We are not studying adjectives at this particular time so I used this lesson plan for nouns instead of adjectives.  We looked at vocabulary words from our reading story, social studies lesson, and science lesson.  We identified the words as different parts of speech, concentrating on finding the nouns.  I anticipated the students would be able to identify nouns as we had talked about them quite a bit.  I typed them on the computer and the children discussed each one as they came up on the TV.  They took turns typing their own definitions under each word as it came up.  We then came up with sentences that we typed on the big screen using Word.  The students enjoyed this part of the lesson very much.  They were very eager to come up with definitions for each word without using glossaries or dictionaries unless they were stuck on a word that they couldn’t figure out.  It did take more time than I had anticipated because of their slow typing, most still use hunt and peck.  The next day, we played a round robin game using the vocabulary words and definitions.  The student had to come up with correct definition and part of speech for the words in order to advance.  This was a great deal of fun for all of us, and the students asked to go around several times even though we had correctly identified each word.  We then wrote either a story or a poem using the vocabulary words.  These were quite imaginative because of the wide range of words, which were used.  The majority of the students wrote a short story, which I then had them type on the computer, save on their own disks and also to a hard copy.  I felt that the students had a greater grasp on the vocabulary words then if they had simply looked them up and written down definitions in a notebook.  They enjoyed both learning the words and using them, which is what I wanted them to be able to do. 
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November Journal Entry

     We have started writing a class newspaper once a week on Fridays.  During our reading or English time, I lead the students through the process.  They named it 4th Grade Times.  We include any special activities that we have done that week, such as field trips or special science projects.  We look for pictures from the web to include in our paper, and also we have used the digital camera.  The children have been very excited about this project and all want to contribute ideas.  They watch my typing carefully for mistakes in spelling and grammar and never hesitate to point out mistakes that I have made, intentionally or otherwise!  They now know to indent a paragraph when they write which I have to tried to teach in vain in years past.  Each child receives a copy to take home with them and share with their parents.  They really love to insert pictures and to wrap the text around the picture.  Even my slowest student remembers the process.
     We have sent our songbird south and have been watching the process of migration of not only our songbird, but the Albatross also.  We are involved in two projects concerning migration.  The children are learning quite a bit about geography as well as the science of behavior.  We are going to begin our Kids to Kids project next week.  We looked at Cambodia and Thailand last week in comparison to landscape of East TN.  They all agreed that it is very different.  The students are very excited with the idea of writing a book to share with others. 
     We have used our three Cyber Ambassadors this past week to help learn how to make a power point presentation.  Each student has used the Internet to save pictures for any project of their choice (within reason of course), and they will now make a power point presentation of that project to share with the class.  So far, we have finished two projects.  We plan to keep using them until each child has their project finished.
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December Journal Entry

     We have been studying folk tales this month in reading.  We have read several stories from our text and other sources.  One of those sources was the Internet.  We have written our own folk tales and we have acted out tales from different countries.  I used a lesson plan on cultural study along with this project.  The students worked in groups and read the tales, then they learned about the countries that their tale was from.  We looked on the web for information about these countries as well as computer encyclopedias.  Each group was also required to use a standard encyclopedia to find information.  Each group then presented their information to the class.  As a final project, I used another lesson plan from the web.  This lesson incorporated math into our reading.  I had to modify the plan a bit because I did not have enough advertisements from lumber companies.  We get a local newspaper each week which has a limited supply of advertisements.  I told the children that they were the three little pigs who had just built their new homes.  They had to furnish these homes with items found in the newspaper.  They had to keep a running account of how much they were spending on each item.  This gave us some time to talk about what furnishings were.  Several children wanted to furnish their homes with Crisco Oil because it was on sale!  The children looked through the classifieds as well as the advertisements.  They really enjoyed this project, especially when they realized just how much they had spent.
     We have not been able to complete a newspaper since our last meeting because of problems with the computer.  It is beginning to fail.
     We have used Grant, Emily, and Brandon , our Cyber Ambassadors, to continue the students use of power point.  One of these three students comes into our classroom for approximately 45 minutes per day to work one on one with one of my students.  My students are enjoying learning about PowerPoint very much and the Cyber Ambassadors are doing a great job of teaching them. 
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January Entry
     We are very excited about starting a new Internet project this month even though we don't have access at this moment in our new classroom.  We signed up for the postcard exchange.  I have been using my home computer to print the addresses of the schools who are participating and the students have begun to send postcards.  We have not received any yet, but we are anxiously awaiting our first.  We have also continued with our Cambodia project.  We have finished the books, and we are finishing up the packing process.  We should have them mailed off by the end of the week.  We had also begun tracking the Albatross although without connection, this has had to be put off for awhile. 
     The Cyber Ambassadors have started working with our class again to finish up our power point presentations.  We have just a few left to do. 
     I have been using the laptop to create several PowerPoint presentations.  We have also used it to type a few stories in a small group activity.  Because my computer that is connected to the TV is being worked on, I plan on using it to share the PowerPoints with the students.
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February Entry

