excel to graph final results and find the mode and median levels.

Mrs. Diddle’s third graders are using the PPS Library Media Services link to research Explorers. Their end product will be a poster from each student sharing the information that they have found out. Moreover, students learned about short cuts by using the right mouse button (right click) and saving to the H drive.

Olive Branch finally has a computer lab, thanks to Mrs. Holt. Check her website to sign up for a time. Need ideas? See me!

Mr. McDonald has been teaching students how to create works of art on laptops with paint programs.

Mrs. Polencheck and Mrs. Froehlich are becoming Jeopardy gurus by reviewing money SOLs with PowerPoint games found online.

Mr. Doran has been working with Orchard with his classes.

Mr. O’Donnell’s sixth graders have been using Excel to have students track data and entering functions to track range, mode, and median.

Mr. Polito has been building flip charts for his Math classes and has discovered the benefits of Promethean Planet.

Mr. Haugen’s sixth graders are researching Civil War battles by using Wikipedia and will report to the class their findings.

Mrs. White, Promethean Guru, continues to wow and amaze everyone with her technical skills!

Miss Laughlin will be sharing resources for parents at the PTA meeting with the COW cart Tuesday night.

Mrs. Austin has been busy with her Quia site for her fifth graders and is able to track data for remediation purposes.

There are a lot of great things going on in our buildings!