With Discovery Education online students actually enjoy research! 5th grade students are learning about the physical characteristics of the Earth, Moon and Sun. Using their own logins for Discovery Education, students were able to access videos that had been assigned to them. They were then able to select from videos and watch them while taking notes. The benefit to this type lesson is that the students are in control. They can select the videos in any order, pause and rewind video to capture the info for notes and search for additional videos if they needed more information. In a classroom setting, the teacher is in control of the video. Students can’t pause a video or rewind it as needed which may mean missing information for some students. Every student was engaged during the lesson and when asked their opinion on that type of learning the response from students was overwhelmingly positive. The following day, students were able to pool their information in groups and compare and contrast the physical characteristics of the Earth, Moon and Sun on Venn Diagrams. We will be planning more lessons that allow students to access resources from Discovery Education!
Our third grade was given an awesome opportunity to talk to NASA in Houston. The students were educated about satellites, astronauts, Google Earth, training facilities, and got to see astronauts moving around the space station LIVE. The students really enjoyed interacting with the Space Center and learning all about NASA.
Students from Hemphill videoconference with their teacher who was in Egypt!
Recently, Mrs. Nora Rodriguez traveled to Egypt to visit her niece. Before she left, she wanted to make sure that she would be able to talk with her students while she was gone. She set up a blog to record important information about her trip. One morning around 9 am (4 pm in Egypt) she videoconferenced with her students to talk about the place she was visiting, the culture, the things she had seen, and the foods that she ate. To prepare for the videoconference, her class looked at a few pictures she had sent of herself standing in front of a pyramid and cruising around on a camel. However, during the videoconference, she was in the bustling city! The students were able to learn about the similarities and differences between the place she was visiting and our city of Kyle.
Students used the Logger Pro software to graph their heart rate data.
7th grade students in Mrs. Johnston’s and Mrs. Norman’s Science classes measured their heart rates using hand held heart monitors. The monitor probes fed data directly into the computer and created graphs using Vernier Logger Pro software. Students tested how various activities change heart rate and measured how long it took each student’s heart rate to return to normal after exertion.
The battle continues for 5th graders in Mrs. Gries' class!
While studying the American Revolution the students in Mrs. Gries’ class pretended to be Loyalists and Patriots. The students wrote speeches defending their opinions and some of them used Audacity to record their arguments on our podcast. Izrael, Bailey, Taylor, Skyler, and Samantha represented the Loyalists and agreed that the Colonies would be foolish to leave the protection of King George. Makenzie, Miguel, Jacob and Sergio shared the Patriot point of view and called for independence. Please visit the podcast page on our website and listen to their excellent speeches.
