Do-Re-Mi

Let's start at the very beginning

A very good place to start

When you read you begin with A-B-C

When you sign you begin with do-re-mi

...okay, i'll stop letting my inner Maria come out. 

But WOW I knew that when I signed up (okay I didn't really sign up, more like interviewed) to be a first grade teacher I was going to have to really start from the very beginning.

Using technology in first grade is no different. It's hard to not assume they know how to do what I consider the "basics". Just like I can't assume every kid knows what sound O makes (or that it can make more than one sound...).

Anyways, last week in computer lab we started working on our US symbols project. Well it was time to go so I had the kids save their project. I even set up a folder for each kid to save their work in and took them through the steps.  Every kid saved, that was not the problem.  The problem happened when we were walking back to our classroom.  Not one, not two, but THREE of my cuties started to cry. After calming them down I can to find out that they were upset that they would never see their work again because we didn't print.

When we finally got back to the classroom I called the kids to the carpet and we had a chat about what it means to save something on a computer.  After I explained what it meant and showed them how I could open my old work back up I thought everything was handy dandy...boy was I wrong. Their hands shot up like crazy! Some questions/comments were as followed:
"What if I don't remember what computer I was working on?"
"Can I still edit my work even though I saved it already?"
""What if someone turns the computer off?"

So lesson learned...you should start at the very beginning because it's a very good place to start!