What it is: Tomorrow is Valentine’s day! While I’m not a big celebrator of this holiday at home, I do enjoy making a big deal of it at school. It is a fun day to build community and culture within a school! Our Valentine’s day plans include jump rope and hoops for heart, the Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, a read-in, book exchange and some fun games/art projects! I am excited! One of the sites I am looking forward to introducing tomorrow is festisite Text Layout. The site is easy to use and yields some impressive results. Students type a bit of text into the text box. Then they click “Layout text” and get their text written as a shape poem inside a heart. The image is delivered as a PDF which makes it easy for students to print and save their creations. Cute and easy!
How to integrate festisite text layout into the classroom: festisite text layout is a neat way for students to play with text. Students can use festisite text layout to write a shape poem about Valentine’s day or a non-fiction poem about the heart. Use the site to create fun Valentine wishes for friends.
Turn the heart text layouts into a game by writing heart-related vocabulary definitions. Students can cut out the heart shape and write the vocabulary word on the back. Students can see how fast their team can get through the deck of cards they have created.
We will be using the heart layout to write a reflection about what we “love” about a book we are reading during our read-in tomorrow. This shape poem can be taped to the inside cover of the book so that when we do our book exchange, it has a personalized message about the book from the giver.
Tips:festisite has other fun text layouts to try including money, card games, logos, iPhones, poems, and text layouts. You can even create spirals, mazes, banners and rebus puzzles out of your text. Way cool!
Please leave a comment and share how you are using festisite text layout in your classroom!
What it is: Money Island is a neat site I found today while searching for some fun tie ins for our economic inquiry block at Anastasis. This enchanting virtual world teaches students about money and how the economy works while they go on quests to destinations like the Eiffel Tower and Atlantis. Students learn and practice the real-life principles of financial responsibility. Students build knowledge and skills in three major areas including: saving and spending, earning and investing, and using credit wisely. In addition to these major areas, students learn how to spend, grow and give money; the difference between wants, needs and taxes; different types of income; gain an understanding of interest; how to use credit wisely; and how to build wealth.
The site includes detailed lesson plans and activity suggestions for the classroom, as well as a specialized area within money island where teachers and parents can see what students are learning and track progress.
Money Island was created in partnership with the Young Americans Bank. This bank was designed specifically for children under the age of 21! Our students will be taking a field trip to the Young Americans Bank in Denver to continue their learning during this block. If you are in the Denver area, it is a great field trip!
How to integrate Money Island into the classroom: Kids are not exposed to enough opportunities to learn and practice financial literacy. Case in point: the national debt crisis, housing loan disaster, and credit card stats. It baffles me that we don’t spend more time in the classroom helping kids learn about money and finances! Every teacher should take this on in some capacity, we can’t assume that someone else will teach it. Kids need to learn about how the economy works prior to being neck deep in financial decisions on a daily basis. Money Island is a fun introduction to all of this!
Students begin their journey in Money Island with a mission to help character Stone Broke. Students choose a virtual side-kick who will guide them through Money Island and help them make important decisions. Students are directed through a series of quests to help Stone Broke while learning about money and how to make sound financial decisions.
Money Island is a virtual world so it takes a bit of time to get all the way through it. When students login, they are given a special key so they can pick up right where they left off in the game. This is a great site for a one to one classroom environment or computer lab setting where each student has their own computer. The site could also be used as a center activity on classroom computers with students rotating through the center throughout the week. Because students can save their progress, they can play from both school and from home.
Money Island makes a fantastic tie-in to a money or economics unit for kids.
***Hint: Click “Join” to join. For some reason the “Play” button is a little bit temperamental. It worked for me the first time I played with it but not the second…not sure what that is all about!
Tips: There is a new game featured on Money Island…Episode 2 helps students learn how to “win” at the credit game. There are also fun mini games and comics on the site for kids to interact with and explore!
Please leave a comment and share how you are using Money Island in your classroom!
What it is: The higher up I got in math, the less connection I could make back to it’s usefulness in real life. I had math mastered in school, I could memorize the formulas and spit back out the steps to get straight A’s in algebra, geometry, calculus and even trig. It wasn’t until I was watching the Social Network movie (as an adult) that I started connecting that higher math to purposes in real life. That is a problem. Remember the scene in the Social Network when Zuckerberg is writing algorithms on his window? I saw that, looked at my husband in astonishment and whispered “I learned that!”. I had NO idea that trig was actually used for anything. Seriously. That is why when I saw Algebra in the Real World movies on Karl Fisch’s Fischbowl blog, I knew it was a site that needed to be shared again. Algebra in the Real World has mini documentary type films that show the ways that Algebra is used in a variety of jobs and real world scenarios. Movies include:
Aquarium makers
Backpack designers
Designing stronger skateboards
Engineering faster bikes
First one in the ball park
The forester
Landscape architects
The Lundberg farms
Maglev trains
Reliable Robots
Roller Coasters
Saving the bald eagle
Solar power
The starshade
Structural engineering
The surface of Mars
Testing the robotic hand
The wind business
Windsails
Plenty of variety to help students with a variety of interests!
How to integrate Algebra in the Real World movies into the classroom: After seeing the Social Network, I wanted to go back to my high school trigonometry class so that I could connect the dots. I always really appreciated my physics class because it gave meaning to the algebra classes that I took. I like that these videos help to make connections between the equations students learn and their uses. It is nice to have such a good mix of topics so that students with different interests and passions can find one that helps them make the connection.
These videos would be great to share with a whole class as the algebra topic connected with the video is introduced, at the beginning of the school year, or based on student interest level. Use as an end of the year cap to connect what has been learned throughout the year with the use post classroom.
What it is: Google has all kinds of great resources that many of us use daily in our schools. Every year I look forward to the launch of Google Doodle and wait with anticipation to see what kids from around the US have come up with. This year, I am in a place where we can even try our hands at the Google Science Fair. Very exciting stuff!
Doodle for Google is now open for 2012 submissions! K-12 students can express themselves through the theme “If I could travel in time, I’d visit…” as creatively as possible using Google’s logo as their canvas. The winner gets their image displayed on the Google homepage for a day, $30,000 in college scholarships and a $50,000 technology grant for their school. The winning doodle will also be featured on a special edition Crayola box. Submissions have to be postmarked by March 20th.
The Google Science Fair is open to students age 13-18. Students from around the world compete for over $100,000 in scholarship funds, an expedition to the Galapagos, an experience at CERN, Google and LEGO and an award from Scientific American. Nothing to scoff at!
How to integrate Google Doodle and Science Fair into the classroom: Google for Doodle and Google Science Fair are such fun competitions for students to get involved in. Both let students think and express themselves creatively. If you don’t have time to integrate these contests into your regular school day, consider holding an after school club for a few weeks so that students have a place to gather and participate.
I really love looking through the Google Doodles every year. I was thinking that it would be fun to have the students create a doodle with our school name based on our school theme for the year. Yearbook cover? Now that could be fun!
Tips: Share the new Google edu booklet with your colleagues, don’t hog all of those good ideas to yourselves!
Please leave a comment and share how you are using Google Doodle and Science Fair in your classroom!
What it is: Book-it and Suessville have teamed up to do a live read-aloud story time with Tim Tebow. On February 15, 2012, Tim Tebow will be live in a webcast reading Dr. Seuss classic, Green Eggs and Ham. This is especially exciting for our Colorado kids who are huge Tebow fans-HUGE. There are lots of fun printables to pump your students up for the big-day including some tail gate party fun. There are coloring pages, bookmarks, graphing activities, green activities, games and more.
How to integrate America’s Biggest Story Time into the classroom: Set up a reminder for this one, it is sure to be a good time. You just can’t beat a good story…Green Egg and Ham is a classic! Hold a reading party in your classroom, using this event to kick it off. Start by holding a tail gate party complete with fun snacks, a book exchange, etc. Watch Tim Tebow read Green Egg and Ham live in the webcast on an interactive whiteboard or on a projector-connected computer. Set up tents, pillows and blankets around the room where students can choose a cozy spot for a day of reading. This is a fun way to celebrate the joy of reading.
Here are some more ideas I have been collecting on Pinterest for your read-in book party:
Book cakeBook party inviteBubble Gum TimerCaterpillar kabobs
Tips: Sign up for an email reminder for this event on the Book It website! I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: you should be on Pinterest.
Please leave a comment and share how you are using America’s Biggest Story Time with Tim Tebow in your classroom!
Today I created another speed booking site, this time for our JR. High teacher at Anastasis. Feel free to use it with your middle school students…make sure to create your OWN share page or I will get a whole lot of interesting responses from our Google form. You can create your own form using Google Docs.
