Tag: animals

ARKive

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on ARKive2915 views

 

What it is:  ARKive is an incredible website that I learned about from a tweet on Twitter (forgive me I was in the middle of class and didn’t keep track of who- thank you whoever you are!)  ARKive tag line is “images of life on Earth”, but ARKive is so much more than just a collection of images, it has thousands of videos, images and facts about the world’s species.  This is the digital version of Noah’s Ark!  This is the most impressive animal and life website I have seen!  I truly can’t say enough about this site, students of all ages will enjoy this one (I’m talking k-12 here!)  ARKive has an education section of the site that is a free multi-media educational resources complete with downloadable, ready to use audio/visual modules on a wide range of science, geography, citizenship, and environmental based topics.  ARKive also has some great games for students to play that are directly related to the lessons they learn while on the ARKive site.  Games range from building a habitat to word searches and digital fridge poetry.

How to integrate ARKive into the classroom:    ARKive’s ready made educational resources make it simple to integrate into your science, geography, or general classes.  The resources are ready made PowerPoint presentations (which incidentally also open nicely in Keynote which we use).  The resources bring learning to life with images, videos, facts, and some interactive pieces.  This is what textbooks should be!  ARKive’s ready made resources can be downloaded on classroom computers for use by small learning groups as a center, downloaded to a lab of computers for individual student exploration, or used with a projector and an interactive whiteboard for whole class learning and exploration.  The ARKive site itself is a wonderful place for students to explore and learn more about animal species and life on Earth.  This would be a great place for students to collect information, images, and video to create their own presentations.  The games provided on the ARKive site are fun for students and teach them as they play.  For example, students who are studying habitat can play the Design a Habitat game and gain an additional opportunity to interact with the concepts they are learning.  Older students can dig into the facts provided on ARKive and learn about animal classification and species of the world.  ARKive images could be used in the language arts classroom as a story starter or creative writing prompt.  

 

Tips:  This is truly an incredible site, I encourage you to take a look at it and use it with your class!  (Click on the education link at the bottom of the site for the Resources and Games.) 

 

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

Build Your Wild Self

Kelly Tenkely1 Comment on Build Your Wild Self2784 views

 

What it is:  Build Your Wild Self is a website I heard about on A Geeky Momma’s blog (which I thoroughly enjoy!).  The site fits perfectly into my classroom this week as our Book Fair theme this year is “Safari”.   The site, created by the New York Zoos and Aquarium, lets students create a character called their “Wild Self”.  Students can choose a character and then add crazy hair, arms, legs, etc. to make them wild. There are even fun sound effects for the different backgrounds they add! 

 

How to integrate Build Your Wild Self into the classroom:   This would be a great site to use with students after reading a book like “Where the Wild Things Are”.  Students could create their own Wild Things and write themselves a Wild Things story featuring themselves.  This is also a great site to use with kindergarten and first grade students who are learning about different animals.  As they build their Wild Self they can name what animal the crazy part belongs to.  Older elementary students also enjoy working on this website, my students created a wild self for their safari passports for our book fair this week and really enjoyed it from kindergarten through fifth grade.

 

Tips:   The Wild Self can be printed out, sent to a friend, or saved as a desktop.  

 

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Build Your Wild Self in your classroom.

Toy Maker

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Toy Maker2195 views

 

What it is: Toy Maker is a website full of free paper toy downloads.  While it isn’t directly using technology in the classroom, this is a great site to visit for the free downloads.  Toy Maker has everything from paper animals (origami type), to awesome math and learning toys, to toys that move, and gift boxes.  This site offers really amazing downloads and teaches students how to follow step by step instructions to create their toy. 

 

How to integrate Toy Maker into the classroom:   The math and learning toys on the Toy Maker site are perfect for integrating into your existing curriculum.  Living in Colorado means a lot of indoor recess days in the winter months, these toys offer excellent activities for those indoor days!  The gift boxes are perfect for holiday gifts home (Christmas, Mother’s day, Father’s day, etc.) or for exchanging with learning buddies.   Younger students will enjoy creating one of the animals and writing a story to accompany it.

 

Tips: Share this site with parents, they will love these printables for rainy days at home!

 

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Toy Maker  in your classroom.

