Second Graders?

Stephen from Indianapolis, Indiana writes:

I have admired your Planet 5th website and now the Learning in Hand site for many years. My question is this: I have had the Palm 130's for three years while I was a 5th grade teacher, but now for the 05-06 school year, I will be teaching 2nd grade. A 5th grade colleague and I want to do "Palm Buddies" similar to intermediate and primary "Book Buddies". The problem is this: what would you suggest we do! We are not real sure what programs would be best for our 5th graders to teach our 2nd graders or what they would be capable of doing? Maybe just math facts? or e-books? Any advice or research out there for 7 year olds using palms with their older classmates would be extremely beneficial.

I've used handhelds with students in grades K-5. There are by far many more activities and applications to use with the upper grades. However, there are still many things second graders can do. Here are some activities second graders at my school have done:

• MathAce for addition and subtraction practice.
• MathTreeHouse for addition practice.
• Note Pad for drawing or beaming spelling words.
• Sketchy for making drawings and animations to review a concept.
• Quizzler for quizzes about a topic or unit of study.
• MatchWho to make a character to write about.
• SpellIT's Word Jumble mode for practicing spelling words.
• Coconut Fern to play a game of Connect Four against the computer or against a friend.

And if they have a fifth grade buddy helping them, there's even more possibilities. Let me list some buddy ideas that come to mind:

• Fifth graders make GoneMad! story templates and then help the seconds grader fill it out and read it. They could even then write a story template together to share with other pairs of buddies.
• Fifth graders could help second graders create a Quizzler quiz over something they have learned.
• Fifth graders and second graders could write a What-If Builder story together.
• Fifth graders could teach a second grader how to play some of the simpler games from this page.
• Fifth graders use Dictate with second graders to practice spelling words.

There are certainly plenty more way to use handhelds with second graders. Please leave a comment with your ideas for Stephen!

Comments

[Anonymous]

This may not directly relate to second grade lesson plans so I hope this entry is OK here.

I found a freeware spellchecker that may come in handy for those with limited software budgets called Spell5 on Palmgear.

You can enter text directly into the Spell5 application, have it examined and then copy/paste it to Docs to go, memo, etc.

[Dale Ehrhart]

If you begin the morning with a conversation about the date, day, and weather you could integrate palm pilot callendar application into this discussion.

Have the students journal what the temperature is and what weather is like. Preload the activties of the day and review them with the students.

Good practice for what is one of the original and core features of a handheld.

[Dale Ehrhart]

At the beginning of the year use Contacts as part of a "get to know your classmates exercise." Have the students enter their own information into the palm, and then beam that information to each other. Kids get familiar with two core features of the handheld, Contacts and beaming.

[Dale Ehrhart]

http://lh099.k12.sd.us/tribby.htm

This is a lesson plan for a "spelling word alphabet book"

[Marc Alan]

Stephen,
Tony and "Dale" have offered some great suggestions.
Where do you teach? I am a 4th grade teacher in Lawrence Township @ Indian Creek Elementary. I would like to bring together a collaborative group of local Education Palm Users in the Indy area. I am entering my second year of using Palm computers with classroom integration. Are you interested in sharing ideas, struggles and successes?

Marc
marcemenhiser@msdlt.k12.in.us

[Dale Ehrhart]

I'm 35-year-old career changer who wants to integrate technology into my future classrooms. I'm a student right now and, unfortunately, I have two years left. I always wanted to teach but I let my parents talk me out it when I was 18. I allowed my wife talk me out of it in the late 90's. However, after spending quite a bit of time volunteering in my daughter's preschool and kindergarten classrooms I decided last year that I had to go back to school. I'm trying to find a technology inclined teacher to do my student teaching with. Right now, I'm just a parent who uses his two daughters as Guinea Pigs.

My daughters, 6 and 4, have enjoyed using my handhelds (currently a Zire 72s) for several years and they love taking pictures and video with it. This summer, they shot footage of a butterfly emerging and took pictures of a cicada emerging. They take pictures of things, weird looking fungus for example, we come across on nature walks and then we do research or ask a naturalist about it.

I have my daughters practice handwriting on NoviiAnimator using some templates I created. They ask to use it and they love to use it.

I started using QuizWiz, before I knew about Quizzler, and I utilized the materials my daughter brought home to create Math worksheets and quizzes with specific problems. I talked my mother, a teacher's aid, into buying a handheld and her students loved doing Multiplication Tables on QuizWiz quizzes I created.

What I would like to see is a guided reading program for handhelds and laptops. I've actually scanned picture books into the computer, rearranged text and pictures, and created PDF files for my daughters to read. My 6 year old likes reading from the laptop but I've found that in cases where you need large print and one-to-one text/picture correspondence the handheld screen size is problematic.

Dale
Flushing, Michigan

[Dale Ehrhart]

Here's an interesting 1999 PDF file about young children and handhelds. Page 1 starts with 2nd grade usage.


http://www.concord.org/publications/newsletter/1999fall/99fall.pdf