Learning What Students Know With Turning Points

Mrs. Gibson reviewed her 8th grade Science students on their knowledge of elements with a Turning Point Quiz.  This uses clickers assigned to students who read the question and do their best to answer the questions.   Mrs. Gibson then reviewed the results of each question with the students and clarified any misunderstandings or questions they had.   This was in preparation for their upcoming assignment on creating a Facebook like page for their assigned element. 

Come to Texas!

Ms. Dyer, Ms. Conrad, Mr. Cockroft and Mr. Wrinkle have been keeping their 7th grade students busy as they have been assigned to work for an empresario to get settlers to come to Texas!   First they gathered information about what Texas was like in the 1820s and then created a storyboard plan to create an advertisement using images of Texas, key information from the 1820s and a modern web 2.0 tool -  Animoto.  The results were a commercial that covered the key TEKS for the unit and some great technology skills in creating a multimedia presentation.

The students enjoyed the project as well.  Here are some of their comments:

• "its like a powerpoint but not as boring"
• "This project was very fun and I enjoyed doing it. I liked having the power to be creative and choose my own style."
• "I like that there's a hint of my inner self and style in there"
• "I love how easy it is to make the video, but I don't like the character limit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
• "I loved the animoto itself, it is way easier than powerpoint! I think the most challenging part about this project was find the right pictures."

Here are some student product from this project:

My Come to Texas Project

Lorenzo do Zavala

Come to Lorenzo de Zavala's Colony

Come to Texas - David G Burnet

Come to Texas - Stephen F. Austin

Dewitt County

Come to Burnet County

Career Cruising - 8th Graders Make Plans for High School

Mr. Jasman helps students in his class complete their 4 year plan. 

Mrs. Leverette, 8th grade counselor,  has been working with the 8th grade social studies classes to get students to think about their four year plan for high school using an online tool - Career Cruising.

Students plan what Math, English  Social Studies and Science courses they want to take and see what they need to do now to be eligible for the advanced courses.

Parents and students can log into this program at home any time to review choices and see the possibilities.

In teaching, Mrs. Leverette took advantage of the new technology on campus, the Mimio Teach and the MimioPad which allowed her to use the board interactively and to move around the room and still control the computer to navigate pages and annotate the screen.  These tools allowed her to show the kids what they needed to do in the program and what decisions they needed to make without being tied to the computer and/or document camera.

Research in 6th Grade World Cultures

Students in 6th grade World Cultures have been busy in the labs and on netbooks researching a Latin American Country using online resources such as Culturegrams and the CIA Factbook, found on the library research page.

Students will then demonstrate their knowledge of that country and of PEGS by constructing a poster board of their country to present to the class in the next few days.  

Students are gaining valuable research and note taking skills in this project that they are sure to use in future years.

Plotting the Storyline with Comics

8th Grade English Language Arts has been working on analyzing linear plot development (TEKS 6A).  To reinforce this with the students Mrs. Marks, Mrs. Pinson, Ms. Anderson and Ms. Salazar had their students create a comic strip to depict the parts of a linear plot development as it related to short story they had been reading in class.  The students were able to use a free tool - MakeBeliefsComix to create their comic strips and them save the strips into word for a final product.

Seventh Grade Science Explores Food Webs with Inspiration

This week seventh grade science was studying TEK 5C - diagram the flow of energy through living systems, including food chains, food webs, and energy pyramids.   Ms. Filary, Mrs. Billings and Mrs. Klaus addressed this TEK by bringing students into the labs to work with the software Inspiration that allows students to make a diagram using images and connect those images with arrows to show the direction of flow in the food web.  Students were highly engaged and were able to create their own food webs to show mastery of this concept.


Here is a sample of the food webs that the students created: