Group items tagged

Ice Breakers is a no frills site with tons of free instructions about many useful icebreakers, group games, and team building activities. This is a great place to find activities for the classroom. The site is uber-plain and filled with ads, but the content is strong enough to still recommend it to educators.

"The We Do Listen Foundation offers free animated stories, games, and lessons for children. The books and their corresponding lessons are designed to help young children learn about things like how to be a good listener, what to do about bullies, and good sportsmanship. All of the books feature the character Howard B. Wigglebottom. The We Do Listen Foundation's games are a mix of matching activities, spelling games, and pattern recognition games. Children can create their own Howard B. Wigglebottom stories on the We Do Listen Foundation's website. The foundation provides online tools and templates for writing and coloring their stories. You will also find templates that you can print out and have students color offline too."

1. Find flashcards to study or create your own flashcards. 2. Study flashcards or use the other activities such as matching, crosswords, hangman, scrambled word, or bug chase. 3. Study flashcards anytime and anywhere by printing your flashcards or by using them with applications on your cell phone, PDA, or iPod.

This site lets you create your own name tags ( you can type a name in or draw). You can also see innovative designs that others have made. You can save the name tag as an image or print it out. You can also print out a multiple name tags. Besides the obvious uses, these name tags can be used in classroom activities where students are portraying an historical or literary figure. Students could also play a 20 questions game and reveal their person or concept to the other when guessed. Students could also have tag placed on their back and receive clues from other students as their "identity."

"Classtools.net allows you to create free educational games, activities and diagrams in a Flash! Host them on your own blog, website or intranet! No signup, no passwords, no charge!"

The league allows students to cast votes, individually, in which they choose between two competing people, ideas or things. In a discussion on climate change, for example, they could vote for which they thought was the bigger cause of global warming: aeroplane emissions or volcanic activity - discuss! Each student chooses repeatedly from random pairs. By repeatedly casting votes, the students create a league, ranked in order of the most powerful, important, popular or influential. The results are often unexpected - students are surprised to see how their peers voted - and a good starting point for discussion. Why does this person have more power than another person? What makes this pop star more influential than that politician? How is this power used?

Guidance and Support for Ongoing Improvement How does the MILE Guide help states, districts and schools implement and support 21st century skills initiatives? * Generate broad-based support for 21st century skills initiatives through step-by-step establishment of a compelling vision for 21st century teaching and learning. * Set benchmarks and goals with assessments to help administrators, teachers, and policy leaders to identify current progress on 21st century skills initiatives and define next steps. * Generate successful grant applications through identifying and prioritizing objectives as they seek funding via grants and other sources. * Ensure continuous progress through providing improvement rubrics to monitor activities and accomplishments. A Comprehensive, Coherent Toolkit for Progress Offering a variety of tools all designed to work together, the new MILE GUIDE includes: * The MILE Guide Self-Assessment Tool A visual mapping and self-assessment tool that allows districts to plot where they are today and set a course for future integration of 21st century skills into systems of learning. * Implementation Guiding Recommendations A set of district-relevant recommendations and promising practices to help local districts move from assessment of 21st century skills integration to concrete action. * P21 Framework Definitions The most up-to-date P21 Framework definitions that spell out expectations for 21st century student outcomes and the necessary support systems at the state and local levels.

Most parents and educators are always encouraging our youth to get off the couch and do something! DoSomething.org is an organization that helps teens with social causes they care about. This is the generation of "doers" and this organization provides an avenue for young adults to make a difference in the community they live. They have 3 rules: No money, no car, and no adults! The organization provides tons of resources on their website including a directory of clubs in each state that are already setup, but teens are encouraged to start their own project as well. I came across a video online on "How to Use Social Media for Good" by Monique Coleman, in a section called DoSomething U, which helps people starting not-for-profit organizations or social enterprises. That got me to their site and from there I found all these amazing clubs our youth is organizing and most importantly, doing. They also have the Do Something Awards which were earlier this year on VH1. They select 5 nominees that receive a $1,000 towards their cause and the Grand Prize Winner receives a $100,000 grant for funding for their project. The 2010 Grand Prize winner is Jessica Posner who started a community center in the second largest slum in the world, which is in Kibera Africa where 66% of girls there trade sex for food as early as 6 years old. But not everyone needs to cure cancer or fight AIDS to participate; any student can start a project they care about in their own community or simply search for volunteering opportunities near them. Since one of the rules is no adults, I would suggest sharing the site with your students and letting them run with the ball from there.