Keyboard Shortcuts

My school is lucky enough to have a K-2 computer lab.  However, our K-2 lab needed some work.  When I got here, it was a windowless cave with bulletin boards covered by sad, faded black paper and random staples.  After a couple of sessions with my kids in there and my trusty staple remover, I've made some progress!

This all started with a vision of posting keyboard shortcuts for students to reference.  I use shortcuts all the time and I wanted to have my students be able to use them, as well.  By posting them in a visual way like this, they can just look on the board to see them, instead of constantly asking me, "How do you print, again?"

But first, I had to make the computer lab presentable enough to hang my shortcuts.  I removed the old, black paper and left the blank bulletin boards.  I figured this was better than faded paper with tons of staples in it.  I added happy, polka dotted border to make it fun.

I taped the border to an old, green chalkboard, and since there was no chalk to be seen, I used my chalk markers and wrote the web address for the 2nd grade test we have to give each month, as well as my classroom website.  I want the kids to learn how to go to these sites on their own, so they can do it at home, too.  I'll add to this list throughout the year and also post websites that other teachers use.

I wanted to have pencils available in the lab, since my students have to take a monthly math test and I want them to work out the problems on paper to verify the correct answer.  We also use these math testing booklets full of allowable resources.

My classroom has 4 Mac desktops (refurnished and granted from Free Geek in Portland, OR).  I hung the page sized reference sheet for Mac shortcuts so students can refer to it to remember how to quit, print, even copy and paste!

If you are interested in hanging shortcut posters in your computer lab or classroom, you can check them out here!

Are you working on sprucing up any rooms in your school?  Maybe you are like me and have a computer lab in need of some love!  

I'm linking up with Katie from Queen of the First Grade Jungle!