An interesting project.
"Circling the globe from east to west, urban or rural, we each live in a unique community. What can we learn from our area, from our varied citizens or natural resources? This standards based project seeks to tap into the creative nature of students as they look at their community with new eyes and explore ways to share their findings with others using videoconferencing and technology as a resource."
A very interesting platform that teachers of younger students are using for them to create and share what they are doing. It seems to be more visually based rather than text based. It is free and right now has two versions, one for the classroom and another for home. It is in beta and if you sign up now it is free. Would love to hear what some of you think.
So excited to announce the Every Classroom Matters online radio show (podcast) http://bit.ly/XAozCY If you go to the site on your ipad or iphone, you can click "itunes" and it will add the show to your podcast feed or you can play it. The first show I talked to Dr. Lee Graham, a cofounder of #diffimooc about MOOCs and how colleges can actually make money giving away teaching for free. What does this model look like? It was a great conversation and I"ll be sharing more about it.
Please listen and let me know what you think and if you have a suggestion for a new show, follow the link. Thanks!
You can go to this website and find some cool ideas for science competitions.
"The Elementary Science Olympiad offers over 80 challenging and motivational events which are balanced among the various science disciplines of life science, earth science, and physical science. These individual and team events also offer a balance among events requiring knowledge of science facts, concepts, processes, skills, and applications. While a number of the events are in the form of a general quiz, the majority provide an element of "hands-on" participation allowing the "active" study of science. The emphasis is on learning, participation, interaction, and having fun."
This is an online art museum for student work. This permission form is used by artsonia, a student online art museum. It is a great place to participate and share artwork. Also, I like how artsonia allows parents to moderate the comments left on their child's artwork. This form also asks for parent volunteers. This is a nice way to share your student's best work.
For those working with elementary students integrating global competency, these 428 lesson plans and activities are great ways to cover geography and the cultural literacy that is needed by today's students.
Here are some lesson plans for phonics and writing for younger students to use in your classroom. I've sorted it by the most popular first including some Outdoor ideas and some phonics games you could play.
Using ipads to teach vocabulary. In this mainstream media article, students are using Toontastic to create stories and learn new vocabulary. My students enjoy Puppetpals, another great one to use.
As you work to integrate Common Core standards into your classroom, it may help to look at sample lessons. In this set, you can see lessons, presentations, and assessments working with informational text (grades 3-5). Remember that you can search the site by grade level and common core standard and that other subject areas besides Common Core are included on the site.
Teacher Karie Huttner shares how her third grade classroom is using FaceJack and Discovery images along with demonstrations and videos. I think that using image data banks is a great idea because licensing and copyright is not an issue in this case. FaceJack is an app. Cool work here and great sharing including how they cite sources. Elementary teachers will enjoy her blog.
These are complete mini-topics that are a week's worth of activities and lesson plans on each topic for ages 4-11. This pulls together lesson plans, interactive whiteboard resources, and printables and will be helpful for teachers in a tight or who need to quickly emphasize a topic where they know students have problems.
Fun! A Milk Carton Construction Contest! This is something you can do with all students (and win $5,000 in the process.) This is a fun one to share with elementary teachers.
Evergreen Packaging is challenging school age children to become more eco-friendly with their nationwide Made By Milk Carton Construction Contest. For the past 3 semesters, students have been using their creativity to build art creations from recycled school milk cartons based on specific themes. Schools have the chance to win up to $5,000 for their creations.
The Spring 2014 contest theme is "Stories," and entries are being accepted now until April 16, 2014.