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Reading Street Supplement

http://web.me.com/jtenkely/Reading/Home.html What it is: Over the summer I worked with a teacher at Marquette Elementary school in Gary, Indiana to supplement their reading curriculum.  They used Pearson’s Scott Foresman Reading Street, but were struggling with the program.  Students weren’t understanding concepts and were really struggling with even the basics.  Marquette held a summer remedial reading program where they aimed to supplement the curriculum and help students to become more successful in their reading.  I took a look at the Reading Street curriculum for third grade and noticed right away that a huge number of concepts are presented, but there is no depth or opportunity for students to really learn and understand the concepts.  My goal was to take the curriculum (in this case Unit 6 for third grade) and supplement it with technology.  My goal was to add some richness to what was presented.  I aimed to give students the chance to learn, practice, and create with the material presented.  Because we were working in a summer program, we were able to spend more time with the material and work with fewer students.  Below you will find my curriculum guide for 3rd Grade Reading Street Unit 6.  Even if you don’t use Reading Street, or teach at a different grade level, I encourage you to take a look at what I did with the curriculum.  I hope that you will find some ideas that you could use to supplement the curriculum you are using in your classroom.  I created a website for Unit 6,  called Reaching for Our Goals,  so that students had one place to access all of the websites and resource they needed. (If you study suffixes, parts of speech, commas, compound words, punctuation, MLK, Space, the Wright Brothers, or Jim Thorpe there are some great links.)   I also created a wiki (this is an example) where they could collaborate and show off their finished projects.  On the wiki, you will find example thinking pages, VoiceThread projects, and Animoto projects. http://marquette.wetpaint.com/

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Educational Videos

Posted by admin | Posted in History, Middle/High School, Primary Elementary, Science, Secondary Elementary, Teacher Resources, Video Tutorials, Websites | Posted on 24-04-2009

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What it is:   Educational videos can be expensive, out of date, or hard to find.  Happily there are a few sites working to make it easier to access educational videos for free.  PBS has always been known for their great educational material.  They have hosted videos on their site for some time but they were not located in one place where they could be easily sorted through.  Now PBS has PBS video, all the great PBS material in one easy-to-search place.  You can browse these videos by program, topic, or keyword search.  All videos are on demand, I have been impressed with the quality!  Another great website for on demand free videos is American History in Video by History Education.  American History in Video has more than 5,000 titles in its collection!  The videos allow students to analyze historical events, and look at the events over time through commercial and governmental newsreels, archival footage, public affairs footage, and important documentaries.  Students and teachers can search videos by year, historical event, people, places, subjects, and by keyword.  This is an outstanding collection of free on demand history video!

How to integrate Educational Videos into the classroom:   Video is an amazing medium for teaching.  It brings textbooks to life and helps students to relate to history and science in new ways.  Kids often find history boring and I believe one of the reasons is that they haven’t had enough life experiences to relate what they are learning to prior knowledge.  Video helps them make connections that reading a textbook can’t do.  Use these videos as an introduction to learning, as a reinforcement during learning, or embedded in lessons. 

 

Tips: Always make sure you watch a video in its entirety before showing it to a class.  Sometimes content may not be age appropriate or as on topic as you would have guessed.

 

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Educational Videos  in your classroom.

Comments (1)

100 Incredibly Inspiring Blog Posts for Educators - Learn-gasm said on 11-05-2009

[...] Educational Videos. This post introduces the PBS library of American History in Videos as well as tips on integrating videos in your lessons. [...]

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