Interactive TEKS building

At Double File Trail, teachers are always looking for ways to motivate students. We are fortunate enough to have Promethean Interactive Boards in many of our classrooms. Here is Mrs. Turner caught doing a TEKS study on with her students using this technology. It's a great motivator and students respond positively to the technology in their classroom.

Graphing in Grade 3

In preparation for their Independent Study Project, Grade 3 TAG students worked with Ms. Canfield and Ms. Hintz to learn how to graph in MS Excel. Students worked with a few different types of data to create and manipulate bar graphs and line graphs. Students did fantastic work making some individualized graphs, assessing if the charts represented the data they want to portray. We are excited to see what data students choose to represent their projects in visual graphs.

Science Fair on the Web

In preparation for our Science Fair in January, students can find all the resources they need on the DFT Science Fair Website. Important Dates are highlighted, any forms that need to be filled out, helpful links for getting projects started and even the Scientific Method. Sharing vital Science Fair information on the web is a great way to communicate with our families and provide a vast amount of resources while saving on paper!

2nd Grade Classes learn to Research Online

As part of learning how to research using online resources, all of 2nd Grade did a class PowerPoint on Cheetahs. It was a great way to learn as a group the process of sifting through information to find what we need to do our reports. The classes did a great job working together and are ready to do some research in groups! As part of the learning process, students learned how to navigate the school and library websites to find our Online Databases and Encyclopedias. Ask a Second Grader how to use PebbleGo, Britannica Encyclopedia and World Book Encyclopedia to conduct Research.

Math Online Activities

Math Online! Get your students excited about math by working with them on these websites:

• http://www.aaamath.com/index.html Great site for elementary students
• http://nlvm.usu.edu/en/nav/vlibrary.html National Library of virtual Manipulatives.
This is a great site where you can explore Math topics by grade level.
• http://www.funbrain.com/tens/index.html Fun Brain Place value Puzzler. Lots of levels to explore.
• http://www.coolmath4kids.com/ CoolMath has some fun activities that grownups will love as well. Lots of great puzzles and interactive ways to be cool while practicing Math.

Cyber Safety

Cyber Safety – Resources for keeping your children safe on the internet.
- http://www.ikeepsafe.org/ “You don’t have to be a Computer Expert to keep your Child Safe Online” This site has basic rules of Internet safety for Children and Parents.
- http://www.thesafeside.com/downloadcenter.html On The Safe Side's downloads page are free resources for schools and families that reinforce and expand the concepts presented in the Stranger Safety and Internet Safety.

A few Activities/Games you can do with your children online are:• http://www.disney.co.uk/DisneyOnline/Safesurfing/- Games created by Disney to help children understand how to safely surf the internet.
• http://pbskids.org/webonauts/- PBS Webonauts Internet Academy

Get connected to Double File via the web!


School WEBSITE: Visit our website at: http://schools.roundrockisd.org/doublefiletrail/ for updates on events and news at our school. Also check back for basic information, calendars, and more.

ENews: Join our Enews to receive email updates at home. Simply go to the website and click the yellow icon with “Get DFT ENews” and subscribe.

Teacher Websites: Visit your classroom Teachers’ website! Click on “Our Teams” off of our
DFT site and find your grade level, or specialist teachers.

Students Skype with Author

Author Seymour Simon spoke to grades 3, 4 and 5 via webcam and Skype. The Author shared with students via webcam the story of how he got started, some of his first books and even showed us some documents, video and media from his computer as a timeline of his career and preview of books to come. Visit Mr. Simon's website at: http://www.seymoursimon.com/

2nd Grade Online Research

All of our Second grade classes learned some key research features. Using our children online encyclopedias listed on our Research Resources, students found answers to their questions. This was a great project covering many of our Technology TEKS as students saved and printed key information as well as recording it.

Science Projects using Technology

Double File Trail Elementary is full of Scientists! Jan. 26th we held our school wide science fair and you won’t believe the technology that went into so many projects! Students used graphs to calculate data, digital images to show experiments and graphics for titles and accents. Many students used word processing to type out their problem, hypothesis, purpose, procedures, background, conclusions and captions. Kinder, PreKinder, First Grade and Second grade all did class science projects as well. Enjoy a sampling of our projects.

DFT Science Fair Projects


PreK, K, G1, G2 Classroom Science Fair Projects

Seasons Graphic Organizer

One at a time, each first grader in Mrs. Grimes's class would use the class computer and the Kidspiration template- Seasons to make their own graphic organizer. Students chose pictures to drag over to season boxes. Students would also choose and drag a text box to the season box and type words about the season. This was a great way to mesh Science TEKS and Technology TEKS. When the student finished, they each navigated to their individual student folder on the server to save their work!

Holiday Wish List

This lesson was taken from our Technology Integrated lessons on the RRISD ARRC. It is a great way to incorporate Technolgy and Language Arts. Mrs. Grimes had her first grade students each:

• Start with opening up a Microsoft word document.
• They titled their work and then used the bullets for their list
• They typed words or phrases for their list of things they wished for.
• They chose clip art to match their project.
• Students explored using font by choosing font type, size and color.
• They saved their document in their student file.
• We printed their documents to take home to assist families in seeing students ideas for gifts.

(A nice extension would be a writing piece- "A gift I would like to give....")