What it is: What makes technology SO great is the way that it can make life (and teaching) more productive and fun. Over the years, I have found so many ways that technology can make reading more rewarding for both kids who love to read, and kids who dread reading. Today, I created an “Extreme Speed Booking” website for @michellek107′s class at Anastasis. I created the site quickly using Weebly, an awesome WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) website editor. Drag and drop website building is where it is at! The idea behind the site is to introduce students to a variety of books and form classroom book groups. How does Extreme Speed Booking work? A whole lot like speed dating. 🙂 Students spend a little time with each book and then rate them accordingly with “I want to read more”, “Interesting”, “Not for me”, or “I’ve already read”. Students can also make a note of how interested they are in reading the book (maybe a 1-10 scale)? This process introduces students to a variety of books, genres and authors. Students may come across titles and authors they wouldn’t otherwise find. It also helps teachers form classroom book groups that are of high-interest and investment to students because they had input.
How to integrate Extreme Speed Booking into the classroom:Extreme Speed Booking is a fun way to build book groups/literature circles. I love this method of exposure to a variety of books, authors, and genres.
For our purposes at Anastasis, I created the Weebly website with a link to the “look inside” on Amazon. Because all of our students have an iPad, this was the simplest way to get the book preview into the hands of the students. Don’t have technology? No problem! Just make sure that you have enough copies of books so that each student can sit with the physical book during the Extreme Speed Booking sessions. If you have classroom computers, you can do a blend of both.
Explain to your students that they will have 2 minutes with each book. During that time, they can choose to read the introduction or first chapter, read the book jacket, or flip through and look at chapter titles and pictures. The goal during this time is to discover whether this is a book that they would like to read. It is okay if it isn’t a book they would want to read…the goal is to find out which book they are most excited about. After the two minutes is up, sound a bell that signifies it is time to switch. Before they switch, students can quickly make a note of the Title and rate the book. Continue on until students have had 2 minutes with each book. Collect the notes students have made and formulate book groups based on interest in the book.
I’ve added a few extra pages to our Extreme Speed Booking website including places where students can explore other books that they may like to read (Shelfari and Book Wink). I’ve also added a form that book groups can fill out as they are reading. The form gets emailed directly to the teacher. Our students will probably be blogging quite a bit of reflection about their reading. I thought it might also be useful to have a place for groups to answer questions, make comments, or update their teacher with their progress as a group.
@michellek107 created a Google form for her students to fill out while they are speed booking. Great idea! She is so smart. This will make it easy to collect all of the responses in one place to form groups.
Suggestions for books:
Choose books from a variety of levels, make sure you have a few book options for each reading level in your classroom.
Choose a variety of authors and genres, this is a great way to expose students to authors and genres they don’t normally seek out on their own.
Set up classroom computers with some book trailer videos from a site like Book Wink…this is a great “introduction” to a book or genre and acts much like a movie trailer.
Choose a variety of books from ONE author. After students have completed reading in their smaller groups, they can come back together and do an author study as a whole class; each group contributing something a little different.
Choose a variety of books from ONE genre. Students can read books in the smaller groups but discuss common features of the genre as a class.
Choose a variety of books on a similar topic. Students can read books in the smaller groups and then discuss the different character perspectives, author approaches, etc. This would be really neat to do with historical fiction, Holocaust fiction, etc.
Use non-fiction books that reinforce topics and themes that you are using in other academic areas.
Use biographies of presidents, change makers, authors, etc. Students can learn about a specific person in the smaller reading group and share what they have learned with the larger group later.
Tips:Extreme Speed Booking is a lot of fun with tech, but equally doable without tech! If you have access to a 1-1 tech environment, or can reserve the computer lab for a round of speed booking, you can use my technique above. Weebly makes it very easy to do this!
If you haven’t already, check out Shelfari and create a virtual bookshelf of book recommendations for your class or school. You can see our Shelfari shelf for Anastasis below. If you teach 3rd-12th grade it is worth checking out Book Wink!
This post is going to be formatted a little differently than most are-so fair warning. 🙂 I do a lot of digging for resources and tools for our inquiry block at Anastasis Academy. I thought it might be about time I shared the love here! If you find it useful, I may include some more of these kinds of posts periodically.
Right now our students are learning about how the world works. They are inquiring into animal habitats and needs.
Plant and Animal Habitats from BBC has students working with the Sarah Jane Adventures team to complete a habitat interactive activity where students match aliens with the best habitat based on clues about both creature and habitat.
