King Open's Martin Luther King's Celebration!

Celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr Birthday today, January 15, 1929.

King Open School united in celebration of Martin Luther King's Dream on Friday, February 8th through song, music, dance, words, pictures, video and most of all...together as the a COMMUNITY!

1. Click here to view this interactive & informative Biography of Martin Luther King!

2. "I Have a Dream" students join Martin Luther King!

3. History.Com "King Day: Making the Dream a Reality" READ & LISTEN

4. See the largest PICTURE GALLERY of MLK

5. Read MLK Timeline

6. Inspiring QUOTES by MLK

Math Night @ King Open

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King Open School's Math Coach and teachers planned an exciting evening for students and families of King Open to explore many areas of our Math Curriculum at our recent Math Night. A few components explored included our Investigations in Number, Data and Space Program and our Fluency and Automaticity through Systematic Teaching Program (Fastt Math).

Investigations is a complete K-5 mathematics curriculum, developed at TERC in Cambridge. It is designed to help all children understand the fundamental ideas of number and operations, geometry, data, measurement and early algebra.

Fastt Math helps children grades 2 and up achieve math fact fluency and build the confidence in mathematics. The software program automatically differentiates instruction based on each student's personal fluency levels in customized 10 minute daily sessions. NCTM's Curriculum focal points identify math fact fluency as an essential component of math and recommend that students develop quick recall of addition, subtraction, mulitplication and division facts.

Quotes to Share:

"Fastt Math is a fun way to learn Math on the computer." by Smarika, 2nd grade

"I love Fastt Math because it's fun and it teaches you about Math. It is good for your brain. Math is important for every job, so if you didn't know a lot of Math you wouldn't be able to get a good job." by Jeremy, 2nd grade

Photos @ King Open

Take a few minutes to see these great photos from King Open School this year!

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Did You Know?

What do you think about this clip? Did you know this about our students today?

Go.Grolier.Com--For Your Research!

Find it faster and easier with Grolier Online, the "content connection".

King Open is pleased to share the news that students, teachers and parents can now access Grolier KIDS Online (Grades 1-5) and Grolier PASSPORT (Grades 6 and up) in school and out of school. Watch for posters around the building for passwords and usernames.

In our effort to promote an "non-google" school environment, please begin your search here--Information for reports, safe web links, magazines, newspapers, international news sources, homework help, biographies, multimedia, interactive maps, dictionaries, current events, science experiments and projects, and articles.

President Lincoln's Gettysburg Address

This day in history, November 19, 1863, President Lincoln delivered his "Gettysburg Address" during the Civil War in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. President Lincoln delivered this speech in reference to the "new birth of freedom". Click here to learn more and see more photos of this historical day.

For AUDIO, click here to listen to this powerful speech. Please give only a minute to click and play to have your students listen to one of the most important speeches in history!

Click here to See the "Photo of the Day"

Please come back and visit this post/section daily to share the "Photo-of-the-Day" from National Geographic. You can see animals such as these eloquent elephants from making their way through the swamp grass in Kenya's Amboseli National Park.

Learn about other parts of the globe through these colorful and brilliant pictures. Your students will love them.

Photo Galleries at National Geographic

What better way to make learning come alive with these amazing photos from National Geographic photo gallery.

Images include scenes from underwater, underwater exploration pictures, Titanic discoveries, coral, giant sea creatures, whales, squid and narwhals! Click the word "comments" in green below and write here to share what your favorite picture is of the underwater world and why!

Discovery of King Tut, November 5, 1922

Howard Carter found what he was looking for on November 5, 1922. Born in London, Carter and his team of archaeologists explored Egypt. After years of combing through the sands of Egypt, on November 5, 1922 Carter knew he found something special..."A magnificant tomb with seals intact".

Pablo Picasso's Birthday, 1881

This day in history, we celebrate one of the most influential artists of the 20th century at King Open. Pablo Picasso was born on October 25, 1881 in Spain. Our students in grades 1 and 2 explore this great artist, practice and understand his unique style. For more information about Picasso visit this site.

Drawing and Writing with ART PAD ONLINE

ArtPad offers many skills for our students learning and exploring computers. ArtPad is very user friendly and supports students use of the keyboard and movement of the mouse.


