The magazine Kids Discover has a great free collection of infographics that you might be able to use in your classroom. Make sure to click on Load More to get the full listing.
Archive for the ‘lessons’ category
Infographics from Kids Discover
October 14th, 2013The College, Career, and Civic Life Framework
September 19th, 2013The new framework for Social Studies instruction includes a focus on evaluating sources and taking informed actions during a study of civics, history, geography, and economics. I’m intrigued.
Here’s a quote from the intro:
ADVOCATES OF CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION CROSS THE POLITICAL SPECTRUM, BUT THEY ARE BOUND BY A COMMON BELIEF THAT OUR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC WILL NOT SUSTAIN UNLESS STUDENTS ARE AWARE OF THEIR CHANGING CULTURAL AND PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENTS; KNOW THE PAST; READ, WRITE, AND THINK DEEPLY; AND ACT IN WAYS THAT PROMOTE THE COMMON GOOD. THERE WILL ALWAYS BE DIFFERING PERSPECTIVES ON THESE OBJECTIVES. THE GOAL OF KNOWLEDGEABLE, THINKING, AND ACTIVE CITIZENS, HOWEVER, IS UNIVERSAL.
ePals Global Community
January 15th, 2013Writing assignments are more engaging when they have a real-world context (think quadrants B and D on the Rigor/Relevance framework). One way to incorporate that is through written correspondence to people of other cultures from around the globe.
Instead of just randomly emailing people, ePals has set up a community specifically for educators to connect classrooms from around the world. It’s like paper and pencil pen pals, but for the new “flat” world.
Flocabulary – Five Elements of a Story
October 30th, 2012Flocabulary has a great set of songs to teach educational concepts. The one that I watched dealt with plot, setting, characters, conflict, and theme. It’s fun to try and catch all of the allusions to other works of fiction.
An intro to Movie Maker for students
October 23rd, 2012Today we’re using Windows Movie Maker with a few PE classes to create public service announcements teaching personal safety techniques. Our campus is piloting Bring Your Own Technology, so students were able to bring cameras/iPods/iPhones/etc. in addition to the more traditional USB drives to import their video clips. I’m excited to see the different locales since not every group was filming in the courtyard.
Side note: on our networks we found out that if an iPod/iPhone is locked (passcodes/sliding patterns), the computer will say that it’s installing drivers on Windows 7 but will not show up in Autoplay or the Computer explorer. Unlock the device and the files are accessible.
Get the .docx file of my handout for students here: Using Windows Live Movie Maker
Using Hitchcock’s storyboards to address Common Core standards
September 24th, 2012Reading Standard for Literature 7.7 in the Common Core reads:
Compare and contrast a written story, drama, or poem to its audio, filmed, staged, or multimedia version, analyzing the effects of techniques unique to each medium (e.g., lighting, sound, color, or camera focus and angles in a film).
When I think of effective (and just plain downright cool) use of lighting and camera angles, I think of Alfred Hitchcock. That’s why I was excited to see FilmmakerIQ.com’s collection of storyboards from 13 of Hitchcock’s greatest films.
Using something like the storyboard from The Birds will help illustrate the effect of angles. Have students come up with other ways that they could have shot the scene from different angles and discuss how those changes affect the feel. (When the bird attacks Lydia, why do we want to be zoomed in on her face? Why not be side-on from a distance?) Where’s the emphasis of the action? What’s the pacing of the action? How do those factors impact characterization? This will help add a common vocabulary for you and your students which will hopefully in turn create an informed discussion when you discuss other adaptations from print to screen.
Outdated idioms
February 22nd, 2012
A Language Arts class was learning about idioms, figures of speech, today. When the phrase “like a broken record” came up, they honestly had no clue what a record was – and why should they?
Some could picture a DJ turntable and we went with that and explained how scratching actually was that – scratching over the grooves of the record. I then dusted off a record player and brought it to the classroom. It had the red and white audio cords, so I hooked it up to the TV and blasted it. The students were amazed at the needle arm.
My friends will appreciate that the record played was the Broadway version of “1776”.
HippoCampus
January 13th, 2012I’ve mentioned this before, but if you’re looking for a great collection of educational videos streaming on the Internet, check out HippoCampus.
Research Scavenger Hunt
November 24th, 2010I’m a fan of experiential learning to build connections and help students find the relevance, hopefully remembering some of what they learned. (If they truly learned it, they will remember. If it’s just storing the information in working memory, then you can wave bye-bye.)
Many times we ask students to find information using multiple sources, but we don’t coach them on how to do it. 7th grade Language Arts teacher Mrs. Clerke and I created a quick scavenger hunt to familiarize students with print references. If we were to jump straight into a big research assignment, the students wouldn’t quite know where to look. Add that confusion to students not realizing what information they really need for their project and a research unit becomes more exhausting than it should be.
Below is a copy of the handout we gave them for the scavenger hunt race. (This is also for Clerke’s and my reference in case the district wipes our computer user accounts and e-mail in the same year. What are the odds of that happening, right?)
Research Scavenger Hunt
Find a biography of a president. What’s the title of the book? Who’s the author?
Is Warsaw, Poland north or south of Prague, Czech Republic? What’s the title of the book? When was it published?
Let’s say you’re writing an essay and you want to start it with a quote about winter. Find a quote about winter. What’s the title of the book? Copy the quote about winter. Which page was it on?
Your teacher has asked you to make a travel brochure to visit Guyana from the story “Three Skeleton Keyâ€. Draw the flag from Guyana. What is the title of the book you found the flag in?
What are two synonyms for the word “sovereign� Which book did you use?
What part of speech is the word “jealousy� How do you spell its plural form? Which book did you use?
Who invented the Geiger counter? When did that person invent it? What country was that person from?
Name a type of fluke worm. What does it do? What’s the title of the book? Who published the book?
*Bonus Point: Draw the flag from Libya.
Citing the Career Opportunities book
September 28th, 2010Field, Shelly. “Sportscaster/Radio”. Career Opportunities in the Sports Industry. New York: Checkmark Books. 1999
