Red Ribbon Week Oct. 24-27

RED RIBBON WEEK
“THESE PAWS Don’t Touch DRUGS!”
October 24-27

Monday: Oct. 24
“Drugs Turn You Inside Out!”
Wear your t-shirt inside out.

Tuesday: Oct. 25
“I Can, You Can, We Can
“Can” Drugs!”
Bring a can of food to donate.

Wednesday: Oct. 26
“SOCK IT TO DRUGS!”
Wear your crazy socks & bring
a pair of NEW socks to donate
to our sister school.

Thursday: Oct. 27
“Show Your School Spirit,
Be Drug Free!”
Wear your RCE t-shirt
or blue & orange.

Friday: Oct. 28
“SAY BOO TO DRUGS!”
Wear your Halloween T-shirt.

Happy Red Ribbon Week

Pre-K Fun!!

Free photo slideshow customized with Smilebox

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

This is one of our favorite books. Enjoy the video!!

Homework

What are the names of your family members?
mom, dad, grandmother, grandfather, brothers, sisters

What do you like to do with mom and dad?


Thank you for your responses.

Mr. O'Quinn

Pre-K Day 24

Wow!!! What a fun, energetic, crazy ride it has been.

We have read, written, talked, checked out books and made many wonderful new friends.

This past week was a week full of new technology. We went to the computer lab on Tuesday morning and worked on improving our mouse control skills, and using the keyboard. On Wednesday we had time to explore the app's on the iTouches, we also had to work on sharing. On Thursday, we used the Netbooks and learned a new program called Odyssey and learned how to use a built in mouse on the computer. Very challenging, but we where successful!! Friday was a day to use the activboard for the first time. It was a fun time.

As you can see our education will not only be reading, writing and arithmatic but technology on a daily basis. Time to learn and be challenged.

A Great week, exciting and challenging but very beneficial.

Enjoy your weekend!

Mr. O'Quinn

Reflections from our first week

My favorite thing this week was:
Jacquelyn- Show n Tell.
Taha- playing with the dollhouse
Brian- Playing with the view masters
Colette-reading books
Angelina- singing
Lucas- running at recess
Chloe- going to recess
Tyler- play in blocks
Haider- reading books
Alexander- going to lunch
John- sharing
SarahBeth- having cirlce time to share stuff
Brinda- puzzles
Ella- Show-n-Tell
Ava- Mr. Potato Head
Cooper-My birthday
Reid- legos
Taylor- playing with the dollhouse

and my favorite was watching all of the children interact with one another and make new friends that could possibly last for a lifetime.

Your sons and daughters are fun, energetic, playful, joyful, happy, excited learners. I know some of them may tell you they don't want to come to school, but when they arrive they are happy and eager to learn. I look forward to this year.

See you at the school.

Mr. Jimmie O'Quinn, B.Ed., M.Ed.
Pre-K
Rummel Creek Elementary

Welcome to Pre-K

New Pre-Kindergarten students and families, welcome to PreK at Rummel Creek Elementary.

Below you will find a second blog for my family and I would like for you to read the latest post about my Crazy Summer. I believe this will assist in putting rumors that you may hear in the neighborhood to rest. It has been a trying summer for me but all is coming to an end. If you have questions after reading, send me an e-mail.

http://oquinn-joshua2415.blogspot.com/


This will be a year full of fun and exciting events. Don't forget to register to be an approved SBISD volunteer. That will enable you to be able to attend parties, read to the class, help in the computer lab, field trips, math tubs, writing workshop and many other activities. We can't wait to see you in the classroom.

I will see you all on Monday morning, August 22nd.

Welcome,

Mr. Jimmie O'Quinn, B.Ed., M.Ed.
Pre-K
Rummel Creek Elementary

Tool #11 Reflection

1. What are your favorite tools you now have in your personal technology toolbox?
One of the best tools for myself is finding online resources and using them in the classroom including video and games. This is a new aspect that will make my job easier and not make me have to create everything I want to use in the class. I also want to model the use of GoAnimate, MakeBeliefsComix and TikaTok.

2. How have you transformed your thinking about the learning that will take place in your classroom?
The journey has surely changed my thinking and how Pre-K children can use the tools and be prepared for future learning. They will become digital citizens and have many resources under their belts to use for many years.

How has your vision for your classroom changed?
I have begun to create a new plan and organization for my classroom to make the tools more accessable.

3. Were there any unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
The greatest outcome was that I found I was able to navigate new programs and will be able to use them independenty and teach them to my students.

Tool #10 - Underneath it All - Digital Citizenship

Digital Citizenship could be a difficult concept for my Pre-K children to comprehend;however, becoming a member at such a young age it is important to make sure children understand the responsibility of being a digital citizen.

Several items to communiate would be to "Be Kind" online, just as they have to be in person. Students must understand to remain "Safe" and know that they don't give out any personal information such as name, address, school name, phone #, etc. Finally, the students understand not to set up passwords or navigate to sites that have not been approved by the teacher while working at school.

NetSmartzKids is a site that I thought would make learning about internet safety more enjoyable for Pre-K children. I also thought BrainPop would be a valuable resource that will give the students good resources.