     We have not been able to use ICQ yet in our classroom because of a classroom move that we had to make.  We did not have Internet for a few weeks because of this.  We have made plans however to use it this month to interact with a couple of other classrooms.
     The Cyber Ambassadors are continuing to come to our classroom to work one on one with students to create power point presentations.  My students have saved pictures from the Internet onto a disk to be used in their presentations.  The Cyber Ambassadors are showing my students how to use these pictures and also to save the power point to a disk.
     We have been using the laptop as an extra computer in the classroom.  The students have written their own Declaration of Independence and Constitution on paper, and then typed them on the computer.  They are learning to use the spell check and grammar check before saving their work.  After they have saved it to a disk, they print it off and then look for additional errors.  If they find any, which is inevitable, they take their disk, open it, and fix their errors.  They then save their final copy to disk and print it off.  They love using the laptop. 
     We have been very excited about being part of Project Groundhog.  We have a thermometer hanging outside our door and the children check it constantly to see how our weather has changed.  They have enjoyed communicating with several other classrooms across the US and they were so thrilled to find a classroom close by, Mr. Collin's at White Pine.  We have sent electronic cards to several different classes, as well as e-mail.  We are preparing a community profile to send into the project.  We have also begun participating in the postcard geography project.  We have received many postcards from so many different places.  We have begun taping them to a very large US map to indicate where each card comes from.  Each student is going to be writing their own postcards to send to the address of their choice.  They go to the state web site to find pictures of TN symbols which they then print off and cut out to paste onto a 5 by 7 index card.  They have to read information about these symbols off the web page and then write it onto the card.  I have been helping them to address the cards.  They are really enjoying putting these cards together.
     Through typing the newspaper, I believe the students are showing a greater awareness of grammar.  They are very quick to point out any mistakes that I make while typing!  They enjoy reading their own newspapers and I have heard from parents that they also enjoy reading them.  We missed getting a few copies out this past month because of absence on my part, and a computer crash that erased everything, even with careful saving.  We intend to get back on track this week.
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March Entry

     We have been very excited about Project Groundhog, which we have been involved with.  The students were thrilled to write the community description that we did as a large group activity.  They all had ideas about what should be included in the description.  They were very quick to point out any grammatical errors that I purposely included in my writing.  We saved it to a disk and then I showed them how to send an attachment through e-mail.  We have sent electronic postcards to the various members of the group that we are in and have received quite a few also.  It has been a great project for learning about Celsius and Fahrenheit also.  We have only two weeks left in the project, but I believe that my students will continue their interest in the weather and the different areas where our group members are from. 
     Each of my students continues to make Powerpoint presentations with the help of the cyber ambassadors.  The cyber ambassadors are very good helpers in regard to teaching how to make the presentations.  My students are enjoying the experience.  They have also enjoyed watching the power point presentations that I have made.  I find that they make very good introductory material.
     We have been using the laptop as an extra word processor.  The children are so excited about using it to type their stories.  I have been having them write their stories, type them, read them and edit them, and then go back in to retype any mistakes that they have made.  They are becoming much better at finding errors this way.  They don't mind the editing as much this way.  As a matter of fact, they want to edit their material now.
     We continue to try and do a weekly class newspaper.  The children become very excited about reporting what has happened in our class that week.  They come up with all of the ideas as I type.  They pick out either pictures from clip art, or the Internet when it is working.  They have become very good at formatting the pictures also.  They all quickly recite the process to me when I ask what I need to do!  It has become one of the highlights of our Fridays. 
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April Entry
The Cyber Ambassadors continue to visit my classroom and teach my students how to make power point presentations.  They enjoy learning how to do these very much and just about everyone in the class has finished.  They have also cleaned the mouse a few different times.
     The students enjoy having the laptop in the classroom.  They have been typing their stories about themselves to add to our web page.  They would rather use the laptop than any other computer in the classroom.  I also have been using the laptop to create power point presentations for the classroom.  The students seem to enjoy the learning experience from the presentations.  Each student is typing a story about themselves and drawing a picture to go with it to put on our web page.  We have just about completed the initial writing and drawing.  I still need to upload a few of the stories.  They want to continue writing stories to add to their section, and I have been encouraging them to do this.  They have been accessing the page at home to show their parents and relatives.  They made sure the web address was in one of our latest newspapers, and it was one of the lead stories. 
     The students continue to enjoy writing our weekly newspaper.  One Friday when we were out for snow, they were very disappointed that we were not able to write.  They have many suggestions on the format of the paper, which we put to a class vote.  Some of the suggestions are accepted, and some are voted down. 
     We have finished one of our Internet projects, the Project Groundhog.  The students really enjoyed this project and I am going to do it again next year.  As a matter of fact, they have insisted on tracking the weather after the project was finished.  We sent several cyber cards through the Internet to the various classes that were involved.  We also received quite a few.  One of the other projects that we are involved in is the postcard project.  This is another great project.  The students find pictures of TN from the internet and information to go along with them, then write it up on a post card next to the picture which they paste on, and send them on to various addresses.  They weren't very excited about doing this at first, but now they that we have been receiving cards from various locations, they are asking to do their post cards.
     The students are very excited about using all of the technology in our classroom.  They enjoy using the computers for the writing, learning programs, and Internet projects.  They have mentioned to me that they want to make sure they are at school on the days they get to be on the computer.  I used to have trouble with students leaving early on Fridays but now, nobody wants to go home.  I try to do a lot of computer activities on Friday afternoon and there are groans if they are picked up early.  We have an atlas program that plays songs from various regions as well as examples of speech patterns.  It also has slide shows of all the different states.  The students really seem to enjoy this program.  We have several reading programs that we do as a large group activity.  They have to use different reading concepts to solve puzzles.  We do math on the computer with different math programs.  They are very quick to help each other get through the different activities.  I also enjoy doing these activities.  It gives me a chance to have more interactions with the children.  As the year progresses, the activities become more student directed.  They are the ones at the keyboard as I monitor.  This gives them a chance to build keyboarding skills as well as computer confidence.  I have seen a great change come over several of my students as they become more confident using the computer.

