Many folks like to introduce themselves at the beginning of the school year sharing who they are and what their philosophies are for the classroom learning environment. Kids just love this part as well (yeah right).
This is the most painful part of the year for me. At the elementary level when I taught first grade, they were zoned out from me within minutes. They just wanted to hit the centers I had set up. At the secondary level in the middle school classrooms, they sat politely because they knew the drill. First five or ten minutes of each new class was the “Hi, I’m Mr. Floyd, and….” part of the class. Boring. I try. Lord knows that. I just do not have the artsy fartsy bones in me.
Then, I come across folks like Beau Bergeron. This kid (23 years young) has a wonderful sense of conversation. I am more than happy to learn from those younger than me when they are so dadgum (Texas term) creative. I guess I can blame testing for my lack of creativity since it all started when I was in school (thanks H. Ross Perot), but probably not. Anyway, I digress. Take a look at what Beau has created below and enjoy. Most of all, take some time and think through the first impression YOU are going to create when the kids and parents come this year. I realize James Dobson says, “Don’t smile until Christmas.” But what impression do you want the kids to get about what your expectations are? I want to set the bar high and have them live up to them. When they see I put more energy into the classroom than I have to, hopefully they will do the same. It’s worth a try. Realize what you do speaks so much more powerfully than what you say. First impressions. Then, when you are ready to work on your own, shoot me an email. Let me know what I can do to help you create yours.
Enjoy Beau’s mind and imagination. PS - Realize he played this video on the white shirt he wore to the event.
For those of you interested in historical photos for units, writing prompts, documentaries, and more, the Smithsonian Institute has loaded quite a bit of their content to Flickr. See the collection here.
Need some online quizzes to help your kids (K-12) get more practice with math concepts? Then ThatQuiz has the answer for you.
Go to the site, choose a math category to fit your needs, and practice away. Students do not have to register. If you just want their final scores, they can always print out the screen when they finish the quiz. Free is always a great price, especially when the product has as much value as this one.
Students will find practice in these categories with MANY subcategories:
Integers
Fractions
Concepts
Geometry
I know my 7 year old will be trying out the concepts portion this summer to stay in mental math shape.
Okay, reading teachers and librarians. This site is just neat in so many ways, yet it only does one thing. It finds you an author.
The premise is simple. Go to Literature Map. Type in the name of an author you (your students actually) like to read. Literature Map goes out and does some crazy style of mapping and finds authors that write like your chosen author and about topics similar to the ones your chosen author writes about. Not sure how it does it.
It seemed to do a pretty good job of nearly all I entered (one or two children’s book authors were not in there). The funniest response I found was when I put in Eric Carle (not one of my fav’s, by the way) and it suggested Stephen King as one of the options. I could not agree more, because Carle’s story lines bore me to death (get it? Death, Stephen King…insert cricket chirp). Sorry. I know it is more about the art than the words in his case.
Anyway, here is what it looked like when I did Lois Lowry. Consider that the closer the author name is to your chosen author in the center of the screen, the more alike the writing styles and other attributes. In this case, Judy Blume was closest. It may not be perfect, but it will get kids reading new authors. Neat stuff. Should have one computer in the library just with this turned on.
For those who do not blog or read blogs, I truly feel that you are missing out on tremendous resources shared by other educators. I was skimming through my Bloglines account today and found this jewel of a post from Kevin Jarrett over at Welcome to NCS-Tech! Consider this reading site. Free Reading is a site devoted to offering high quality reading resources for grades K-3. They define themselves as:
Free-Reading is an open source instructional program that helps educators teach early literacy. Because it is open source, it represents the collective wisdom of a wide community of teachers and researchers. Free-Reading contains a 40-week scope and sequence of primarily phonological awareness and phonics activities that can support and supplement a typical kindergarten or first grade “core” or “basal” program.
What you will find on this site is research-based reading materials, the research that support them, and a collaborative group of educators sharing their resources to make your classroom instruction the best it can be. To me, this is what Web 2.0 is all about. Share great material with like minded individuals, and you will find equally as valuable resources to partake from. Here is the mission behind Free Reading:
* To help educators worldwide teach kids to read * To make quality, research-based, explicit and systematic instruction for early reading widely available and free (in two senses of the word “free”: “at no charge” and “openly offered so as to be used, reused, mashed-up and shared again”) * To nurture a community of educators who share effective methods in a form that others can easily apply in their own teaching * To disrupt spending in education away from traditional textbooks and towards more customized instructional materials, more support and training for teachers, and better tools for data and knowledge management. * Ultimately, as Catherine Snow has said, for kids to be able to “read books with enjoyment while lying in a hammock under elm trees”.
Though no individual skill taught here may be an end in itself, we believe each is a step on the path to that ultimate goal.
You will find many skills covered in categories including:
Phonological Awareness
Phonics
Comprehension
Vocabulary
Fluency
Writing
So dive into their resources and see what you surface with. I bet you will find it more valuable than anything out of the textbook. Besides, that’s their goal.
