BrainPop helps with Clauses

Mrs. Porter is using the netbooks and Brainpop as a station in her room to help students understand what clauses are and how to use them properly.  Students take a quiz at the end of the video and email the results to the teacher.  This activity is in part of their writing unit in preparation for the STAAR Writing exam coming up in a few weeks.  Brainpop is a subscription service paid for by the RMS PTA this year.

Netbooks Make a Splash in Dance

Students in Mrs. Garcia's dance class, under the direction of Mrs. McLain, are working in groups and using the netbooks to learn new dances.  Students are watching instructional videos on how to do a dance then learning that dance as a team.  The technology allows students to watch the video over and over again as well as to rewind to certain parts and  to slow it down to get the subtle parts of the movement.  The dances they learn will then be demonstrated to the rest of the class.

Teachers Use Moodle to Prepare Math Students for EOC Exams

Students in Algebra and Geometry are preparing for the online End of Course Exams by taking their class tests online through moodle.  Students are learning to read the questions on a screen, use scratch paper for computations and how to enter, review and submit answers so they will scored, all valuable practice for the End of Course in May.

Here is a sample screen of a test question:

QR Codes Hit the Library

The RMS Library is using QR codes to link students with more information about books and authors.  Mrs.Kay is using this as a way to highlight and promote books celebrating to African American History during the month of February. Students can pick up a QR code from a container or find one on the back of the book and scan them use the webcams located on several of the library computers.  The student will then be directed to a video summary of the book, interview with the author or a webpage that gives more information about the time period the book was written.  The kids love the opportunity to learn more about the books before checking them out and books being tagged by QR codes are being checked out more than before.  Look for more QR codes in the library soon!

Mrs. Pickle's Class Uses Cell Phone to Discuss Literature

Mrs. Pickle recently explored allowing students to bring their own technology (BYOT) in class to discuss the class Novel, The Outsiders.  Students answered multiple choice and short answer questions about the chapters they had just read through the use of Poll Everywhere and their cellphones, tablets, or school provided netbooks. After each question,  Mrs. Pickle reviewed the responses and asked the students to explain their choices as she led the classroom discussion.  Students loved seeing their answers pop-up on the screen and were anxious to defend their opinions to the question.  This activity provided the students and teacher with instant feedback and gave all students a chance to voice their thoughts and opinions about the characters and the story.  Look for more BYOT opportunities in Mrs. Pickle's class soon!

Texas History Writes Civil War Diaries with the help of Technology

Over the past few weeks students in Mrs. Collins, Mr. Wrinkle and Mr. Jasman's Texas History classes have been learning about the American Civil War.  The culminating project has been for the students to create a Civil War diary from a particular point of view of someone who would have lived during this time period.  This year the teachers added a technology component by having the students create a book of diary entries with the help of Voicethread.com.  The students were to create a jpeg slide to go along with their diary entry that would be narrated.   The students found images from Matthew Brady online and used PowerPoint and Easybib to create the jpeg slides.  The files were then uploaded to Voicethread where the students narrated the image with the text from the diary.  The students loved seeing their slide online and found using easybib an easy way to cite their images.

Mrs. Collin's Class Voicethread

US History Seeds of Democracy as told by 8th Graders

Recently the students in 8th grade US History explored the seeds of democracy through the creation of paper slide videos.  Students were given an event in history that had an impact on the writing of the US Constitution.  They were to research the event and explain how it played a part of the development of the US Constitution.  The students worked in teams of 3 to 4 to create 4-6 pieces of paper, "slides" that told the story of their event. These slides were then videotaped with flip cameras while the students narrated the images.  The teachers then used these videos to the review the class on the various seeds of democracy that they students need to know according to state TEKS.    Here are a few examples of the final products: