On Friday, Many parents met with Carla to discuss the Common Core. On thing that became clear during her presentation was that, although there have been "technology standards" in the past, and we have known that having tech saavy kids will be imperative in this century, the Common Core model pushes teachers and parents to make it happen.
If you are interested in the specific ways in which technology skills are integrated into the Common Core, this document is helpful: http:// bit.ly/1aDHscs
One area in which parents can really help support their kids is in typing practice. Once a week in the Technology Lab is not enough. As I mentioned before, Dance Mat Typing is a great FREE online typing program. We want our kids to feel comfortable writing on computers for many reasons, but the coming changes to standardized testing is a big one.
Over the past couple of weeks, I have been attempting to get the 4th and 5th graders set up with their LAUSD email/cloud storage/GoogleDocs accounts. Ideally, by the end of this week they will all be set!
2nd and 3rd grade have been working on typing practice in a different way by creating "word cloud poems" about themselves in abcya.com.
1st grade has continued to work on math skills, playing Money BINGO and Base Ten BINGO on abcya.com.
And finally, in abcya.com, for advanced typers only...
Happy Halloween!