PS - Feel free to share some of your great curriculum with them. It is the only way to make the collective grow.
Let’s face it. Your students love nature. They love computers. They love media. Why not have them create short documentaries about cheetahs, water lizards, polar bears, and more using real video footage, authentic sounds, and background music?
What? Your kids don’t know how to make videos? You don’t know where to get the media for the film? Well, let Nat Geo step in and save the day. Enter the Wildlife Filmmaker. Your kids do not need to be professionals, but they just might turn into them. Using drag and drop technology, National Geographic has done a wonderful job of simplifying the process for teachers (I say ‘teachers’ because the detail could kill us if we had to walk our younger students through the process in MovieMaker or iMovie).
The students will be given a code to write down when they are through to allow them to retrieve the video once they are completed. Now, retrieve means it will bring it back up and play it in the Nat Geo site. I did not see a way to download the video yet, but I am sure it will not be long. A teacher could very easily write the numbers down to create links on his/her web page for parents and students to view their creations.
So, if you are lucky enough to have an administrator order you to teach the things you wanted the students to learn but testing got in the way of, then try this out. The students can preview the animal clips and make a short video or two to try the site out. Then, once they are comfortable with it, they can do some research on the animal of choice and return to the site to make their own Animal Planet documentary short. The side benefit of this is that they will gain some great skills using the video timeline window on the site. It is very much like the software programs such as Windows MovieMaker, Apple’s iMovie, or the more advanced Apple Final Cut Studio we use in our high school.
Awesome tools for science and literacy (digital storytelling), so go give it a try! Let me know what you think about it.
You remember how smart you were in high school? You know, headed to Ivy League if it weren’t for that one teacher who hated you or that one bad test day, or not enough money or ….. Yet, you were every bit as smart as any Ivy Leaguer. Right, Uncle Rico?
The best thing about this system is that you have free access to the lectures and course material through the Open Yale site. You get the chance to virtually audit the course. How cool is that? You never leave your (insert where you are on the computer, with iPod, etc.). You choose when to study. You challenge your friends and co-workers to see if they can handle the rigor of an Ivy League course. Or, you impress them by doing it anyway when they say no thanks. You can’t necessarily move your family to Yale, but you sure can take advantage of this.
Open Yale is the direction schools are headed with content (minus the “free” attached to ALL of it). The OCW movement is but one group offering the ability to be a lifelong learner from talented, brilliant, academic minds. Consider iTunes U. Harvard, Yale, Texas A&M, Stanford, and more are filling your iPod with academic lectures, videos, and notes just in case you want to take advantage of them during your self-directed learning. Once again, it is free. These schools are also using the iTunes portal for students who show up in person, so consider the fact that the information you are getting is current and you have one heck of a deal on your hands.
Here is what I am thinking. You have a few high school students who are very bright. They are ready for the D1 university challenge, so they think. Why not corral up a few of them and put together a PLN that meets before school, after school, during a study period, or even virtually. Work through a course with them so they can see what university work is all about. They will either prove their muster or realize it is time to step it up. Regardless, what the Open Yale site says is the goal of the project stands very true in this instance:
This approach goes beyond the acquisition of facts and concepts to cultivate skills and habits of rigorous, independent thought: the ability to analyze, to ask the next question, and to begin the search for an answer.
We hope these courses will be a resource for critical thinking, creative imagination, and intellectual exploration.
I could not say it better myself.
This is learning for the love of learning. Challenge for the intrinsic motivation. Intellectual stimulation as a voluntary mental workout. When did these things get left out of the standards in school? Oh, yeah. When they were not on the test. What an opportunity this is!
If you have a young one at home, I know you watch PBS. I also know they are aware of who Daniel Cook is. Quite the bright young man, Daniel spends his time working with adults learning about their jobs and the things around them. His videos and strong personality kept my son engaged every time it came on the television (all I kept thinking was “Boy that kid would wear me out.”).
Now, Daniel has his own website. He has a Playroom and a Backyard area to for kids to explore, interact, and learn. You will also find episode guides. The guides share a short summary, learning objectives for the program, and contact information of the location that was visited for additional information.
Interested in some online Guided Reading practice via games? Then you might find Roy the Zebra worth your time.
You will find digital stories that you can scroll through one virtual page at a time. Included with the stories, you will find pre and post questions and literacy worksheets for vocabulary practice. You will also find games that help with alphabetical order, double consonants, high frequency words, singular or plural words, rhyming words, and much more.
If your early readers need literacy practice then this might be the site for you. Give it a try and shoot me some feedback in the comments as to the pros and cons.
Need some online quizzes to help your kids (K-12) get more practice with math concepts? Then 
If you have a young one at home, I know you watch PBS. I also know they are aware of who Daniel Cook is. Quite the bright young man, Daniel spends his time working with adults learning about their jobs and the things around them. His videos and strong personality kept my son engaged every time it came on the television (all I kept thinking was “Boy that kid would wear me out.”).
Interested in some online Guided Reading practice via games? Then you might find 
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