Slice of Life Day Twenty-one: Technology in Third Grade

It is amazing what children are doing in the way of technology these days. I guess I shouldn't be surprised at anything they do when I watch my nineteen-month old grand daughter try to push keys on my iPad.  Her three-year old brother knows more than I do. I have to watch carefully or he will order a new game to play!

I was in a third grade classroom on Thursday. This is a room that I visit often and volunteer in their writer's workshop. They have been working on informational pieces and are in the process of publishing their work. They each have an iPad and are typing the text and adding text features.

Being retired for two years, this is something I never had to teach my second graders.  Since I do have an iPad, I was familiar with what they were doing. Today I conferenced with two boys that were both working on adding pictures to their piece. When Zane went to add a whale shark to his subtopic, the web address came up instead of the picture. I was able to show him how to save the picture to his file and then copy it from there. I did the same thing later with Eric. He was trying to add a picture of a liter box in his piece on kittens.

I also worked with Ann on her piece about cats. She had her subtopics listed and was trying to get the pages to line up with her table of contents. It was fun to watch her check to see if she had the right page on the subtopic. When she didn't she would scroll up or down to be sure it was on a new page and then add the page number.

For sharing time, Sage shared with the class her text feature of a glossary. She had picked words that she thought her readers might not be familiar with and gave definitions. She also went back to her text and found those words and put them in bold print! She thought her classmates might want to try that, too. Such smart writers!

It is just amazing to see what these third graders can do. They are confident and excited about sharing their knowledge with others!