Veteran's Day Activities

Veteran's Day is a special time at Purple Sage. The day is a hustle and bustle preparing for our beautiful Veteran's Day assembly where we honor all our visiting veterans with music and song.  Ms. SadatPurple Sage's music teacher, does a magnificent job in preparing each grade level with a patriotic song.  Then we have Grisham's band and choir and Westwood's color guard to help complete the program.
In the classroom, Ms. Robinson, fourth grade teacher at Purple Sage, used an interactive lesson from Gynzy.com. As we saw in our assembly, many students have a veteran in their lives, but many don't really know what the holiday represents.  This lesson included videos and activities about the military, and what a veteran and freedom means.

Ms. Robinson writes, "Just wanted to relay that I did this lesson with my class. They, of course, didn't know the wars although some used the context clues of looking at the pictures to figure the time-frame out. It was a really powerful lesson, and I would definitely do it again. Thanks for suggesting it!"

Digital Citizenship Week

Digital Citizenship Week was the week of October 19th-25th. Digital Citizenship is really not much different than citizenship in person.  Each class has already signed their commitment to our District's Acceptable Use Policy, just like they signed their class social contract.
Remembering our behavior plan, the 3 Bees, we want to BEE Safe, BEE Respectful, annd BEE Responsible in real life, as well as in the digitable life. Always follow the rules that you have committed to:  Always get parents or teachers' permission and supervision to be on the computer.  Only go to safe sites that are for your age.  And, speak only to people you know, like your grandparents.  Be protective of yourself by never sharing your information.  One class created bookmarks as a way to remind them of their commitment.

SHOW ME!

CHECK OUT THIS FREE App! IT's AWESOME! Mrs. Jacqueline Garcia was very excited for her class to use this with their IPads! It's a virtual whiteboard.  Students can write on the iPad using their finger or stylus.  This App gives the students the capability to audio record! The learning opportunities are endless!  Students can immediately play back a tutorial that can be used over and over. Great to use with students who have been absent and missed original explanations and examples. 

Mrs. Garcia's class was working on division and the algorithm steps the first day they tried this app.

Very Hungry Caterpillar!

Mrs. Rivera's Dual Kindergarten Class completed their retell on The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.The students enjoyed this activity and wanted to share it with you!  Document Cameras are used quite a bit to document growth in kindergarten.  It is creative how Mrs. Rivera's class shared in English and Spanish.

Learning in our Dual Language 5th Grade Classroom

Our Next Geneation Digital Classroom is off and running, learning new things daily with our IPad Air devices.  Mrs. Garcia got her feet wet first by adding a technology component in with our Dual Language Student Created English Alphabet.  The students researched to find strong words to represent each letter of the English alphabet.  Then the students acted out their word and a classmate snapped the IPad camera.  There was great excitement stirring in the classroom!

             

                 

What happens When Sophie Gets Really, Really Angry!

Mrs. Mooney's Kindergarten class completed their retell on When Sophie Gets Angry-Really, Really Angry by Molly Bang This is what they came up with.  They really enjoyed sharing using their document camera.  
K.8 Reading/Comprehension of Literary Text/Fiction. Students understand, make inferences and draw conclusions about the 
structure and elements of fiction and provide evidence from text to support their understanding. Students are expected to:
(A)  retell a main event from a story read aloud;

Introducing our Next Generation Digital Classroom

Have you heard about the Next Generation Digital Classroom initiative? Congratulations to Jacqueline Garcia, who has been given the opportunity to lead this trailblazing experience. Round Rock ISD created "incubator classrooms" in each school, elementary to high school, to foster the integration of new teaching and learning with mobile tablet technology. The district selected four different mobile devices, and Ms. Garcia and her 5th grade dual language class are piloting the IPad Airs. There is one for each student.
Along with the Ipad tablets, each class received an interactive white board data projector called BoxLight. Since we had a Promethean board, we were able to move that board into another room for other classes to use.
The class started off with addressing our Acceptable Use Policy, the district technology expectations. Students have learned to log into the new devices and have been trying new apps, as well as using their Google accounts. Our goal is to seamlessly embed this new technology into our curriculum and master our technology application essential skills and knowledge.
The class is off to a great start! The students are so engaged in learning. We are confident that this initiative will benefit our students and keep us moving from a First Class to a World Class District!