News, information, and updates

Walnut Creek Wetlands Center Opens

lrichardson — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:16:21 +0000

Located on 59 acres of floodplain in southeast Raleigh, the Walnut Creek Wetlands Center is now open to the public. The Center provides a unique opportunity for visitors to see the plants and animals of a wetland in an urban setting. Low cost programs are available to teach “the importance of wetlands, wildlife habitats, hydrology, natural ecosystems, and human interactions with the natural environment.”

Educators can find more information about the Center in LEARN NC’s Discover NC section. Also check out the field guide, “Walnut Creek: A Guide to Exploring Urban Wetlands” created by Exploris Middle School Students. Over the course of a year, the students investigated the wetlands. Using cameras and waterproof journals, they recorded everything they saw and experienced, from tracks made by raccoons and coyotes to the lowliest leopard slugs and sea lampreys. They presented their work to the city of Raleigh in 2008 to be placed in the new Walnut Creek Wetlands Center. LEARN NC is proud to be able to bring this work to you on our site in PDF format.

North Carolina maps and related lesson plans

Emily — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:48:57 +0000

North Carolina Maps is a comprehensive, online collection of historic maps of the Tar Heel State. Featuring maps from three of the state’s largest map collections — the North Carolina State Archives, the North Carolina Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill, and the Outer Banks History Center — North Carolina Maps provides an unprecedented level of access to these materials. North Carolina Maps contains more than 2,000 maps, ranging in date from the late 1500s to 2000, and including detailed maps for each of North Carolina’s one hundred counties.

North Carolina Maps’ K-12 section is devoted to helping teachers use the interactive maps included in the database. Included in this section are essays instructing teachers on how to incorporate maps into the classroom, an illustrated history of maps of North Carolina, and dozens of lesson plans using the maps on the site. The lesson plans span all age groups from kindergarten to twelfth grade and every core subject from environmental science to U.S. history. Math teachers can even teach algebra using a map lesson plan!

One of the site’s most popular lesson plans is the eighth-grade lesson “Webquest: Building an Historic District.” In this lesson, students explore the city of Oxford using overlay maps that switch from 1882 to the present day, and they can find where local schools, grocery stores, and movie theaters were located.

Blog post provided by Jennifer Job, Documenting the American South/UNC Libraries

Classroom management

David — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:48:54 +0000

This week, our Special Education blog looks at classroom management. By being proactive and consistent and by collaborating with other adults, teachers can maintain a positive classroom environment.

Help with teaching reluctant writers

Emily — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:20:06 +0000

We’ve just published a comprehensive guide to the writing process, from pre-writing and preliminary research through formatting and publishing. The guide is presented as a series of articles that use discussion, examples, and suggested resources to help you guide students through any writing assignment.

“A Writing Process” breaks the work down into a series of manageable tasks, which can make assignments seem more approachable to reluctant writers. The articles suggest pre-writing strategies, explore the process of writing thesis statements, discuss ways of using graphic organizers to map out ideas, share resources for evaluating the credibility of online sources, and more.

Teaching about North Carolina American Indians

David — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:57:14 +0000

A North Carolina Humanities Council’s Teachers Institute, with experts from the Cherokee and Lumbee tribes, developed this comprehensive guide to help North Carolina educators teach their students about North Carolina’s Indians and their history. The guide, “Teaching about North Carolina American Indians,” is now available on LEARN NC’s website.

The rich heritage of North Carolina’s American Indians is presented though best practice articles, webliographies of resources that can be found in print and online, and lesson plans for 4th and 8th grades that help educators teach about the Cherokee, the Lumbee, and other tribes of our state. Teachers will also find downloadable audio files on Cherokee language and folklore, along with guides to using them in the classroom. In addition, the Lumbee English is addressed through a dialect dictionary and quiz created by the renowned North Carolina State University linguist professor, Dr. Walt Wolfram.