Scholastic Listen & Read

Kelly Tenkely2 Comments on Scholastic Listen & Read2943 views

 

What it is: The Scholastic website is full of truly amazing resources.  Today I ran across one that I hadn’t used before called Scholastic Listen & Read, I heard about it on Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day.  Scholastics Listen and Read is for students in first and second grade.   The site does exactly what it’s name implies, it lets students listen to non-fiction stories and read along.  There are 11 non-fiction stories for first grade social studies including The Path of the President, What Does the President Do, and a Celebration of Earth Day.  There are 15 non-fiction stories focused on animals and food for first grade students.  Second grade students have access to 10 non-fiction stories focused on social studies including Constitution Day and Welcome to a Pilgrim Village.  There are also 11 short non-fiction stories for second grade students focused on animals and food.  Social Studies is a hard subject to teach first and second grade students from a text book because the vocabulary and reading can be especially challenging.  Scholastic Listen and Read solves this problem wonderfully with short, easy to read non-fiction stories that are read aloud to your students.  As an added bonus, each story includes the Scholastic Word Wizard.  This tool floats right on top of the web page.  At any point, students can click on a word in the story and the Scholastic Word Wizard will give them an easy to read definition of the word.  Students can also type a word into the Word Wizard to look it up.  

 

How to integrate Scholastic Listen & Read into the classroom:  Scholastic Listen & Read is ideal for any classroom or computer setting.  The non-fiction stories could be read together as a class with a projector and speaker setup, individually in a computer lab setting, or in small groups as a center in the one or two computer classroom.  The stories are easy to understand and the ability to look up words right from the story makes it a great place for students to learn key social studies and animals and food concepts.  

 

Tips:  Scholastic Listen & Read is a great place for ESL and ELL kids to go for English practice and vocabulary!

 

Leave a comment and share how you are using Scholastic Listen & Read in your classroom.

 

Wildlife Filmmaker

Kelly Tenkely2 Comments on Wildlife Filmmaker2954 views

What it is: National Geographics Wildlife Filmmaker lets students make custom nature films complete with animal video clips, sounds, music, and text captions. The site is easy to use and films can be saved on the site or shared through email.

How to integrate Wildlife Filmmaker into the classroom: Wildlife Filmmaker is an excellent place for students to display knowledge after researching wildlife. Research on different animals can be completed right from the National Geographic website or collected from several sources. Students put a lot of thought into their wildlife videos since they are shared with other students. Students can send their videos to you via email for grading and sharing with the rest of the class. Plan a film festival where you can use a projector to show students finished products. Wildlife Filmmaker can also be used as a creative writing activity. Students can select video clips and use the caption tool to write a story about what is happening in the film (these get very creative!) Additionally the site would make a nice basic introduction to movie editing because of its use of timelines. It would be a great activity to lead into using iMovie HD where timelines are used to separate sound tracks and video.

Tips: The National Geographic site does contain advertisement banners. I use the advertisements as a mini lesson to teach students how to recognize the difference between ads and site content. We also discuss what the purpose of website ads.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Wildlife Filmmaker in your classroom.

Kinetic City

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Kinetic City2547 views

What it is: The Kinetic City Super Crew needs students help to save their virtual world of Vearth from the science-distorting computer virus, Deep Delete. Students work together to perform engaging science activities and then download their data to the Super Crew to help repair their world. Kinetic City provides students in grades 3-5 a fun interactive way to learn standards based science. There are 100 fun science based activities to participate in. These activities can be done through physical experiments, internet research, interactive science games on Kinetic City, art projects, and physical activities. The complete Kinetic City experience was intended for use as an after school program, starting a Kinetic City club cost money but use of the online materials and games is free.

How to integrate Kinetic City into the classroom: Since Kinetic City activities are all standards based, they should fit right into your third through fifth grade curriculum. The interactive games, experiments and activities are wonderful to use as an extension of current classroom activities. Game and activity topics include gravity, the human body, human body systems, learning, animal adaptation and classification, power and energy, and more.

Tips: Visit the Kinetic City educator page for more information on starting a club and for print out guides for using the site.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Kinetic City in your
classroom.

Glossopedia

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Glossopedia1927 views

 

 

 

What it is: Glossopedia is a site for second to sixth graders about animals, plants, and the environment. Glossopedia offers multimedia tools and programs to teach students.

How to integrate Glossopedia into your social studies curriculum: Invite students to fill out a graphic organizer (like a KWL chart) using Glossopedia to introduce a new subject. Allow young students to use Glossopedia to learn basic web search skills.

Tips: Visit the educators page to download great learning activities.