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SPECIAL
IDEAS FOR YOUNGER CHILDREN:
USING THE INTERNET IN THE PRIMARY GRADES
Teaching With the Internet:
Sarah Shanahan's Class
• Dominique, Juan, and Mika clicked on the link
to this story and waited a moment for the Shockwave plugin 
to load. Earlier, Sarah had downloaded the Shockwave and
Flash plugins from http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/
onto her classroom computer. These new plugins opened an entire world
to her kindergarten class. They enabled her children to listen to storybooks
that were read aloud and many more engaging experiences with multimedia.
Wonderful animations, video, and speech enabled her young children to
engage in important learning experiences on the Internet. Today, her
students were listening to an outstanding read aloud story from Children's Storybook Online.
• They clicked on the link to an alphabet book in Swahili a class in Oregon
had developed. The children in David Leahy's class had recorded their
pronunciations for each word, many of which came from the book Jambo Means
Hello by Muriel Feelings. Mika and his friends listened to the class in
Oregon reading words in Swahili. They talked about the words and the pictures
as they listened to the words being pronounced.
• Dominque, Juan, and Mika moved over for Kevin
and watched as he clicked on What
is it? of Nanoworld
, a site in Australia with many strange-looking photographs
taken with an electron microscope. Each week, Sarah selected a picture
from the files at this location or from Scanning
Electron Microscope and had students draw a picture of the object
and then write a description of what they thought it was. It was always
great fun to have students share their pictures and read their invented spelling
for this activity during a brief Internet Workshop.
Lessons From the Classroom
• There is also a final lesson in this short episode.
Sarah, made judicious choices in her selection of sites to use in the
classroom, avoiding the most blatant of commercialism that pervades web
sites for young children. She had a rule in her class never to use a site
with banner ads. She thought long and hard about whether to use the story
The
Ant and the Grasshopper because it has a commercial logo for
Hiyah.com. Eventually, she decided that the quality of this resource outweighed
the appearance of a commercial logo and no overt attempt to sell a product.
It was a tough decision, however. Sarah had learned it was hard to make
simplistic decisions in this area such as never using a .com site in her
class. Some .com locations didn't overtly sell products or services while
some .org and .edu locations did. Sarah had learned these decisions needed
to be made carefully and each location needed to be explored thoroughly.
She did this with each site she used in her classroom.
Central Sites
for the Primary Grades
• As you look for central sites for young children
it is important to keep in mind child safety concerns. One place to begin
your search is at Yahooligans. This is one of the largest
collections of useful sites for children with links that are screened
for child safety before being accepted. As with all lists, though, one
can never guarantee the contents of links that move away from these sites.
Thus, you must still monitor student use. You may wish to set a bookmark
for Yahooligans and allow students in the older primary grades access to
this information. For younger students, you may wish to preview locations,
set bookmarks, and only allow children to use the bookmarks you have set.
• Probably the best central site screened for child
safety is Great Sites. This resource has been developed
by the American Library Association and includes over 700 outstanding
locations for children. Be certain to explore the wonderful resources
here.
• There is also an excellent central site for young
children located at Berit’s Best Sites for Children. These
have been screened and rated. Each also contains a short review describing
the contents. Many will indicate the approximate grade level for the activities
at the location.
Keeping it Simple: Using Internet
Workshop
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Here are some examples of Internet Workshop
that might be used with students in the primary grades:
• The Prince and
I
Have your students explore this magical kingdom as they go on a mission
to find the Prince and deliver a secret message. Share discoveries during
a workshop session. You can also play Magic Squares, Scrambled Words, and
Rhyme Time, send the Prince some of your own art and stories to display,
or search for hidden treasure. This is a wonderful site, developed with
child safety strategies in mind, run by Canada's National Film Board. It
is intended for elementary school children in grades K to 6. Uses Shockwave
or Java
plugins.
• Poem Pack
A wonderful location for working on long vowel patterns in phonics
containing ten cute poems with animations and audio. Have students listen
to the funny poems and complete other exciting activities located at
Long Vowels. Then, have students bring to your
workshop session at least two words containing long vowel sounds. As
they read their words, make a list for the entire class to see. Part
of the many exciting resources at the BBC site in the UK. Uses Shockwave
plugins.
• Alex’s
Scribbles - Koala Trouble
This site from Australia features an extensive collection of wonderful
stories about Max, the koala bear, by Alex Balsom (5 years old) and his
dad. It is quickly becoming a classic on the Internet for young children.
The stories contain hyperlinks within the illustrations; these require
children to click on the correct location in the illustration in order to
move forward in the story, thus supporting reading comprehension. Have
children draw a picture of Max and write their own story after reading one
of these delightful adventures. Then have them read their stories during
Internet Workshop.
