REACH Ties Together Research and Technology
Huntington School District fourth graders are quite a talented bunch. The youngsters capitalized on the district’s new REACH program over the past year to research and create impressive original PowerPoint presentations on some fascinating topics.
REACH (Research and Enrichment Activities for the Children in Huntington) was developed by SEARCH Chairperson Maryann Daly and elementary school librarians Cindy Tietjen, Georganne White, Ellen Blanchard, Denise Smith, Patricia Dillon and Christine Amodeo.
“REACH was designed to provide hands-on active learning for all children in the second and third grades district-wide and interested and task-committed students in the fourth grade,” Mrs. Daly said.
Fourth graders were given an opportunity to work with either Woodhull librarian Christine Amodeo or her Jack Abrams School counterpart, Patricia Dillon on an in-depth project
“In early fall, interested students sat down with these REACH teachers and discussed their ideas for a long-term project of their choice,” Mrs. Daly explained. “During the weekly enrichment periods, many students came to the library or computer room to work on their presentations. Both Mrs. Dillon and Ms. Amodeo taught these children how to correctly and thoroughly research their topic of interest, using a power point presentation to display their work.”
The librarian-teachers proved to be exceptionally effective in working with the fourth graders and the finished products are exceptionally well-done. “Under their guidance, the students were taught how to copy, paste, correctly enter footnotes and bibliographies, access pictures from the internet and access many different resources for useful information,” Mrs. Daly said.
Students worked for weeks on their projects, which were later put on display during their library classes and will be available for viewing on the district website at www.hufsd.edu.
“We should be especially proud of all these determined young people who put much effort and time into their topics with the careful and constant guidance from these veteran teachers,” Mrs. Daly said. “Thanks to the many hours of attention and time devoted to each student, the REACH program for fourth graders was a huge success this year.”
Computer Skills Students Acquired Through REACH:
• Adding a text box to a PowerPoint slide and adding a new slide;
• Adding a hyperlink that goes to a slide in the presentation;
• Adding an action button that enabled a return from a hyperlinked slide to the previously viewed slide;
• Changing font style/color;
• Making the background of the text box shaded and transparent;
• Adding music;
• Playing a song for a designated amount of slides without interruption;
• Looping a song to play for an entire presentation;
• Inserting pictures/clipart onto a slide;
• Inserting pictures as the background of slides;
• Saving the presentation to a flash drive;
• Opening the presentation from a flash drive;
• Saving an Internet picture to a file;
• Copying/pasting information into a Word document;
• Creating a new REACH folder on their computer account;
• Saving information to a REACH folder;
• Accessing NOVEL online databases;
• “Writing” on a slide and saving it so that the writing is viewed during the presentation;
• Adding “custom animation” to the slides to enhance the visual effects;
• Changing the “slide layout” options;
• Adding/deleting bullets on a slide & scanning pictures;
• Adding scanned pictures as the background for a slide& adding a hyperlink that goes to a website:
• Creating a “Jeopardy” game board (an advanced concept for those that completed their REACH project).
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