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Apple of Newton's Eye

"My first Web page was actually our school's Web page," Cindy Newton told Education World. "My principal came to me and said, 'Let's get a page going.' He sent me to two or three afternoons of HTML training. Wow, was that churning out the pages! After creating the school site, I decided that my class needed its own spot on the Web."

Newton uses Mrs. Newton's First Grade as a portal for her first-grade students to access the Internet. She realizes that typing in long URLs correctly is a near impossibility for young children, so she adds links to her pages as curriculum needs dictate. Students simply click and go!

"I definitely wanted the class site to be user friendly for first graders and their parents," recalled Newton. "The background and buttons are colorful shapes. I designed this to fit early first graders who cannot read well yet and to reinforce geometry standards for knowing shapes and math standards for ordinal numbers."

Newton's site is filled with many excellent links and projects for early learners. She looks for resources that have many pictures, are easy to navigate, and feature a small amount of text in a large space. She creates her own resources as well! Zoo WebQuest, for example, is an activity her class uses at the end of the school year as part of a unit on animals. In it, students become "animal experts" via the Internet!

"Many people see the need for students to use the Internet when they are in upper elementary grades and for Web sites that promote parental involvement or communication," said Newton. "I would urge all teachers to consider using their sites for student involvement, however. There are many ways to involve students and to reinforce standards while teaching kids to use the Internet -- and what a motivating means of reinforcement!"

Article by Cara Bafile
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