• Boowa and Kwala
This location is for our very youngest students, ages 3-6. There are
so many different possibilities here for Internet Workshop. Visit different
countries, learn new songs and play interactive games. This site uses Flash
and has lots of music, sounds and animations. Available in both English and
French.
• Internet Coloring Books
There are a number of coloring books on the Internet for very young
children to enjoy. Have children print out their work and then write about
their picture. They can read and share their work during Internet Workshop.
Be careful, however, about screening sites for commercial messages. Interactive
coloring books provide opportunities to color illustrations right on the
screen. A nice, non-commercial, example is Draw Your
Own Picture. Shockwave is required for this site. Non-interactive
coloring books contain black and white illustrations to be printed out
and then colored. They include The
Happy Earth Day Coloring Book from the EPA, Smokey's
Coloring Book, and FEMA's
Coloring Book.
• Hangman at
Kids Corner
Here is a fun site for this traditional game. Children select letters
as they try to guess the spelling of a word. This is a great place for
kids to develop their decoding and spelling talents as they complete an
Internet Activity. Invite students to print out their successful work and
share it during Internet Workshop. Set a bookmark!
• Blue Dog Can Count!!
At this location, children can write an addition, subtraction, division,
or multiplication problem and listen as Blue Dog barks out the answer.
This is a great place to check one’s work. Better yet, have one student
write the problem while the other predicts the answer. Then see if they
agree with old Blue Dog. Great fun. Set a bookmark!
• Jumpin' Jehosaphat
the Counting Sheep
Here is another site like Blue Dog only Jumpin’ Jehosaphat jumps and
bleets out the answer. It doesn’t seem to work as smoothly as Blue Dog
unless you have a very fast Internet connection.
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• In addition to these traditional uses of sites
for Internet Workshop, it is also possible to use your computer without
requiring any navigation at all by your students. This is a very safe
experience for your children since they only view an image you have bookmarked
on the computer. For example, find an unusual image each day to display
on the screen and encourage your students to draw a picture of this image
and then write down what they think it is. A great source of these images
is the Nanoworld Image Gallery where you will find
images taken by an electron microscope. Sometimes images will contain
the label for the item. This is also useful for students who may wish to
copy the word down as they write a sentence describing the picture they see.
This can easily be set up as an Internet Workshop for kindergarten classrooms
with children’s pictures and writing shared during a brief workshop session
at the end of the day.
The definition of an outstanding web
site is, of course, subjective. You may, however, wish to review the criteria
the American Library Association uses to define outstanding web sites.
They organize an extensive criteria list around these elements: authorship/sponsorship,
purpose, design and stability, and content. Take a look and see if you
agree. Their Selection page is located at http://www.ala.org/parentspage/greatsites/criteria.html.
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Using Internet Project
• Permanent sites for Internet Project in the primary
grades are beginning to appear on the Internet. Given the power of this
type of experience we suspect more will soon follow. One of the more comprehensive
locations is
The Mind’s Eye Monster Exchange Project. This site puts
classes together that wish to participate in a collaborative language
arts project. Then, students draw a picture of a monster and write a
description of their monster picture. Paired classes exchange their descriptions
and attempt to draw a picture of what they think the other students’ monsters
look like. Finally, the images of all monsters are posted at the Monster
Exchange Project so that classes may see the originals and compare them
with the descriptions that were written. Many lesson plans and extension
ideas are also listed at this location for teachers. This is wonderful
Internet Project idea for any primary grade classroom. The opportunities
for language arts experiences, as students communicate about their monster
images, are exceptional.
• Another permanent project location on the Internet
is Monarch Watch.
If you wish to plan a project around this beautiful species of butterfly,
this is the place for you. The location contains an amazingly extensive
set of resources designed for children and teachers to learn more about
butterflies. Your students can raise butterflies, band them, release them
into the wild, and track their progress as reports come in from observers
around North America. Pay a visit to this excellent resource.
• In addition to permanent sites such as these,
you should also visit locations on the Internet where less permanent Internet
Projects are described, inviting you and other teachers to join in classroom
interchanges. Or, you may come up with your own idea for a great project
and invite other teachers to join you by posting it at one of these locations.
