Dar and the Spear-Thrower in iMovie HD

Some of the 6th Grade Language Arts students created an iMovie that summarized the plot of the novel Dar the Spear-Thrower. They were required to use the Ken Burns Effect, place text over some pictures and add background music. At the end of the project, they learned to export the movie into a lighter, compressed quicktime format so that they could send it to their teacher over the network.

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Rock Lab Report

The 8th Grade Science students used Word and Excel to complete their first formal lab report of the year. They collected and graphed their data in Excel. Then they used the Paste Special command to place the data table and graph into the Word document that was to be the final lab report. Students took one day to complete this assignment.

Online Newspaper Survey and Excel

The 8th Grade National Spanish students used Google Docs to receive and share a teacher template that they used to compare and contrast five online newspapers of the Spanish speaking world. The template was originally an Excel document with hyperlinks to the "portada" of each newspaper. Students worked in teams and built their research document after three class periods of research. Since the students shared the document with their teacher, she could monitor their progress throughout the lessons.

Spanish Sentence Structure and Excel

The 7th Grade National Spanish students used an Excel template that they accessed from their teacher's shared folder. The studnets renamed the document and saved it in their Spanish folder of their home directory on the student server. Next, they analyzed the grammatical structure of various sentences that their teacher gave them in class. Afterwords, the students dropped the completed document into the teacher's drop box, and as is often the case, this was a paperless lesson.

Non-linguistic Interpretations in Social Studies

The 8th Grade Social Studies students researched six questions on the topic of absolutism, and compiled a graphics library in the process. Once they finished the research, they used a teacher made template to create a collage for each question. Then the students explained their collage and how it related to absolutism and democracy. This lesson took five class periods to complete.

Prey-Predator Web and Inspiration

The 7th Grade Science students used Inspiration to draw a Prey-Predator Web that illustrated the interactions between consumers, producers and energy sources. This lesson took two class periods to finish.

Geological Layers and Sketchup 6

The 8th Grade Science students used Google Sketchup to create a cross-section of geological layers with examples of different disconformities that they had studied in class. Students gained practice with the navigation tools: orbit, pan, zoom, zoom extents and zoom window. Some students who finished early were able to import their own textures into Sketchup and customize the layers beyond the variety that the Sketchup materials library offers.

Essay Writing, Word and Criterion

The 6th Grade students wrote an essay in Word that they later uploaded to Criterion. Criterion is a web-based software that maintains student writing portfolios and evaluates individual submissions that the students make. The Criterion software can analyze writing characteristics such as sentence structure, word choice, grammatical conventions and of course, spelling. Every middle school student has an account.

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Think and Write Exercises

The 8th Grade Social Studies students have come into the lab on four occasions to answer questions that their teacher leaves for them in his public folder. The students must create a new Word document, save it to their own account with the correct naming convention: lastname_lessonname.doc and then they practice their keyboarding as they answer the questions. Once finished, the students need to save and close their document and drop it into the corresponding teacher's class drop box.


After the students had completed the first two assignments, they compared the word count for each question, in an attempt to evaluate the thoroughness of the answers.

Landforms Around the World

The 6th Grade Social Studies students created a Powerpoint presentation with approximately 10 vocabulary words that dealt with different landforms like isthmus, bay, archipelago, and peninsula. Students created slides with a definition of each vocabulary word and then added a screen shot from Google Earth which gave an example of the particular landform. This lesson took two class periods.

Prey-Predator Relationships and Excel

The 7th Grade Science students did a simulation in class of a prey and predator interaction between two different animals. They recorded the data generated and created a graph in Excel to represent their findings.

Geology and Filemaker Pro

The 8th Grade Science students were given a rock collection with various igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rock samples. To confront the challenge of organizing this data, the students had to make a database where they could record the characteristics of 15 samples. Once completed, they did sorts and finds to help them see patterns in the samples they had observed. The students took four days to complete this assignment.

This is a view of the database in Layout Mode.


This is a list view of the database in Browse Mode.


This is the table view of the database after doing a sort by Rock Type.

Air Rocket Lab

The 7th Grade Science students built model rockets and did several launch trials. Different trial sets had different manipulative variables under observation and all this data was recorded and analyzed in Excel. Afterwords, the students wrote up a complete lab report in Word, using the paste special command to link their data table and graph back to Excel.

8th Grade Science Wiki Semester One

The 8th Grade Science students are all members of a Wetpaint wiki and are required to make periodic contributions throughout the school year. Their Science teacher is the moderator of the site. Last year's class carried their wiki into the 9th Grade.