Tag: Science

Buzz Lightyear in Orbit

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Buzz Lightyear in Orbit2366 views

What it is: Buzz Lightyear in Orbit is part of NASA’s website for kids. The site uses the popular Toy Story character, Buzz Lightyear, to teach kids about the next space mission with Atlantis. It also introduces kids to the Discovery team and the mission that has just been completed. Kids can go on 5 space “missions” of their own by playing some fun educational games on the site. Games are math and science based and separated into grade level. Grades k-2 can play games appropriate for that age group and grades 3-5 can play at a more difficult level.

How to integrate Buzz Lightyear in Orbit into the classroom:
Use Buzz Lightyear in Orbit as part of your space unit or even as a current events topic. Students can read and learn about the current space missions on the Buzz Lightyear home page. The games are great for reinforcing math and science skills that you are teaching in conjunction with or even separate from the space unit. Your students will love the fun look and feel of this site and especially the familiar Buzz Lightyear character.

Tips: At the bottom of the game screen, you can download worksheets that correspond perfectly with the games and information on the site!

Leave a comment and share how you are using Buzz Lightyear in Orbit in your classroom!

Free Pinhole Camera

Kelly Tenkely2 Comments on Free Pinhole Camera2936 views

What it is: CreativeTechs Tips did a post yesterday about some free pinhole camera templates. Corbis is offering free PDF templates for real working 35mm pinhole cameras. These cameras are perfect for the sunny days ahead! There are six great artistic templates to choose from for an almost one of a kind camera.

How to integrate Free Pinhole Camera into the classroom: Teach your students about science, photography, and art in one shot by having them print out and create their own pinhole camera. Pinhole cameras work wonderfully on a bright sunny day…perfect as you head into summer. This is a great science project that your students will love…how many kids can say that they made their own camera?!

Tips: After the students have created their camera use them to teach the basics of photography and hold a mini photo contest in your classroom.

Leave a comment and share how your Free Pinhole Camera worked out!

School House Rock

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What it is: Remember how outstanding School House Rock was? I know as soon as you read the title of this post Conjunction Junction popped into your head and all those great grammar rules came flooding back. Well now your kids can benefit from the School House Rock videos and lyrics. Sqool Tools has gathered links to all of the School House Rock videos on America, grammar, science, money, and multiplication in one place and posted the lyrics to accompany each video. How sweet is that?!

How to integrate School House Rock into the classroom: School House Rock is such a classic. My fifth grade students had a blast going through and watching these videos…I can still hear them singing them in the halls! These videos are a great way to introduce or reinforce a concept. You can also encourage students to create their own School House Rock type songs and videos. They will come up with some really great jingles to teach math and science concepts.

Tips: Now for the downside…these School House Rock videos are hosted on You Tube which is blocked by most schools. But, not to worry, I have a solution for you (it may require slightly more planning on your part): Check out Tech Crunch. Here you can type in a You Tube video URL and Tech Crunch will download it to your computer. Save to a flash drive or CD at home and use the video in class the next day.

Leave a comment and share how School House Rock is rocking your classroom.

Send your name to the moon!

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What it is: Join NASA’s Return to the Moon by sending your name to the moon. Names are being collected online by NASA and will be placed onboard the LRO spacecraft for its next mission to the moon. Students who sign up will receive a certificate showcasing their support of this historic mission back to the moon. The purpose of LRO is to map out safe landing sites, locate potential resources, collect data on the radiation environment, and to demonstrate new technologies.

How to integrate NASA’s Return to the Moon into the classroom: This project is a short and sweet one, it literally takes 10 seconds for students to sign up and receive their certificates. The project is sure to generate student interest in the LRO mission as well as space travel in general. Use NASA’s Return to the Moon as a jumping off point for further exploration of NASA and the space mission. The NASA kids site is a great place to continue exploration after your students have sent their names to the moon. The certificate of participation looks very important and official…students will love it!
Tips: The deadline for sending your name to the moon is June 27, 2008 so hop to it!
Please leave a comment and share how you are using NASA Kids in your classroom.

Computer Lab Favorites

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Computer Lab Favorites2003 views

What it is: Computer Lab Favorites is a collection of 50 one stop learning activities created
by Scholastic. The activities are self contained and interactive.
Students can play Dude the Dog, Scientific Labeling, Human Body Math
Hunt, Around the World, Mapman challenge, Puzzled States, Classify
This, Moon Olympics, Pick the Perfect Word, Choose a Word, and many
more. Students can spin a virtual game wheel to play a game. The site
is broken down by subject and also by grade levels k-2 and 3-5.

How to integrate Computer Lab Favorites into the classroom:
As the school year winds down, allow your students to review all they
have learned over the course of the year by playing these great
interactive activities. Students can spin the game spinner and have a
game selected for them or choose a specific subject or topic of play.
Save this site for next year, it is the perfect way to introduce a
topic or put some life back into reviews! The games are content rich
and a lot of fun to play!

Tips: This would be a good site to set as the home page on your classroom
computers. It has enough games and content to keep you coming back all
year long!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Computer Lab Favorites in your classroom.

