Fry's Fish Blog about Fish Tales!

Miss Fry is having her students blog about self-selected reading books in her TeacherWeb home page.  This encourages students to think deeper about the books they are reading and make connections between different books they are reading as well as connections to their own lives. It also introduces students to books they might not have read otherwise. Check it out and see if you aren't interested in reading some of what the kids are reading now!

Forest Creek First Lego League Team "The Lord of the Legos" Competes

Forest Creek's First Lego League Team "The Lord of the Legos" competed in the FLL Team Competition at Westwood High School on Saturday, Nov. 13th.  We are so proud of all ten members of our team.  Our team competed against 18 other elementary and middle school teams.  This year, our team consisted of seven fourth graders and three fifth graders. Altogether, they spent more than 50 hours of their own time after school and during recess preparing for our competition.

Our team was divided into three parts, a build team, a programming team, and a research team.  These students had to learn how to build a robot, how to program it using the lego programning language, and research the self-selected topic of ADHD. 

The team was led by Rodger Schorr, a mentor from National Instruments.  Kirstie Ginapp and Valerie Rollans were the school sponsors. Without the support of these teachers, our team would not have been possible. 

We would also like to thank Elizabeth Fry, a fourth grade teacher at Forest Creek, for coming to the competition on Saturday to cheer our team on.  It was wonderful having another teacher take such an interest in our hard work.

Thanks to all of the students who competed in the First Lego League competition.  We are so proud of you!

Forest Creek Third, Fourth and Fifth Graders Blog about Bluebonnet

Mariah Smith, the librarian at Forest Creek Elementary has had students blogging about Bluebonnet books for the last three years. Before blogging, students are required to read the entire book and then post their opinion about the book.  According to Ms. Smith, "A meaningful blog will include a variety of opinions and a rich discussion of a topic."  Through this blog, students are able to share their opinions about the Bluebonnet contenders with others in our school.  Congratulations to Ms. Smith for incorporating this interactive technology into the Bluebonnet Book program!  Visit the blog here.

Whitfield's Munchkins are Writers!

Have you ever thought your kids were too little or too young to start using the computer for anything but games?  At Forest Creek, our kindergarten students start producing work on the computers almost as soon as school starts! Mr. Whitfield has taught his students to use Microsoft Word already.  They have learned to type their names, using the shift key to make capital letters and create a numbered list.  They are practicing writing their sight words and writing sentences with capitals and punctuation.  We are so proud of our kindergarten writers.

Heinzen's Honey Bees are Web 2.0 Denizens

Web 2.0 sites are websites that promote information sharing, user-centered design, and collaboration on the web.  Typically, Web 2.0 sites help users create new products or information, rather than simply consuming information.  Our first graders are delving into this world of creation on the website!

Mrs. Heinzen's class has used two different Web 2.0 tools recently to enhance her classroom.  Her students created a class diamante poem using Read Write Think's interactive diamante poem tool.  Her students also created individual online stories and printed them using Scholastic's Story Starter tool. They were so excited to share their writings with each other and others in our school.

We are so proud of our digital natives as they safely explore how the web can help them become better students!