Remember cootie catchers? Or fortune tellers? They are easily folded out of a regular 8.5×11″ piece of paper. Students can use cootie catchers to show their knowledge, and quiz each other, about habitats. Ask students to each choose a different habitat to create their cootie catcher about. Each flap can have a different word that describes the habitat (for example: desert might say “dry”, “barren”, “extreme temperatures”, “low vegetation”). The next flap can have a type of animal that lives in that type of habitat. The last flap can include a fact about why that habitat is perfect for the animal. To play with the cootie catcher, one student chooses a word and the other spells the word out while opening and closing the cootie catcher. The first student chooses a new word and the second student spells the word out while manipulating the cootie catcher. On the final turn, the student chooses a flap to be opened to reveal the fact.
There are SO many fun ways to explore habitats and animals…if you have outdoor space at your school, send students outside to explore the habitats they walk right by every day.
What it is:We Give Books is a fantastic initiative from Pearson. Here, you will find award winning digital picture books for students through age ten. There is a mix of fiction and non-fiction, a variety of authors, and a balance of read-aloud books and independent readers. New books are added every month along with special, seasonal books. Now any student with internet access also has access to high-quality picture books! Even better? The more books you read, the more books that are made available for everyone. Choose a book to read, choose a literacy partner campaign to support through your reading, and the more that you read, the more books that are shared with those that need them. Way cool! The site reminds me of Lookybook (which is sadly no more). I’m happy to *finally* see another option!
How to integrate We Give Books into the classroom:We Give Books instantly increases your classroom library and puts high-quality books within reach for children everywhere. We Give Books makes an excellent companion to the interactive whiteboard or projector-connected classroom computer for a class read along. Pull up a story and read the book chorally, ask students to take turns reading, or simply follow along. Everyone can see the pictures and words! This is a great resource for practicing reading strategies together as a class.
We Give Books makes a wonderful reading station on classroom computers. Students can access wonderful stories any time through We Give Books. For those students that struggle with indpendent reading (or are emergent readers) there is a read-along option on some of the stories. Students can follow along with the reading building fluency, flow and vocabulary.
If you are a primary or elementary teacher, this is a must-add link to your classroom website or blog. Be sure to share the site with families so that students can access the same wonderful library of books from home. Students (and teachers) can create their own library where they keep the books they have read (or enjoy reading). To add a book to a library, you must be a member of We Give Books- no problem, it is quick and free to become a member!
Tips: Students can use the word cloud on the right side of the We Give Books page to find books about their favorite subjects. Thank you to @Shannonmmiller for pinning We Give Books on Pinterest, it is a great find!
Please leave a comment and share how you are using We Give Books in your classroom!
What it is: Codecademy makes learning to code a snap. It is an interactive, fun way to learn coding one step at a time. The site will prepare students to program websites, games and apps. Learn independently or with friends, keeping track of their progress and comparing it with yours. Students can track and share their progress to see how much they have learned and to stay motivated. The platform could not be simpler to use and after just a few lessons…I’m starting to really understand and get the hang of programming. I think that is pretty impressive considering that I have never had a lesson before now (not entirely true, a few years ago I went through the learn C in 24 hours course…I could follow along but didn’t really understand what I was doing.)!
How to integrate Codecademy into the classroom: With the popularity of apps, I have students who are just itching to learn how to program. It is great to see boys and girls of all ages excited about learning how to code. Codecademy is something that you can use to learn right along with your students. You don’t have to be the expert because Codecademy guides everyone step-by-step through lessons and lets everyone move at a pace that is comfortable to them. If your students can read, they can learn to code with Codecademy. Today, a fourth grader at Anastasis started going through Codecademy lessons and quickly surpassed me. His excitement was evident as he figured out variables in lines of code, how to set off an alert or command. What I love about using Codecademy as a class or school is that students can work together, encourage and challenge each other. When students hit certain lessons, they unlock new badges to display.
Codeacademy’s obvious use is to learn how to code. For students who are passionate about gaming, websites, and programming this is a great sandbox to learn in. Students get immediate feedback about the code they are writing. Start a class club where students learn how to code together. Use some time each week to learn to code with students, you could set the goal of learning to code together over the course of the year.
Codecademy is great for students who are reluctant to read but love technology. This reading is for a purpose and students love it! With Codecademy, getting an online education has never been so much fun!
Tips:Codecademy has created a new site called Code Year. Make your New Year’s resolution to learn to code and sign up for Code Year. Each week, you will get a new interactive lesson delivered to you via email. By the end of the year you (or your students) will be lean, mean coding machines! So cool! I’m taking the challenge with several interested students and am looking forward to learning something new this year!
Please leave a comment and share how you are using Code Year in your classroom!
