CALL_IS_VSL

Types of activities: Make Instagram Galleries for Historical Figures. Create a Netflix series for a novel (displaying an understanding of plot, setting, characters, etc.). Make Amazon product pages to show the types of organelles that plant or animal cells might shop for. Create a Twitter profile for George Washington. Make Facebook pages for endangered species. A variety of activities for high school students.

Bunches of things to do online and for flipped classroom, too

A series of lessons from Falmouth University. Free -- sign in with university

$29.95

"Slidesgo offers over 100 high-quality, free presentation templates for Google Slides and PowerPoint. When you find a presentation template that you like, just click a button to either download the PowerPoint Template or make a copy of the Google Slides theme to your Google Drive. This collection of templates is beautifully designed and fully customizable." T/h N LaFave

"I love genius hour, I love Innovation Day, I love the idea of learning and creating something. But I felt we were starting to focus too much on the creation part rather than just the learning part. That too much time was spent creating the imagery of their learning rather than the learning itself. So instead I asked the kids to do what we have called project time, 30 minutes once a week where they just get to learn. Sure, they can create, sure they can make things, but they can also use the entire time to just read, study, ask questions, whatever they want to do. I decided on a big category to help them focus their curiosity, geography, and with held breath I sat back. "The last two weeks have been incredible. Students have read library books on countries, they have studied maps, they have created impromptu map quizzes, and yes, they have even created presentations. The learning that has happened has been tangible as kids ask questions about the broader world, about their place in it. When I asked them what they thought, the response was overwhelming; "We love it, Mrs. Ripp. Please don't change it. What will we focus on next?" (History for those who wonder)." T/h P. Ripp

"It's no longer enough to work from a pre-determined set of knowledge and skills all students are expected to acquire. To truly meet the Common Core, we have to teach students to dig deeper, think bigger and apply what they learn to real-world problems." So it's also about how teachers approach their job. Article by N. Krueger, 12/29/18

"Of course, since we all live in the real world, it's unlikely that we will be successful in getting all our students participating -- particularly in a cognitive way -- all the time. However, there are a number of actions we can take to increase the odds of as many as our students being active learners and co-creators of what is happening in the classroom.... These techniques can include use of individual whiteboards for students to use for writing and sharing responses; not having students raise hands and, instead, having teachers call on students (especially if they are given thinking and partner-sharing time for preliminary processing); and asking students reflective questions at the end of class for use as exit slips. "It's also important to remember that the effectiveness of these kinds of techniques will always be constrained or expanded by the quality of the relationships and the culture in any classroom." T/h L Ferlazzo

"Use these strategies to help middle and high school students identify relevance, accuracy, bias, and reliability in the content they read." T/h J Coiro

"Programming is magic. It's the ability to create things from pure imagination. We started CodeCombat to give learners the feeling of wizardly power at their fingertips by using typed code. "As it turns out, that enables them to learn faster too. WAY faster. It's like having a conversation instead of reading a manual. We want to bring that conversation to every school and to every student, because everyone should have the chance to learn the magic of programming. "CodeCombat is a community project,with hundreds of players volunteering to create levels, contribute to our code to add features, fix bugs, playtest, and even translate the game into 50 languages so far. Employees, contributors and the site gain by sharing ideas and pooling effort, as does the open source community in general. The site is built on numerous open source projects, and we are open sourced to give back to the community and provide code-curious players a familiar project to explore and experiment with. Anyone can join the CodeCombat community! "

"nCtrl is a series of free standards-based lessons that teach key digital citizenship concepts. These lessons, for students in grades 4-8, are designed to engage students through inquiry-based activities, and collaborative and creative opportunities."

"For a little inspiration, we're showcasing twelve terrific poetry projects from our incredibly creative community of educators. You'll find projects for first graders and high schoolers, and everything from sensory poems to color explorations to poems about polliwogs. (We also think any of these would be just as fun for adults to try - a little creative expression is always good for the soul!)"

"Among the many things students are expected to do, self-assessing their learning is part of the suite of metacognitive tools that are valued in today's society. This skill enables the student to think about their thinking, identify what they're doing well and what needs improvement. Self-assessment takes practice, and when it comes to schoolwork, students are not given enough opportunities. " K.Sung offers an example of ways for students to get in practice in self-assessing.

"Providing your students with a public audience is not only a critical part of the project-based learning process, but it's also a great strategy for building authenticity into assignments to create work that matters. We often leverage our students' parents and guardians in this process because 1) they are easily accessible, and 2) they are our partners in their children's learning plans. Why not then continue and build this partnership in PBL? John Larmer wrote a great blog about how to build parent support for PBL, and one of the best ways he mentions is to keep them involved in the PBL project you launch in your classroom. Here are some strategies to consider as you leverage parents for your next PBL project."

John Larmer sees a sliding scale: "There is a sliding scale of authenticity for projects, which goes from "not authentic" to "somewhat authentic" to "fully authentic.""

"It is difficult to blame our students for their failure to reflect upon their learning. The very nature of the typical school day makes this challenging for even the most committed learner. All that bouncing from experience to experience ensures that by the time they finish their day and have time to reflect, they are relying on a jumbled mess of memories. Without time to reflect immediately after a learning experience, there is little hope that we will develop in our minds a coherent cognitive schema or that we connect new learning with old in a cohesive manner." Author Nigel Coutts offers 8 elements that lend themselves to reflective learning. Includes a nice infographic of the elements.

"To summarize, then, we might say that (1) the skill of guessing from context may not be as helpful in the real world as previously imagined, (2) it may not be as useful in acquiring vocabulary items as previously imagined. When a teacher is asked by a student for the meaning of a word in a text, the reflex response of 'try to work it out from the context' may also not be as helpful as previously imagined. Translations and / or dictionary advice may well, at times, be more appropriate." An interesting view of an activity that has been considered significant by many reading teachers. More research is needed!

A walk through the dynamic of classroom and community, by Nigel Coutts

"This study aims at investigating the efficiency of web quests in enhancing the 8th graders' descriptive writing. The 8th graders in the Lebanese public schools in general usually demonstrate poor writing skills. Consequently, they don't show motivation to write in English. The subjects of the study are one control group (n=22) and one experimental group (n=23) enrolled in grade eight in a public school in Beirut and whose ages range from thirteen to fifteen years old. The purpose of the study is to examine whether or not the web quest helps 8th graders achieve unity and coherence in writing descriptive paragraphs and to examine if the motivation towards writing is increased after using the web quest."