Spelling

Teaching first grade has its own set of challenges but for a tech geek, it can be painful. Having taught 2nd grade for the past 5 years I 've been spoiled by what my kids can do. Not to say first graders can't, but it sure takes a lot longer to get them comfortable with the keyboard and how to navigate around. I'm sure as technology begins to infiltrate our lives more and more, this divide if you will, will lessen. I am constantly amazed at what my own first grader and my 4 year old can do, especially on my iPod touch. That being said, I took my class of 1st graders onto a great site called, http://www.spellingcity.com/ the other day. It was our first time on the site and they did a fantastic job typing in the full address and getting their words typed in in a timely fashion. I was so excited as we still had 10 minutes left of our computer time. Well, that's when things went downhill. Once clicking on the game button, nothing would load. Now if you know 1st graders, you know that they are not overly patient but despite that pitfall my class held it together. In the end, we didn't get to play the game with our words but after talking to our LMS, we got the problem figured out, at least for now, and they will get a 2nd chance to try it out today. I'm excited to hear what they and she thought of it as I wasn't able to be part of the group today as we had our team planning time. Nonetheless, the kids proved to me that they are more than capable of doing more than KidPix and that they can follow multistep directions fairly well once they've been shown what to do. I'm excited to see what we can do next and how I can continue to embed technology into our curriculum in a 1st grade appropriate way.