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May Entry
We have participated in several different Internet projects this year in the classroom, which was a great improvement over the preceding year.  We began the year by joining the Journey North project.  We used the Internet to research different types of birds, animals, and butterflies to learn their migratory patterns.  It fit in well with our science unit at the time which had to do with animals and their behaviors.  The students did a great deal of reading on their own to learn more about these behaviors.  It was exciting to see the interest that developed through the use of the Internet. 

Another project that we participated in was Project Groundhog.  In this project, the students kept a record of the temperatures at school for six weeks.  They also corresponded with different schools through e-mail and cyber cards.  We wrote about our community, we read about weather, researched groundhogs, and developed several art projects that we put on the groundhog web pages.  Again, this activity prompted independent reading about groundhogs, and the different regions of the country with which we corresponded. This project fit in well with reading and science, as well as social studies. 

One of the best projects that we participated in was the Postcard Geography project.  This project is designed so that a class receives postcards as well as sends postcards throughout the United States and around the world.  My students learned so much about the different regions of the United States through the postcards that they received.  We got one from almost every state in our country along with some from other countries. My students made their own postcards to send.  They had to read about the state of TN and then design their cards.  We got the information from both the Internet and their Tennessee History books.  They downloaded pictures from the state web page to decorate their cards.  They had to practice both reading and handwriting skills to accomplish this task.  They learned about addressing letters and cards also.  Most of my students were reluctant at first to do this, but after we started receiving cards, they were asking to make more.  They would read about the states that they were sending their cards to. 

I have used the Internet more this year than I ever have previously.  I believe it has enriched my students learning through their participation in the learning process.  I didn't have to lecture about places, weather, and animals, they actively participated in the process.  I became more of a guide to information which they would seek out. 

A co-worker and I developed a lesson plan for presenting adjectives.  It involved using the Internet through various web sites.  I incorporated this lesson plan when I introduced adjectives in our English class.  The students certainly enjoyed the power point presentations and the web sites that we connected to.  I felt that they were more receptive to learning about adjectives after I had introduced them in this manner.

I also used the Internet to find other lesson plans.  Through scheduling, my class has 45 minutes of free time each day.  I use this time to teach a subject of the students choosing.  This year for the first time, they wanted to learn about the Revolutionary War.  I had very few materials from which to choose age appropriate lessons, so I went to the Web.  There I found several lesson plans from which I was able to gather materials.  My students wrote Declarations of their own, as well as Constitutions.  I have also searched the Internet for lesson plans on the different stories that we have read throughout the year.  There are so many great ideas out there.  I have used several plans from the Internet to enrich the stories that we have read. 

