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1st 9 wks Elementary Newsletter
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Galena Park ISD - Technology Department

Elementary TIPs

2019-2020 - 1st 9 weeks

Grades 3rd-5th

Teacher Spotlights

Ms. Chavaa Barrett, a 3rd Grade Self Contained teacher at Jacinto City Elementary, is one of our Star Panel teachers. Ms. Barrett received her panel at the beginning of the 2018-2019 school year and has made great strides in integrating it into the classroom. In the beginning, she was using activities and lessons stored on Snowflake, now however she is writing her own lessons and activities and sharing with other teachers. Students can be caught using the panel throughout the day. Thank You Ms. Barrett for the great example you’ve set!

Ms. Marisa Martinez, 5th Grade LA/SS Teacher at Sam Houston Elementary, took her individual technology goal to the next level by creating a digital classroom.  Her weekly use of the Chromebooks enabled her to really explore different types of activities with her students.  This year alone her students completed a digital novel unit, web quests, weekly online discussion topics, digital graphic organizers, digital autobiography slideshow, guided reading group webpage, and a book map where they graphed the flight pattern of the main character.  She has fully prepared her students for digital learning when they enter the 6th grade.

Technology News, Apps, & Tools

3rd Grade TIPs

2019-2020 - 1st 9 weeks

 

Language Arts

Math

  • After students learn about place value in weeks 2 & 3, allow them to work in Splash Math.  There are various place value games that can be used as review for a test or for additional practice Splash Math Place value games
  • Week 4 is a fun time when students begin learning about money.  Money math games are here to help students with that concept.
  • Students will spend weeks 5 - 8 learning about perimeter.  This would be a great time to let them work on the iPads or computers on the website math playground to reinforce their learning on Area and Perimeter

Science

  • Help the scientist go around the lab and discover the unsafe things happening.  What a fun way to make sure the kids know how to be safe during lab time.  Science Lab Safety Game
  • Week 5 brings lessons on Ecosystem.  After learning, have the students practice what they were taught on PBS Kids Feed the Dingo Ecosystem Online Activity
  • Once students learn about life cycles in week 8 & 9, they can play Life Cycle Game

Social Studies

  • The month of September the ELA curriculum has the topic of Celebrate Freedom.  Students can complete Studies Weekly Online: Week 3 Celebrate Freedom
  • The month of September the ELA curriculum has the topic of Celebrate Freedom.  Students can complete Studies Weekly Online: Week 4 The Founding of a Nation
  • The first month of the ELA curriculum has the topic of Responsibility and Citizenship.  Students can complete Studies Weekly Online: Week 7: Good Citizens for this topic.

Other

  • ESL Lessons for 3rd Grade Young Learners - Animated Video Lessons. There are ESL Videos on Telling the Time, Days of the Week, Pets, Zoo Animals, Giving Directions, Places in the City, Health & Sickness, Sports and Months of the year ESL games - learning videos
  • PBS Kids has several different music games to practice their music skills.
  • Students can create some street art to show what they learned in Language Arts.

4th Grade TIPs

2019-2020 - 1st 9 weeks

Language Arts

  • Back to School Magnetic Poetry with Google Slides from Shake Up Learning
  • As your students settle into the procedures of small group, include a recurring technology-integrated center using mobile devices. Students record themselves answering essential questions or completing sentence stems from released STAAR items about setting, characters, plot, etc. Collect these recordings with an app like FlipGrid.
  • Kick off the year with Google Classroom! Every 4th grade student is required to add to the ePortfolio they created in 3rd grade. Assigning and collecting activities in GC will help keep your students’ Google Drives organized. See your TIS to get started with Google Classroom.

Math

  • Splash Math has a variety of decimal games for 4th graders that your students can choose from to practice.
  • When teaching decimals to your students, check out these online lessons from Khan Academy that you can use to introduce decimals and decimals on a number line.
  • Have your students use Canva to create a store flyer as a way to show their understanding of decimals in their daily world.

Science

  • PBS has an interactive activity from seed to plant where students can see the different stages of growth from a seed to a plant
  • Check out this website that has a variety of resources when you begin your lesson on life cycles
  • Let your students create a plant life cycle in timeline form as part of their technology choice board by having them use Google Draw.

Social Studies

  • Explore maps through history with interactive GeaChron. Use the website or get the app to analyze all the way back to 3000 BCE.
  • For Constitution Day, interactive panel teachers can use the Snowflake Preamble activity. Even without access to a panel, students learn best by teaching! Have your students create a Preamble Scramble in Google Slides or Google Draw by creating shapes and double-clicking to type the phrases inside the shapes. They can challenge each other to put the phrases in the correct order.
  • Assign individuals or groups a specific person or event and use the templates in the Character Analysis square of the 4th grade Technology Integration Choice Board to imagine a social media post by that person.

Other

  • Looking for something to use in the general music classroom?  Try out Teoria! This web site is dedicated to the study of Music Theory and contains articles, reference and interactive exercises.
  • Here is a fun website for ESL students, Duolingo.  It’s a popular language-learning platform that is free and fun.
  • Google Classroom now includes a rubric tool!

5th Grade TIPs

2019-2020 - 1st 9 weeks

Language Arts

  • RoomRecess.com provides and Author’s Purpose online activity that can be done in centers or as a class activity on the Panel or projector.  Here is a fun Jeopardy game on Author’s Purpose to use when reviewing this concept.
  • Education.com has resources for teachers to enhance their lessons. Some can be used with google classroom or as group/center activities. 5th Grade Figurative Language will provide many tools and resources.
  • Spelling patterns like VCe are covered during this 9 weeks.  Take a look at the Spelling Games on the Education.com site for helpful online activities for your computer time or center time.  Take some time to explore this site for other helpful language arts topics.

Math

  • This website from Free Training Tutorial has several interactive games for kids to practice their decimal skills. These would be good for a math center activity or as a whole group activity where students take turns.
  • In week nine students will be learning about prime and composite numbers. Education.com has a website that can help you with this lesson. They even have resources for English learners.
  • One of the projects on the district’s technology project choice board is to have students create a presentation. You could assign them math problems to solve with decimals. In the presentation, they would explain each step to solving the problem. This could be used as a sort of “math journal” they could refer back to. They could also share their presentation with the class so others can learn from them.

Science

  • Houston PBS has a great website with several interactive activities for kids to learn about the flow of energy in food webs.
  • In weeks one and two students will be learning about safety in the science lab. You could put students in groups to come up with videos explaining lab safety rules. These videos could be serious or funny. They could even maybe come up with a cool song and create a music video to help explain the rules.
  • In week three students will be learning about Scientific Investigation and Reasoning. These skills could be incorporated into several of the district technology projects on the choice board. The project where they have to work together to Identify and Solve a Problem would be especially good for this.

Social Studies

Other

  • Students oftentimes take a field trip to hear the Houston Symphony. The San Francisco Symphony has a great interactive website to help students learn more about orchestras. They can learn about the different instrument groups. They can listen to musical pieces and create their own music if they want.
  • ESL Kids Stuff has some great resources and ideas for teaching students English. Part of their website is paid but they also have a lot of free resources for you to use.
  • BreakoutEDU has escape games for you to play with your class. Just use your Google account to sign up and you can get to all the free stuff. These are the perfect brain teasers to get all of your students thinking. If you want to challenge your GT kids even more, have them create their own breakout/escape game for the class.