Tag: elementary students

Making a Behavior Grading System

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As we head back into Report Card season, we’ve received quite a few requests for help setting up a Behavior/Work Habits/Social Growth grading system. In case you’re wondering the same thing, here are two ideas that we like to recommend when this question comes up.

Idea 1: The No-Credit Behavior Class

This is a nice way to setup a behavior grading system so that appears like a regular class in the student’s record and a teacher’s subject-based grading menu. It’s very convenient, and quite intuitive if you think of behavior/work/social skills as being like a subject for students. That said, it does have some drawbacks in that you need to hide the subject in each student’s transcript so that everything looks neat and tidy. If you’d like, you can set up a No-Credit Behavior class like this…

1. Go to Subjects and make a different Behavior subject for each grade.

Make sure to set the credit hours to 0  – so that it’s really “no credit”! 🙂

2. Enroll students

3. Set up a Subject-Specific Grading Template for the Class.

For this, first go to Setup Report cards, and scroll all the way to the bottom and click “Turn it on” for Subject Specific Grading Criteria. Then, click the new fourth tab in your Report Cards module.

Then, we can create a subject-specific criteria template. First click “Add Template”, then fill in your grading criteria

4. Assign the Template to the Class

Click the subject’s “Assigned Template” line to get a dropdown menu of possible choicesRead More »

Science Fair Project Ideas for Elementary Students

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I remember going to the school science fair as a child and looking at the erupting volcano in awe. It was indeed fun to execute a few of my own experiments at the science fairs in school.

Come to think of it, science experiments can be quite fun & educational for children in elementary school mainly because they provide an element of surprise and a sense of achievement after having conducted one successfully.

Some QuickSchoolers took 30 minutes off today to run some internet searches on popular projects for science fairs. Here’s a few cool experiments that we will soon be trying out ourselves:

1. How much energy is stored in a peanut?
This experiment uses a (fire) lit peanut to heat up 1/2 a cup of water. Students can then approximate how much chemical energy was stored in the peanut.

http://www.energyquest.ca.gov/projects/peanut.html
This experiment will require adult supervision as needles & fire is involved.

2. Making a model arm
We use it every day and probably do not even think about how it works. The human arm is a complex structure made up of bones, joints, ligaments, and muscles. But how does it all work? What makes us pick up that cup of coffee or throw that football to an exact area fifty yards away? This project will go deep into the human arm and how it works.

http://www.scienceproject.com/projects/intro/primary/PX003.asp

3. Sundial
From sunrise to sunset, shadows of buildings, trees and other objects move slowly, but continuously. In the northern hemisphere, shadows cast west in the morning, north at noon time and east in the late afternoon. Knowing the direction of shadows is very helpful for telling the time and the directions. To tell the time using the shadows we use sundials or sun clocks. Sundials have been used for centuries to tell the time.

http://www.scienceproject.com/projects/intro/primary/PX008.asp

4. The good old erupting volcano
For those who still want to try out this experiment, knock yourself out!

http://www.essortment.com/hobbies/scienceprojects_szkl.htm

Have fun teaching! =]