Phun

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What it is: As promised today I am reviewing the Mac version of Crayon Physics…it isn’t exactly the same, but has very similar principles and applications. Phun is a ‘playground’ where students can be creative while learning about physics principles such as resistance, friction, energy, gravity, force, etc. Phun isn’t a game with a goal like Crayon Physics, instead it is an area where students can create their own shapes and rules and see how they interact when different principles such as gravity and force are applied. Phun is a free program and available for both Mac and PC.


How to integrate Phun into the classroom: Like Crayon Physics, students can use Phun to learn about principles of gravity, energy, force, velocity, etc. Students will enjoy having an environment to test out physics concepts and conceptualize experiments. Phun may have even more application for the physics classroom because it isn’t a puzzle to figure out, but a creative environment to explore and test.

Tips: Because Phun is a free download, students can use this software at school and at home. Cool!

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

Crayon Physics

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Crayon Physics2367 views

What it is: Crayon Physics is a freeware puzzle game. The object of the game is to guide a ball to a star. Students do not have direct control of the ball, but interact with it by drawing shapes with the mouse to get the ball to roll from one platform to another. Any object that students draw reacts as it would if it were subject to gravity. There are some great physics lessons to be taught with this game! Crayon Physics is a Windows only download right now…(I know, bummer for those of us who are Mac users! Not to worry, I have found a Mac version that I will be posting tomorrow.)

How to integrate Crayon Physics into the classroom: Allow students to interact with Crayon Physics to learn about principles of gravity, energy, force, velocity, etc. The game is very entertaining and even mildly addictive. Your students will love learning physics with Crayon Physics. It will bring your class and all those formulas to life for your students.

Tips: Take a look at the video above for a good look at Crayon Physics in action.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Crayon Physics in your classroom.

Read the Words

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Read the Words2345 views


What it is: Read the Words is a free website that offers an audio player that will read anything you want. The Reader on the audio player can be listened to online, downloaded to a mp3 player, broadcasted as a podcast, or posted on a website or blog. The first step to creating your reader is selecting what you want read, this can be uploaded from a PDF, MS Word, HTML file, or input manually, cut and pasted, through RSS or URL. Step 2 is selecting a reader for your purposes, there are 14 readers to choose from. The readers speak English, Spanish, and French. Each reader has unique voices and some have accents. You can control the reader’s speed and pitch. Best of all it takes approximately one minute to generate an hour long recording.

How to integrate Read the Words into the classroom: Read the Words would be an excellent way to guide a webquest for students, create a reader to steer students through each activity in the webquest. If you have mp3 players available for checkout, create a reader for guided reading. These can be used in class during silent reading time or checked out for home use so that the student learning day can be extended. The readers would be excellent for history or science reading where vocabulary can be challenging. Read the Words is perfect for your auditory learners and because you can have text that is already in your lesson read, the differentiation for these students is short and sweet. Read the Words would also be great for English language learners or for English speakers learning Spanish or French.

Tips:
Take some time initially to listen to each of the readers. Choose the one that is easiest for your students to understand and best fits your purposes.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Read the Words in your classroom.

Help a Hedgehog

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What it is: Help a Hegehog is a phonics game where students read a set of words as fast as they can to beat a timer. The online game saves the last score so students can work to beat their score. You can choose from a set list of words, or enter your own words based on what your class is working on.

How to integrate Help a Hedgehog into the classroom: Help a Hedgehog can be used on your interactive whiteboard with the whole class, individually, or in a remedial reading classroom. If you play as a class, each day students can work to beat the previous days score. Individually and students can try to beat their own score. This is a great way to start phonics instruction each morning and as practice for new vocabulary. Enter your own vocabulary for students to practice spelling words, science or math vocabulary, etc. Extend the game by adding the rule that students have to define the vocabulary word before they can move onto the next word.

Tips: This site is intended for phonics instruction but would be appropriate for secondary elementary as well with the addition of your own vocabulary. You could even use this tool for math practice, type in problems instead of words and request that the students give the answer before moving onto the next problem. This would be a great way to start your math class with some mental math!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Help a Hedgehog in your classroom.

Interactive Word Tree

Kelly Tenkely2 Comments on Interactive Word Tree2060 views

 

What it is: The Interactive Word Tree is perfect for use on your new Wiimote Whiteboard (or any other interactive whiteboard.) The Word Tree allows students or teachers to input up to 26 phonemes or words that become apples on the interactive tree.

How to integrate the Interactive Word Tree into your curriculum: The Interactive Word Tree is very flexible based on your classroom needs. Type in short vowel and long vowels and have the students take turns moving all the short vowel words to one side of the tree and all the long vowel words to the other side. Or, type in spelling words and have students move the apples into alphabetical order. Or, type in science vocabulary and students can categorize words on the tree based on similarities. You can also type in words that form compound words, prefixes and suffixes, etc. for students to practice matching apples. It would also be a wonderful tool for matching rhyming words, synonyms, antonyms, the possibilities are truly limitless since you can type in your own words. Another great feature: your words are automatically saved in the list even if you close the web browser so you don’t have to re-type in the words or vocabulary each day. You can add, delete, or change words at any time. Such a cool tool! As I am writing this I keep thinking of additional uses like preparing for a matching test, simple math problems with the problem on one apple and the answer on another.

Tips: You don’t have to use this great tool with the interactive whiteboard, it would also be a great center for the one to two computer classroom or even for use in the computer lab.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Interactive Word Tree in your classroom.