My students have learned a great deal about electronic communication this year through our Internet projects.  We have e-mailed different people throughout the world to ask questions about projects we were involved in and to chat with people.  Our school has used video conferencing to discuss schoolwide projects such as character counts.  We plan on using it even more next year with a new program that we are initiating, peaceable schools.  Using electronic communication enhances instruction because it puts students in touch with people who have more knowledge about certain subjects than I do.  It gives them an opportunity to pose their questions on a global scale, and to receive answers from experts in the field.    They are able to communicate with peers in other places to find out about what life is like somewhere else. 

I have developed several different Power Point presentations throughout the year for several different learning objectives.  I have found that they are a good tool to use for introducing stories.  I pick out a topic from the story and develop a power point to develop these ideas. One example would be, we were reading a story about a little boy who goes to visit his grandfather's ranch.  While he is there, his grandfather mentions to him that he knew some African American cowboys.  I developed a Power Point presentation on African American cowboys.  My students were amazed at all the information I had found.   I have also used Power Points to introduce vocabulary in all subjects.  My students enjoy these presentations much more than always looking words up.  My students have also developed Power Point presentations of their own.  They have become quite good at this skill.

I use MS Word in my classroom in so many different ways.  One way that I especially like, is my students type their stories using word.  They are able to see mistakes in spelling and grammar very quickly.  Many of them have learned how to spell an assortment of words this way!  We also use word when we type our class newspaper.  They have learned to insert pictures, use different font styles, and to save their work.  Both of these programs are invaluable in the classroom. 

Each week our class types a class newspaper.  This is truly a highlight in my students week.  If for some reason we have had to miss, they are always very disappointed.  We use the newspaper to inform parents of events that have happened as well as events that will be happening.  The students have 99% of the input in the newspaper.  As a class, they have to agree on what will be reported.  This has certainly given them a chance to learn cooperation and planning skills.  They decide in which order the news is reported.  They have learned to gather important news first, then the trivial news.  They have learned to put all information of one kind together to make a stronger news story. 

The students also enjoyed putting together a classroom web page.  They have each contributed a story about themselves to the page.  We have shown it to parents who are always suitably impressed. 

These training sessions have given me an opportunity to learn so much about using the computer in my room.  I feel that through these sessions, I have gained so much knowledge about using technology.  I have had the fortunate experience to have access for several years but I have never really known enough to put it all together.  This year has given me that knowledge.  I use the computers in so many different ways now.  I can find information on so many different subjects to help my students learn.  I no longer have to rely on just the textbook.  We have taken virtual field trips all year.  The students are able to see other places and to hear other ideas.  Without these sessions, I feel that I would still be stumbling in the dark trying my best to learn on my own.  Coming here once a month gives me the opportunity to ask questions about technology.  I can then take it back into the classroom and put it to use.  This has been a terrific learning experience for me.  I have learned so much about technology and how to use it.  To me, this has been the most valuable aspect.  To be able to use the technology that is available to me has been a great asset.  I believe that my students have benefited as well.  The more information that I learn, the more information that I am able to share with them. 

I have used the laptop provided through this project in many different ways.  One of the greatest benefits is having another computer in my room.  The students' loved using the laptop to type reports and to type their stories for the web page.  I used the laptop frequently to develop Power Point presentations.  I also plan on using it to create short presentations from the students to their parents with the video cam next year for Open House. 

The Cyber Ambassadors have come into my classroom to help teach my students how to make Power Point presentations.  They have been very helpful in this aspect.  My students enjoyed learning from other students close to their own age.  I enjoyed it because it freed me from having to take the time to teach each student individually.  I feel that this was a great experience for the Cyber Ambassadors also.  They were able to share their knowledge with others. 

I have a colleague who is a first year teacher and who is not involved in this project.  I have tried to share most of everything that I learn with her.  I have involved her in the online projects that I signed up with.  I have shared all my Power Point presentations with her and have encouraged her to do some of her own.  I have offered ideas on how to use her computers in the classroom that will benefit her and her students. Her class is now creating a newspaper of their own.  I will continue to share any knowledge that I acquire and continue to encourage her to seek more. 

I feel technology has enhanced my reading curriculum through motivation.  My students have become internally motivated to read about the subjects that we have been studying.  They have sought out reading material that discusses different subjects. I feel that this makes them much stronger readers.  They have learned many reading skills through story typing and writing the class paper.  I feel that technology is a very valuable tool not only in the reading curriculum, but also throughout the fourth grade curriculum. 

I have no concrete suggestions because so far everything has been fantastic.  I do hope that more teachers can become involved in this worthwhile project.  I hope to continue learning more about video conferencing and more PowerPoint techniques.  I guess my only suggestion is to somehow get everyone involved. 

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