UWCSEA Teachers

Excerpt re literacy:  "While English classes will still include healthy amounts of fiction, the standards say that students should be reading more nonfiction texts as they get older, to prepare them for the kinds of material they will read in college and careers. In the fourth grade, students should be reading about the same amount from "literary" and "informational" texts, according to the standards; in the eighth grade, 45 percent should be literary and 55 percent informational, and by 12th grade, the split should be 30/70."

African headwrap tutorial for the upcoming musical Once on this Island

Another video for how to tie a headscarf.

Another African head scarf tying tutorial for the play

headscarf tutorial

"William Shakespeare, the bard behind some of the greatest works in the English language, is coming to a Facebook page near you. Weekly Reader has teamed up with the Ophelia Project and White Plains High School to re-enact one of Shakespeare's plays on Facebook from April 26 to 28. Much Ado About Nothing will be presented on a special page through status updates, posts, pictures and videos. The students helped create separate pages for their characters complete with pictures, in-character bios and likes. The project is meant both as an educational resource and a tool to combat cyber bullying.

Article re how the color and shape of rooms affects the thinking that goes on inside the rooms... "They tested 600 subjects when surrounded by red, blue or neutral colors-in both real and virtual environments. The differences were striking. Test-takers in the red environments, were much better at skills that required accuracy and attention to detail, such as catching spelling mistakes or keeping random numbers in short-term memory. Though people in the blue group performed worse on short-term memory tasks, they did far better on tasks requiring some imagination, such as coming up with creative uses for a brick or designing a children's toy. In fact, subjects in the blue environment generated twice as many "creative outputs" as subjects in the red one. Why? According to the scientists, the color blue automatically triggers associations with openness and sky, while red makes us think of danger and stop signs. (Such associations are culturally mediated, of course; Chinese, for instance, tend to associate red with prosperity and good luck.) It's not just color. A similar effect seems to hold for any light, airy space."

webcams in America for animal sitings (eagles nests etc)

An engaging trailer for the  film detailing 4 or 5 students who are being bullied and/or parents of teens who have committed suicide following bullying. 

A selection of links re the May 1st news on the death of Osama Bin Laden -- from Finding Dulcinea

Scroll down through this post to see some great free tools to create your own infographics. Could be useful for exhibition etc.

Re a university professor who teaches ecology and evolutionary biology assigning Twitter posts to her class in ornithology.  Students must post tweets re any bird behavior they observe.... 

Tons of great resources about teaching kids about earthquakes as well as seismic research, data, and activities.  Sponsored by the US National Science Foundation.

"The 11th graders in Mrs. Olson's class said the backchannel had widened their appreciation of one another. "Everybody is heard in our class," said Leah Postman, 17. Janae Smith, also 17, said, "It's made me see my peers as more intelligent, seeing their thought process and begin to understand them on a deeper level." "

Intermediate level (gr 5-11) resources for anti-bullying including cyberbullying

water read aloud

Graphic of Horizon reports from 2004-2011

excellent math game, 4 people at a time can play on 4 computers

How to screencast using Quicktime