How It Was 
The 1999-2000 school year marked the debut of the website MiddleSchoolkidz.com.  It was an unexpected outcome that was inspired by wonderful students, exceptional classwork, many teachable moments, and the desire to share and exhibit student work. 

Most of the students and I had PCs at home which were key to supporting our desire to integrate technology into the classroom.  Additionally, at school we had use of 2-iMacs in our portable classroom and the 24-station iMac computer lab in the main building of the school (which was NOT PC-based like most of the homes, or have diskette drives to facilitate transferring files, and was not connected to the internet). 

Our greatest challenges were:

  • advance planning time (since the website was an unexpected outcome!)

  • financial resources to support technology "in our classroom" (PC workstations, external zip disk, domain name and web-hosting, software, technical support...).

  • school and district-wide support

But MiddleSchoolKidz.com was born anyway...

What We Did
MiddleSchoolKidz.com was born with the contributions from a 6th grade Honors Class of twenty-one public school students.  

Through the website, MiddleSchoolKidz.com, we intended to introduce you to some of the activities and projects that we accomplished during the 1999-2000 school year in English and Social Studies.

All students had individual digital writing portfolios, which contained various essays, business letters, stories, current events and projects. In addition, to the writing portfolios the students published a classroom newspaper, entitled, What's Up Room 008?, and they developed and delivered PowerPoint Presentations.  The students also learned how to use word processing, presentation, and desktop publishing software like Word, PowerPoint, and Print Shop.

The student work exhibited on this site demonstrated the following New York State English Language Arts Learning Standards 1,2,3,4:

  • Language for information and understanding
  • Language for literary response and expression
  • Language for critical analysis and evaluation
  • Language for social interaction

Click here to visit Mrs. Gatling's 6th Grade Class of 1999-2000 and to see their outstanding classwork!