Tool #9 Incorporating Classroom-Based Devices as Tools for Learning

The link below is one that I feel will allow me as the teacher to provide resources for the students review, reteaching and new learning for Pre-K learning objectives. http://www.learninggamesforkids.com/ and http://www.studyladder.com/

I believe by maintaining the objectives of TLW learn to recoginze letter names in context or TLW distinguish letters from numerals the student will be able to use several of the games from the sites above to assist them in reteaching and reinforcing classroom instruction. The technology will be a wonderful new tool for the students to solidify learning and be able to have independent practice.

Tool #8 Looking at the Tools

I will be receiving 3 Netbooks and 5 iTouches for my classroom and I am very excited about giving my students exposure to both of the tools.

With the 3 Netbooks, I believe it will give students the opportunity to explore different programs and items in Google Docs. This tool will give my PK children an opportunity to practice with keyboarding, learning letters and about how to use parts of the keyboard- space bar, enter, delete, backspace, tab, caps lock, etc. I think by allowing them to explore at an early age this can remove some of the confusion when they are in older grades. The newest and most difficult to use will be the webcam, but after the initial instruction it should become easiar and more productive.

With the 5 iTouches, I will be very deliberate with the apps that I load to make sure they are all grade level appropriate, I will also load recorded books that are useful for my students.


To manage the iTouches in the classroom my plan is to divide the students into groups of 5 and give each group 15 uninterupted minutes everyday to work on apps that will help them learn specific skills.

The NetBooks I am planning on giving each student 10 independent minutes and rotate through the whole class over two days.

I am very excited about the tools that I will have in the class. Thank you Spring Branch for providing the tools for the students.

Tool #7 Going Global

Many of the tools explored seem to be rather advanced for Pre-K children and very labor intensive for the classroom teacher. GlobalSchoolNet and Class2Class-math projects seem to be outdated and if anything is recreated they would need to be PK specific.

The tool that I believe to be most usable to get us out of the classroom is to create and then invite participants to Skype. Most likely PK/K teachers in the district and in other districts, possibly a PK center in Aldine.

It is very exciting to help the students to the experience of going global and flattening the walls to the classroom.

Tool # 6

Share your thoughts on how you see the tools being integrated into your classroom. How do you see them encouraging participation?

I saw many of the tools as to difficult for Pre-K children to use, but I think they can be exposed to Voxipop in the classroom with each of them recording a response to a question. If parents are able this could be used for students to record from home on a given homework assignment.

The tool I found most beneficial was Skype for teachers. I found it very interesting to possibly share a project or response from another classroom from somewhere in the world. One project I found was classes sharing a performance of a play. One class could learn a play, make costumes and perform for the partner class. Then you reverse the project.

Tool #5

Describe for your readers how you think each tool can be incorporated into your classroom - how you could see the tool being used by you instructionally and your students to demonstrate their understanding of a concept or topic in your classroom.

The first tool I used was very familiar (Wordle) and I believe it will be very useful for my students. Especially after they have learned sight words and letters and are able to do something independently. At first I will use it whole class for experience and modeling.




Also, MakeBeliefComix will allow students to beging to understand character, setting, dialogue while playing with the characters and using immagination for writing. Again, it will be necessary to model for my students.

Other tools I used where Animoto to create movies of the students or field trips and TikaTok.

Many new tools that will give the students more tools to use that they can continue to use in later years.

Tool #4 Moving to the clouds

Google Docs is a tools that helps to create many short cuts to creating documents, recreating and sharing the all the people involved.

While exploring the tools I did several different things including creating a Document and then sending it to the person who needs to give input into its' content. It was a much easier process then having to create, save, open an email, insert the document and wait for a reply to make the corrections. I like the ability to collaborate.

I also used the Google calendar and sent new calendar appointments to other persons who are outside of the SBISD system. It allows me to reach a broader spectrom of persons. I think I will use the Google calendar for my PK parents next year for classroom reminders, and I will also have my room mom add PTA dates and volunteers to our calendar.

The other tools I explored and will use with my students are Sites to create a PK class website and Groups to facilitate class discussion with parents about classroom volunteering, field trips, reading, etc.

Are their other tools that teachers have used that are easy to modify for younger students?

ABC song

Days of the Week

Tool #3 Embedding Video

After exploring kidtube, teachertube and youtube I found all of them very useful.

Thank you Ms. Frazzled for posting the videos from Atomic Learning because I found the three videos on Embedding Video.

I loved finding video that are usable in the first weeks of the school year, Brown Bear and Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.

Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? read by Bill Martin, Jr.

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

Tool #2

The URL below is a Pre-K blog that shows this teachers' Pre-K year. She also provides links to other websites, tools for a Pre-K/Kinder classroom and resources for beginning of the year.




http://prekinders.com/links/


http://mrsforst.wordpress.com/


http://preschoolbystormie.com/



I liked looking speciffically at other Pre-K sites, because they all provided resources that could be incorporated into the current Pre-K curriculum.

Leaving my comment on someones' blog is a good experience. I liked seeing what others had done and also the way that others are thinking about the use of technolgy in the classroom. This really is an open path that needs to be explored and looked at indepth to determine what you can add to your own class and give your students additional resources to use in their education.

Pre-Kindergarten Tool #1

I am so excited about 11-tools. I think it will give me good insight into what I can add to my Pre-K day to help the students gain technological skills and tools.

I am also glad that I got to use the same blog from earlier. I have too many going and didn't want to keep up with another blog.

crazyprekman