Veteran's Day Word Clouds

The fourth graders in Mrs. Sale and Mrs. Jensen's class created word clouds for Veteran's Day. As a group we brainstormed adjectives that would describe a Veteran. Students entered those adjectives into Tagxedo.com to create a word cloud. Tagxedo.com offers students the opportunity to change color schemes, fonts, and shapes of their word cloud. This is a good alternative to Wordle.net. In Tagxedo, students saved their word cloud as a JPEG file and uploaded those files to their teacher's Blackboard site. Check out some of the winning designs!

FIRST PLACE!

Caleb Henn

 

SECOND PLACE!

 

Justin Culbertson

 

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Brailyn McClure

 Jesse Lucas

Kayeleb Bolton

 

 Savannah Goodman

 Tiffany Dailey

 Check out www.tagxedo.com

 

 



Casting Our Ballots

For Election Day 2013 students in grades K-5 were given the opportunity to vote in a mock election. Students lined up at the polls ready to cast their ballots. The polling station was set up in our gymnasium just down the hall from the REAL polling booth for our community members. It was great for students to see adults or as students called them "real voters"  before going to make their own voting decisions. :-)

Students were voting for two seperate issues. First students were taking their turn to vote for their candidate for President of the United States. Many students were very educated on their reasons for chosing the candidate that they selected. Our PTO also raised enough money to buy a new set of playground equipment for the upper grade wing of our building. Students in all the grades were able to give their opinion which playground setup they would like purchased for Bon Air. Check out some of our smallest voters to date, Mrs. Houston's kindergarteners!

LINO IT

Lino-it is an online webtool that allows users to post interactive sticky notes and photographs to a collaborative canvas. Students in our classrooms have been using Lino boards to ask their teacher questions, share their opinions, or make predictions about lessons for the day. Lino It allows students to post from their individual device to a group canvas for all other students to be able to view and respond. This is a great site to build collaboration and inquiry in your classroom. Below you will see some of our Lino boards and will also see some third grade students posting information during an assignment. Check out http://en.linoit.com/ to start posting!

 

To get familiar with using Lino, students asked Mrs. Hollingsworth questions. The students questions were in yellow and the answers were in green.

 

Later, Mrs. York used a Lino to post pictures of various graphs. Students looked at the graphs and answered her questions, which were on blue post it notes.

 

 

In fourth grade, Mrs. Sale's class created story problems using yellow post it notes. Then Mrs. Jensen's class accessed the same Lino board from their room and figured out the answers to the problems. They posted their answers in blue.

 

 

 

Third grade students using Lino in their classroom.

New Student Orientation Classes

When new students enroll into the Technology Academy at Bon Air they attend a new student orientation class to get acquainted with their new computing device. Students meet with Mrs. Hollingsworth, the technology coach, and together they learn log in procedures, how to access various printers, opening certain applications and programs, and they discuss basic care and handling procedures along with cyberbullying concerns. After attending this orientation the new students earn their Digital Driver's License. Check out these kids during their orientation class!