I am not a fan of canned curriculum. It has some benefits and is relatively easy to teach, but there is a lack of differentiation for different learners and the activities for practice are often shallow. Treasures has some fun stories and themes but they are really lacking in their activities to practice the essential learning. The activities are often shallow and don’t change from first grade to fifth grade. The same copy from the dictionary activity is suggested for learning vocabulary for every unit in every grade level. I created the Treasures supplement as a way to help teachers provide students with multiple ways of practicing the essential learnings. I just finished the supplement for unit 1. This is the supplement for first through fifth grade.
What it is: The BBC is a constant source of excellent classroom interactives and games. Today I ran across Magic Key while working on supplementing MacMillan Mcgraw Hill’s Treasures curriculum for first grade. Magic Key is based on a cartoon in the UK, even if your students aren’t familiar with the cartoon, they are sure to enjoy the website adventures. Magic Key has fun literacy games for kindergarten and first grade students. The games help students practice full stops (sentence endings), sentence order, questions, character characteristics, capital letters, seeing patterns, figuring out new words, descriptions, and words that make sounds. The games are age appropriate, include fun characters, and help students practice and understand important literacy skills. In each game, students enter an adventure where the goal is to collect the Magic Key.
How to integrate BBC: Magic Key into the classroom: The Magic Key games are short and sweet, they give students the opportunity to practice new skills independently. I like to use games like these as a center activity. These types of short games make a great center because they provide students with immediate feedback and are self leveling. Set Magic Key up on your classroom computers as a literacy center for students to visit independently or in small groups. Don’t forget that the interactive whiteboard or projector connected computer can also be a center station! These games are a great alternative to the worksheet (you didn’t really want to grade one of those anyway) and will provide your students with an opportunity to practice what they are learning.
Tips: Check out the teacher section of Magic Key for a description of each game, the curriculum tie in, and (I hesitate to mention) worksheets.
Please leave a comment and share how you are using BBC: Magic Key in your classroom.
What it is: The Disney website has a lot of engaging and fun content for kids, unfortunately, not all of it is educational. Hot Shot Business is one of the better Disney games I have seen for the classroom. It teaches kids about business and entrepreneurship through a fun simulation game. Students are introduced to the idea of entrepreneurship and franchising by their virtual business hosts, Kate and Jack. Kate and Jack offer advice and recommendations throughout the game. The decisions that students will make throughout the game will have consequences that extend beyond profits and losses alone. They will have to deal with environmental factors, as well as finding ways to provide jobs for members of the community. Students can choose to start a pet spa, a candy factory, a comic shop, custom skateboard shop, professional landscaping, or a magic shop. Kids are sure to find a business that they are interested in! The entire game is narrated which is great for all levels of readers. As students play the game, they will be exposed to the nuts and bolts of running their own business, they will have to make decisions about how to respond to market trends, how to respond to customer preferences, how to respond to fast breaking news reports that may affect their business, and how to respond to ethical dilemmas. Students even have access to a Hot Shot Business kit where they can download and print out business cards and fliers.
How to integrate Hot Shot Business into the classroom:Hot Shot Business was designed to meet national standards in both language arts and math, making it fit easily into any curriculum. The ideal setup for Hot Shot Business is a few days in the computer lab for a 1-to-1 setting where each student can work individually on setting up their own store. Game play could extend for several days depending on the unit that you are teaching. The Disney site has some excellent lesson plans and suggestions for implementation, I highly recommend them. I like the idea of connecting with entrepreneurs in the community during this unit so that as students are working through the game, they can get advice and recommendations from those who do it every day.
If you can’t make it happen in a computer lab setting over several days, choose a business to start as a class and make decisions as a team. You can do this using an interactive whiteboard or projector connected computer. In this scenario, students will have to discuss their decisions and reason with each other to decide on a course of action.
Hot Shot Business is a really well designed game, it would be a great addition for the 3rd-6th grade classroom. I suspect that it ties into several of the curricula already being used in schools, I know that Treasures (MacMillan McGraw Hill) has units that it fits nicely into. This is great hands on learning, a definite step up from Lemonade Stand. 🙂
Tips: This is a really great site, but I must warn you that it eats up the bandwidth!
Please leave a comment and share how you are using Hot Shot Business in your classroom.
What it is: We use the Treasures Reading curriculum (Macmillan McGraw Hill) at the school where I teach. Although there are things I like about this curriculum, one thing that is in need of improvement are the activities provided for students to practice the skills that they are learning. The activities don’t change from 1st-5th grade, are very repetitive, and do not encourage any sort of deeper thinking skills. In an attempt to remedy this for our students, I went through each unit for 1st through 5th grade and pulled out the essential learning components. I found activities that were engaging and required some deeper thinking to supplement what was currently in the curriculum. As I worked to supplement the activities, I looked for a few things: 1. The activity could be completed with the whole class, using an interactive whiteboard or projector, or could be completed as a computer center (for the classroom with 2 or 3 computers). 2. The activities had to meet and reinforce the essential learning. 3. The activities had to be more engaging than what was already suggested.
How to integrate Treasures Reading Supplement into the classroom: These guides are meant to be a supplement for the Treasures Reading Curriculum. They are designed to offer some extra ideas for helping students to practice and solidify learning. You will find a few activities that are meant for offline use such as a whole class bingo game or partner matching games. You will also notice some suggestions for Promethean activities. I created some supplemental flipcharts for our teachers to use that I am happy to share if you can use them. (I hope to have these up on Promethean Planet soon). Many of these activities can be completed as a center activity in the classroom. We don’t always have access to a computer lab of computers. In the classroom with a few computers, set up a weekly rotation so that your students can complete some of the online activities. Some of the games and activities are also appropriate for whole class participation.
In my classroom, I like to play games with my students. I will often split students into teams where the teams will take turns working through a game. Students love the extra layer of competition being timed.
In my reading classroom, I had literacy groups that I met with every day. Each day I met with a new group (those students who were in need of remedial reading met each day of the week). During literacy group time, the group that I was working with read the story for the week, learned and practiced key essential learning together (phonics, grammar, vocabulary) , and worked on building comprehension strategies. While I worked with my smaller literacy groups, the rest of the class worked through independent literacy centers. At the beginning of the week I explained all of the centers for the week. Because my classroom had limited space, I put my centers into colored tubs that rotated around the classroom. Each day a small group of students received a center tub. The tub has all of the necessary supplies and directions for that center. One of my centers always involved the classroom computers. Sometimes the centers were inquiry based, sometimes games, and sometimes additional reading practice. Every week, each student completed each center activity. In the meantime, I was able to work one on one with my literacy groups. This worked really well in my classroom and technology made it easy for students to work at their own level independently.
The guides are below in ebook format using Issuu, they have been separated by grade. Even if you don’t teach the Treasures Curriculum, everything has been arranged by the learning focus, these overlap in most curricula. You may find some great activities that meet your classroom need here:
First Grade:
Second Grade:
Third Grade:
Fourth Grade:
Fifth Grade:
*Note: The fourth and fifth grade spelling lists on Spelling City do not come from the Treasures curriculum. The fourth grade uses Houghton Mifflin and the fifth grade has generated their own lists.
For a list of all of my publications check out my library on Issuu.
Leave a comment and share how you are using the Treasures Reading Supplement in your classroom.
