What will your typing goals be this year?  Are you wanting to look less at your hands?  Type quicker?  Be able to compete in NitroType against your friends?  Whatever your goal, keep working towards it!  In the end, it's not all about achieving your goal but the process and the progress.

​Happy New Year!

STEAM week is rapidly approaching (December 13 - December 21) and MKG is finding lots of ways to use Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math in our everyday classes.  Look for Tweets and updates as the days go on!

The first week of December is COMPUTER SCIENCE WEEK and we will be celebrating with an Hour of Code!  All students from grades 1-5 will be participating in this fun filled week of learning to be computer programmers.  We will be using websites like code.org, scratch.mit.edu, and others to have fun and learn at the same time!

Greetings MKG students and family!

Welcome back for another exciting year of learning in the Computer Lab.  We will be continuing where we left off last year by focusing on three main ideas in each grade:
1. Internet Safety and Digital Citizenship
2. Keyboarding and Mouse Skills
3. Grade Level Project

Don't forget to get those Home Row hands on the keyboard and PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE!

Ok, boys and girls - time to finish the year strong.  Practice those home row hands EVERY DAY for at least 10 minutes.  It doesn't have to be on typing.com or Dance Mat Typing, you can be doing typing for a class, typing in a game, or even just typing to friends it counts as practice as long as you're using your HOME ROW HANDS!

If nothing else, try NITROTYPE and use the "G+ Sign In" button to log in using your school account.

Good luck and have a happy Spring!

​Mr. Steinberg

Take a moment and fill out the survey below.  If it is not working on your device, here's a direct link:
Technology Class Survey 2018

With two weeks left til Winter Break, computer class is ramping up a few things:

RTI - NitroType racing!
Computer Science Week - Coding and Computational Thinking!

Students in all grades are honing their keyboarding skills and practicing their computational thinking by thinking like a computer with coding games.  Check the above links out to see what the students are up to!

Also check back routinely to see how many students have met the end-of-year typing goals (right-hand sidebar).

Happy Holidays!
​Mr. Steinberg

Students in grades 3-5 have been hard at work refreshing their typing skills from last year.  Already, 19 students have met the grade level minimum for typing scores and have gotten their names added to the Typing Hall of Fame!

Grade 3: 1 student
Grade 4: 11 students
Grade 5: 14 students

The MKG typing scoreboard leader is Dagan C with an impressive 59 words per minute with 97% accuracy.

​To get on the board, students need to meet these typing minimums:
Grade 3 - 15 wpm @ 95% accuracy
Grade 4 - 20 wpm @ 96% accuracy
Grade 5 - 25 wpm @ 97% accuracy
​
Keep up the great work and use your home row hands!

As we begin the new school year, it is important to remember that safety comes first.  In our computer lab, safety will be our first subject and one that we will revisit often.

For the first term, grades 1 and 2 will watch a few videos and have a few discussions regarding internet safety (videos from www.commonsensemedia.org and https://jr.brainpop.com).  Grades 3, 4, and 5 will also watch a few videos and have a few discussions, but they will also complete the FBI's "Safe Online Surfing" program which will allow students to find out more about being safe online while also having fun doing it.  

There will be a safety quiz at the end for each grade and students who pass the test will be certified Safe Surfers.  Students who do not pass the test can take it again until they do pass - the questions change each time, but focus on the same themes.

The goal is to have every student aware of what it takes to be safe online: you need to be active in your own safety!

So remember, be safe!
Mr. Steinberg

Learning how to type without looking at the keyboard (sometimes referred to as Touch Typing) is a skill that all grades are now learning.  There are state recommended minimum typing speeds that were published last year and that I've posted in the lab for each grade to see and be aware of.  I'm proud to say that several students from grades 2-5 have met the state minimum for their grade level.

Grade 2: 6 students
Grade 3: 8 students
Grade 4: 20 students
Grade 5: 12 students

And the best part is, of the 34 2nd-4th grade students, 14 of them are already typing at the next grade level's minimum.  Fantastic job!