Locations where teachers post projects and invite others to join them
have been described in other chapters. They include:
TEACHING TIP
Susan Silverman is a technology integration
teacher in the Comsewogue School District, in Port Jefferson Station, New
York. She has developed a wonderful model for Internet Project that all
of us could use in our classrooms. Take a look at some of her exceptional
projects developed with other classrooms around the world. These are located
at Mrs. Silverman's Second
Grade Class. Susan posts a project description on many mailing lists,
inviting other classes to join in as they explore a particular topic using
the Internet to develop reading and writing experiences. Each participating
class creates a web site containing their finished work and Susan develops
a web site with links to everyone's pages. Susan and her collaborators
have developed projects on Stellaluna, Fall Poetry, Clocks and Time, Owls,
Pumpkins, Winter, Apples, and much more. Take a look at this exceptional
model of collaborative teaching and learning over the Internet. Try it in
your own classroom. |
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Examples of projects you may wish to consider
joining or developing for primary grade students include:
• The Eric Carle Book Club
Invite other classes to read works by Eric Carle (or another popular
author). Then, using writing process activities, share children’s written
responses to these works with each classroom. Also, consider polling each
class about their favorite books by this author and sharing the results
with other classes. When all of the results are in, have each class develop
a graph to display the results. Send the results of your work to the
author and see if he/she responds. The Eric Carle homepage is located
at: http://www.eric-carle.com/.
You may find a link to his email address at this site.
• Amazing Insects
A third grade class in Minnesota studied insects during the year and
shared the results of their studies with classes around the world. They
exchanged information about these amazing creatures. Writing, math, literature,
and science are woven into this project.
• Playground Chants Around the World
Playground chants are part of every child’s culture no matter where
they go to school. Have your students write these down carefully and exchange
them with classes at other locations around the world. Communicate with
classes to find out the meanings of chants that are unfamiliar to your
students. This is a wonderful way to support reading and writing in your
primary grade classroom and to discover important aspects of other cultures.
• Teddy Bears Travel the World
Have each participating class purchase a small teddy bear and send
it to one of the other classrooms. In each class, the teddy must go home
with a different child each night. Each child must then write a description
of the what they did, where they went, and what it was like at their location.
These should be developed with the parent/guardian and returned to school.
Each day, these messages go out to each participating class to be read
by the students. A map can be marked to show where each Teddy is in the
world. At the end, Teddy bears can be mailed back to the home classrooms
with souvenirs from its host classroom.
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E-MAIL FOR YOU
From: Jeanette Kenyon
To ease the trauma of moving to a new community and school, Jeanette
makes use of the many resources available on the World Wide Web. An
excellent resource to use is:
• http://city.net/
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Using Internet Inquity
TEACHING TIP
The Read In Foundation organizes an event
each year to support the reading of outstanding literature. Develop an
Internet project around this event and encourage the reading of exceptional
works of literature as you communicate with popular children’s authors and
with other classrooms. In 1998, participating authors include: Lloyd Alexander,
Avi, Bruce Balan, Judy Blume, David Boyd, Karleen Bradford, Eve Bunting,
Bruce Coville, Paula Danziger, Ed Emberley, Virginia Hamilton, Daniel Hayes,
Joan Irvine, Jackie French Koller, James Moloney, Ann M. Martin, Evelyn
Clarke Mott, Connie Porter, Aaron Shepard, R.L. Stine, Rob Thomas, David
Wisniewski, Jane Yolen. Visit the site for Read In and participate!
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Using WebQuest
• The largest source for primary grade WebQuests
may be found at the Schools
of California Online Resources (SCORE). Others may be located
by using a search engine
. Here are examples of some of the fine activities available
for you to use in your classroom:
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• Cinco
de Mayo
This wonderful celebration of Hispanic culture was developed by Cheryl
Cox, a second grade teacher at Hatch Valley Elementary School in New Mexico.
On their adventure, students work in groups of four to learn about the
history of Cinco de Mayo and Hispanic culture by reading great works of
children's literature, conducting research, making a piñata, and
fixing a Mexican meal to celebrate the holiday. A wonderful learning experience.
Set a bookmark!
• Konnichiwa: Welcome to My World
This WebQuest was designed for first grade but is probably more appropriate
for second or third grade. Students work together to write a book to
help a new student from Japan feel welcome at your school. They read
and research comparisons between life in the US and in Japan and then
each student creates one page to be included in a class book for the new
student.
•
Frog and Toad are Friends
After reading this great book by Arnold Lobel, students color a frog
from the Internet, make an origami frog, and write a letter to a new keypal
friend. A nice set of experiences for second graders doing a unit on
frogs or reading the Frog and Toad series by Arnold Lobel.
• Grandfather's Journey
After students read and enjoy this touching book by Allen Say they
print out a map, plot the journey in the story, use a distance calculator
on the Internet to determine the distance, explore the world of water color,
and visit many locations in Japan over the Internet in order to write a
letter to a friend describing their journey.
• I Like Books
In this WebQuest, students read this work by Mark Browne and then complete
several activities, helping them to identify their favorite genre, contributing
one page to a class book about their favorite reading selections, and
then write a story themselves.
