Category: For Teachers

01/31/2008

Students work to end world hunger

Holly Cook , Staff Writer

	Ann Foster | afoster@ccnewspapers.com Cherry Hills Christian School third-grader Joshua Parchen looks at his computer while working on FreeRice.com, a program that donates grains of rice for every correct vocabulary question answer. Parchen is one of his class’ highest scorers.

What if just knowing what 10 vocabulary words meant could help stop world hunger? Well, at FreeRice.com it does and students at Cherry Hills Christian School in Highlands Ranch know enough vocabulary words to send 1.3 million grains of rice to people in need.

Before Thanksgiving, technology teacher Kelly Tenkely introduced FreeRice to her elementary students to remind them about how much they had to be thankful for, and to do something to help others.

FreeRice is a sister site of the world poverty site, Poverty.com. FreeRice provides a free vocabulary game that accumulates grains of rice, paid for by supporting advertisers, for every correct answer. The donated rice is shipped to the United Nations World Food Program and distributed internationally to impoverished countries.

The results are two-fold. Students increase their English vocabulary while donating effortlessly to world hunger.

“I don’t even think they really connect that they’re learning vocabulary,” Tenkely said.

FreeRice has become such a hot item in Tenkely’s class that students are playing in their free time when school work is finished. Third-graders Joshua Parchen, 8, and Luke Mason, 9, are what Tenkely calls her “FreeRice rockstars.” Both boys have taken up playing at home and have donated more than 77,000 grains of rice individually.

“We try to get homework done in our carpool so we can play when we get home,” Mason said.

“It’s addicting and really fun,” Parchen said.

Aside from just playing the game, Tenkely’s students are taking it upon themselves to develop commercials to motivate others to play FreeRice and to raise awareness about world hunger. To reach technology class curricular goals, students are using GarageBand and Keynote computer software to make their commercials. GarageBand helps students create background music and Keynote is similar PowerPoint software.

“The goal of the commercials is to teach our kids how to use Keynote and GarageBand but also to teach them about poverty and hunger. We are creating the commercials to tell others about the subject and to tell them about one way that we can help out with FreeRice.”

Mollie Gardner, 9, wants her commercial to show people how hungry others are and how thankful they are to receive food. Petra Sikovkski’s commercial says the same thing.

Tenkely wants to place the finished products on other Web sites like TeacherTube and SchoolTube.

“My goal is to let FreeRice know about them, although I’m not sure if they will add them to their site or not,” Tenkely said.

See the full article here Colorado Community Newspaper

My classroom was in the news for a project we are working on with Free Rice.  Take a look:

Cyber-savvy students fighting world hunger

NEXT › ‹ PREVIOUS

CHC Elementary Technology teacher, Kelly Tenkely guides students in both learning computer and helping those in need through FreeRice.com.

Provided by: Leza Shupe

Contributed by: Leza Shupe on 1/15/2008

January 14, 2008
Highlands Ranch, CO

Combining knowledge of world hunger and a desire to help others are combined with technology, vocabulary and math! That is how elementary students at Cherry Hills Christian challenge themselves every day in computer class with “FreeRice.com.” As soon as students are finished with their daily assignment, technology teacher, Kelly Tenkely, allows them to visit Free Rice and play the vocabulary quiz game. With each word definition they guess correctly, 20 grains of rice are donated through the United Nations World Food Program to help fight world hunger.

At the end of class, every student records the number of grains of rice they donated that day. Since Thanksgiving, the 305 students in second through fifth grades have donated over 1,197,870 grains of rice. That number continues to grow daily. To help visualize what this much rice looks like, fourth-grader Allie Chambers measured the grains of rice in a tablespoon and did the math to discover there are approximately 7,200 grains of rice in a cup. That means CHC students have made it possible for those in need to cook almost 166 cups of rice creating almost 500 individual servings.

To further their exposure to technology and world hunger, the fourth grade classes are just beginning a new project-to create commercials for FreeRice.com using Keynote and Garage Band application. “When we are finished with the commercials my goal is to let Free Rice know about them, although I’m not sure if they will add them to their site or not,” says Mrs. Tenkely. “The goal of the commercials is to teach our kids how to use Keynote and Garage Band but also to teach them about poverty and hunger. We are creating the commercials to tell others about the subject and to tell them about one way that we can help out with Free Rice.”

Cherry Hills Christian Principal, Linda Wasem, loves to see students learning a variety of life lessons through daily visits to a website. “Our students are not only learning vocabulary-some of those words are really hard, but they are also learning about people in the world who don’t have enough to eat. Their hearts are moved to give.”

For more details about the FreeRice.com vocabulary game, visit FreeRice.com.
Find the whole article here.