If your student or child is interested in drawing outside of school try this friendly online drawing tool that can be found at ART PAD, click here for the link.

Keyboarding is KEY at King Open!

Congratulations to students who have been practicing their keyboarding skills. Students have been encouraged to develop their proper use of their keyboard with many resources at King Open. Their favorite has been the online version at Dance Mat Typing. Try it at home, before school or after school! With a little practice, you will notice a big difference in your child's or student's keyboarding/writing.

Happy Keyboarding!

Celebrate Dictionary Day This Week

On October 16,1758 Noah Webster was born in Hartford, Connecticut during the American Revolution. In 1806, he developed the first dictionary. Read more about Webster here. Click on the left side bar to find out what today's word of the day is. Check back daily to see "the word of the day" at this online dictionary started by Noah Webster.

Please post your comments on any "Word of the Day"!! To post a comment, click on the word comments below this post, in the comment box type a brief comment. You can type your first name only after checking the option "other".

Fastt Math at King Open

King Open is pleased to have our students grades 2-8 continue with Fastt Math this year. This curriculum enhancing software by Tom Snyder meets both state and national Math Standards. Students have fun while learning basic math facts in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. They will also develop skills to recall facts from memory and develop fluency with multi-digit problems in each operation.

Fastt Math = Fluency and Automaticity through Systematic Teaching with Technology.

Jottit Here!

I am pleased to share another great online writing and reading tool at Jottit. This site can only be viewed and used by students with the password. If you are interested in accessing this space to write, please ask Sandra for the password.

Looking forward to reading what you have to JOT!

Connect with ePals!

Classrooms are using ePals to connect with other classrooms both in the United States as well as other countries. We are excited to learn what other classrooms are doing and how they are using technology to learn.

Stay tuned, we will be blogging here to comment on what we learn with our ePals Classrooms!

Room 103 "COMPUTER STARS"

The "One Laptop Per Child" Project and Ola Technology at King Open is back in session starting this year off in grades 1 and 2. These mobile, green, durable and friendly laptops were in full action with the students in Aida's and Maria's Ola classroom. Students explored writing, photography, connecting with their friends to play games such as "Connect Four" as well as drawing. Students will be sharing the news and excitement with the public in the news on television this month.

Click "OLPC" to learn more information about this project. Also, watch this video to learn the background of this powerful, mini laptop! See more visits from OLPC to the King Open School in other grades and classrooms under the title "School News".

Please click on the word "Comment" below to write what you liked most about using the laptops in your classroom.

BlogSpot

Welcome to a spot to write on this blog. Increase reading and writing with a weblog or "blog". A blog is a shared online journal where students develop their reading and writing skills.

This is going to be used to connect outside of room 213 and King Open School. Stay tuned!

Welcome Back

Welcome back to King Open School. I hope everyone had an enjoyable summer. It has been exciting catching up with teachers, students and parents learning about all the exciting events that took place as well as their travels over the summer.

It has been determined by the students themselves that our primary goal for this year in room 213's Computer Lab will be "To Have Fun With Computers".....

We have been fortunate over the last year to have been able to add more computers in all classrooms grades K-8, install brand new iMacs in both of our computer labs, build students basic Math fact fluency with Fastt Math, develop early reading skills with Lexia, upgrade servers within our building and so much more.

This year I have many new technology resources and ideas to share with the King Open community. Visit this page often to see what they might be as well as some pictures of student projects throughout the year.

Intro to Blogging, Wikis & WebQuests!

This blog has been designed as a place to discuss the everchanging world of technology in the classrooms using Web/Kid Quests, Blogs and Wikis. Our discussion will take place here.

Question for Discussion/Comment:

* Describe and explain your reaction to the 1st WebQuest competition held in Hong Kong at the Chinese University. After viewing and reading from the Blog/Wiki Links in the left margin of this blog, share your predictions for the year 2011 as a result of this competition and how it could impact our classrooms, students and teachers in the United States.

To comment, simply click below "links to this post", then selcet "post a comment". If you don't see your comment immediately, you will see it once you refresh your browser. We hope you enjoy this interactive format for this week and we also hope you enjoy your experience blogging.

It is easy to create your own blog, try it sometime! You and your students wll be hooked.