Ms.+Davis

= Welcome to Ms.Davis and Ms. Cowdrick's Fifth Grade Wiki!!! =



**We are very excited to be bringing 21st century learning skills into the classroom with our iPad initiative. We are looking forward to creating many projects and reinforcing learning with this amazing technology! **

**September/October** - We are thrilled to announce our 7 iPADs have arrived! First and foremost, students will be exploring the numerous educational applications that are on every iPAD so they can become more familiar with this exciting technology! We will also practice using our Google Docs/PV-Eagles account. Through this account, students can create documents, presentations, and use e-mail to communicate with one another and their teachers.

Some of our apps include:
 * Pages - a place to create a document (similar to Microsoft Word)
 * Keynote - create a presentation (similar to Microsoft PowerPoint)
 * Idea Sketch - provides students with graphic organizers to help with reading and writing
 * AR - where students can take AR quizzes on a bok they have read
 * Math Tutor - a "fun" app where math concepts are reinforced through games
 * WordVenture - similar to Mad Libs, students can create stories using various parts of speech

**November** - Throughout the month students began using the iPads more and more! For Social Studies, students practiced their state locations with an app called "Stack the States." We also used various Science apps to look up information about our topic of the day. In addition, students completed their first project using an iPad! This was a cross curricular project as students were using Social Studies terminology in a written narrative format. Students chose a state and created a postcard using the application "PhotoCard." Students were asked to pretend they were visiting the state and write back to their teacher describing their trip. Students included facts about their state's landformations, important places, climate, population, and other fun facts. Students then emailed their postcard to one of the teachers. From that e-mail we were able to print out their postcard and display their work in paper form!



We have just completed our first iMovie project! To kick off our new Science chapter (Earth, Moon, and Beyond), students completed an experiment. We created a model using a kickball, tennis ball, and ping pong ball to show the pattern of movement between the Sun, the Earth, and the Moon. After students completed the experiment they created an iMovie! Their iMovie had to include an introduction to their experiment, a recreation on the model, and key vocabulary words used during this experiment. The students did "an out of this world job" and had fun learning! :)

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 * December/January - ** As we become more familiar and efficient on the iPads, we are beginning to explore more applications. Our new Social Studies unit focuses on the early people, the Native Americans, who first lived on our land. This topic provides a multitude on subtopics such as the many characteristics of the different tribes. To incorporate 21st Century skills, students are researching, organizing, and presenting information on one Native American tribe. Students are working in small groups to foster communication and teamwork skills as well. Each group will organize their information into a "Keynote Presentation" which is similar to the Microsoft version PowerPoint. So far, students are showing phenomenal team working and researching skills. We look forward to posting a sample presentation here soon!