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Commercials in the Classroom:
The Commercialization of Educational Sites on the Internet
E-MAIL FOR YOU
From: Doug Crosby
Doug and his colleagues have leveled over 1000 books for instructional
reading and entered them onto a database which they have made available
to other schools through their school web site. Teachers can request
a copy and we send it out via email attachment. You can see photos of
our reading resource at http://www.digisys.net/cherry/CentRR.htm.
Then they used the digital camera to record these events for the
making of class books and for posting at their web site. This proved to
be very popular particularly with out of town relatives who could see
what their kids grand, nieces and nephews were up to at school. The book
covers and teacher characters can be viewed at http://www.digisys.net/cherry/literacyweek.html
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• Should teachers play a part in this new effort
to have commercials in the classroom? We think not. Our role should
be to avoid exposing our students to as many of these commercials as possible
as we educate them about how to critically understand the nature of this
information.
• Some organizations such as The Center
for Commercial-Free Public Education have been concerned about commercials
in the classroom but, to date, their efforts have only been directed at
television systems such as Channel One, lucrative cola contracts, and other
traditional forms of advertising that are becoming more common in schools.
Visiting the Classroom:
Jack Fontanella's Kindergarten Class in Alaska
• Some believe that kindergarten classes do not
need a classroom web page. They say that children at this age are just too
young for the Internet. Jack Fontanella proves how wrong this view is.
Take a look at his wonderful classroom home page
in the Juneau School District.
Instructional Resources on the
Internet
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• Animal
Tracks
The National Wildlife Federation has developed this site for kids interested
in animals and the environment. It contains interactive games for the
youngest users, riddles and jokes for older students, and even articles
from past issues of Ranger Rick. Many articles also appear in Spanish. A
nice location during units on animals and the environment. Set a bookmark!
• CIERA
The Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement is a federally
funded effort to study and improve early reading. This location has many
important resources for any primary grade educator interested in early
literacy.
• Chucky's
Concentration
A memory game for young children based on the classic Concentration
game. Uses Shockwave. Rich in sound and animations.
• Early
Childhood Teacher Pages
A collection of links to important resources useful to every early
childhood educator.
• Early Literacy Activities
A great collection of activities for supporting early literacy instruction
in your classroom. Also a number of nice ideas for assessment of emergent
literacy.
• Games for
Children Ages 1 to 5
Don’t let the name fool you. You simply must visit this site to see
the wonderful THINKING activities for young children. The use of a Shockwave
plugin provides new levels of sound and animation in these very creative
thinking activities for young children. Set a bookmark!
• Games for
Children Ages 6 to 9
More great thinking activities and games for your students using a
Shockwave plugin. Set a bookmark!
• Little
Fingers Shockwave Parlor Index
Here is a set of great activities to practice important early learning
skills including alphabet name knowledge, telling time, counting numbers,
counting change, and much more. Uses Shockwave.
• Minutes from
ME
A series of columns from a primary grade teacher, Margaret Ennis, who
is a fellow at the Franklin Museum. Her articles contain many great ideas
for working with very young children on the computer. Each one contains
very practical ideas and lesson ideas to use immediately in your classroom.
• Online Autumn
Susan Silverman, a second grade teacher on Long Island, is a master
of Internet projects. She has acquired an international reputation for
her outstanding work. If you are doing work on seasonal change in the fall
with your primary grade classroom you simply must visit this location.
It contains links from around the world to projects by other classrooms
where children wrote poetry, stories, and art about autumn. Set a bookmark!
• Preschool
Activities
A wonderful collection of lesson ideas for hands on science experiments
for young children.
• Resource
Center: Hall of Early Childhood Education
A great collection of resources for early childhood education brought
to you by the University of Texas. Includes section for parents, teachers,
and children.
• Shockwave
games for Younger Children
A great collection of activities for young children using Shockwave.
You should screen these to select ones that actually lead to supporting
your classroom program but many are quite useful.
• Smokey
Bear’s Official Home Page
Here is a great location for an Internet activity during Fire Safety
Week. Kids can play several games about fire safety, take a quiz and
see how they do, and even e-mail Smokey. Set a bookmark! Sponsored by
the USDA Forest service.
• Stage
Hands Puppets Activity Page
If you are interested in using puppets in your classroom here is a
site for you! Puppet activities are a wonderful way to support language
development in the primary grades.
• The
White House for Kids
Have your children take a tour of the White House. A fun activity
for your students to complete as an Internet Activity. Your students
can even write a letter to the president. Set a bookmark!
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Listservs/Mailing Lists for the
Primary Grades
Usenet Newsgroups for the Primary
Grades
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• K12.chat.elementary
Informal discussion among elementary students, grades K-5.
• k12.chat.teacher
Informal discussion among teachers in grades K-12.
• pnet.school.k-5
Discussion about K-5 education.
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