Archive for the ‘lessons’ Category

Monday by the Numbers

July 7, 2008

numbercranes10 Virtually Instant Ways to Improve Your Life - I’m all for improving my life, but why does it have to take soooo long? Here are ten easy ways to pull yourself up by your boot straps courtesy of Stepcase Lifehack. If you find yourself wanting to change something about your life, then why not start out with the simple stuff like Don’t over-generalize and Don’t take things too personally.

12 Ways to Use Project Censored in Your Classroom - Project Censored is an intiative designed to help aggregate news stories that often go under reported. This guide offers ways teachers can educate their students in fair journalism methods and help them understand the practice and importance of research. There are in-class activities and projects on the list, so if your students are studying media and journalism, this is a good place to start them on the right path.

 101 Scholarships Just For Teachers - From TeachingTips.com comes this amazing list of scholarships available for teachers working their way through college. It might be too late for most of us, but if you have some students who are interested in becoming teachers themselves, give them this list to ease college’s financial burdens. Some are region specific, so all 101 might not be completely pertinent. By the way, be sure and check out some of the other amazing lists on TeachingTips, they’ve got some great stuff there.

101 Things to Do When You’re Bored - I don’t know how anybody could possibly get bored when there are hundreds of Instructify posts to read, but if you find yourself with some idle time, then try out a few of these activities to rescue yourself from ennui. Lists Galore recommends flying a kite, starting a blog, or you know, making a list. - JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Photo credit: Wetsun on Flickr

Discover the Undersea World with Ocean Explorer

June 24, 2008

There’s a whole world down there, and you can bring it to your student engagingly and easily with Ocean Explorer from NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). This site has a number of “explorations” based on actual work being done by NOAA scientists, with well-developed lesson plans (some even have adaptations for teaching deaf students). You can pick a lesson by subject, or by a specific exploration project. All lessons are correlated to national science standards.

An example is the lesson on the January 2008 Bonaire expedition in the Caribbean. The  lessons offered for Grades 5-6 include one on Pi by looking at surface area, or a more language-arts-oriented lesson where students design a public information campaign to save coral reefs.

Included below is a link to a video from Dr. Robert Ballard, famous ocean explorer and NOAA scientist. The video explains the motivation behind the Jason project and this site which is to publicize ocean exploration, and to engage and educate the next generation of oceanographers. -ALICE MERCER

Monday by the Numbers

June 9, 2008

Numbers on Flickr - Photo Sharing!50 Things Everyone Should Know How To Do - Do you know how to build a fire? How about CPR, do you know it? Or give directions? All of these things are essential life skills that you should know if you don’t already. This list from Marc and Angel covers everything from swimming to changing a tire in order for you to be more self-reliant.

6 Things Money Cannot Help You Achieve - Even Bill Gates and Steve Jobs still have to deal with the same time that you and I do, even if they could buy and sell you and me in a heartbeat. Surely there are other things than the ones presented on this list by Dumb Little Man, but these 6 make good sense. Money can’t buy you self-esteem, unfortunately, nor will it buy happiness.

52 Character Building Thoughts for Children - These might not be great tips for your older students, but the elementary crowd could really benefit from them. Leah Davies, M. Ed. brings us these great quotes on KellyBear.com. There are some real gems here, like this: When I am sad, I help myself feel better by thinking of things that are good in my life.

9 Ways to Save At The Movies - I know this isn’t completely related to teaching, but since school is out for most of us, we might have some more free time on our hands. Unfortunately, free time allows you to spend more money. If you plan to see any of the awesome, or not awesome movies this summer, here are some ways you can save from The Consumerist. My favorite on the list: Be careful with the concessions. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

(photo by Jo Jakeman on Flickr)

April is National Poetry Month

April 18, 2008

PoetryJust as I was thinking
Is it April already?
It is is almost not April
anymore. In fact,

I feel
horrible

because April is
National Poetry Month

after all, and we have
hardly
taken notice of it.

Here are a few websites
that you might enjoy–
that your students
will surely appreciate,

like the taste of blackberries–
or perhaps something less tart

like mango
or peaches.

Scholastic Celebrates National Poetry Month - Find some great activities and projects for students to work on. Includes tips and inspirational readings from notables such as Jack Prelutsky and Maya Angelou.

Shel Silverstein.com - Everyone’s favorite fantastical poet and artist has a great Flash-based site with activities for the young ones and plenty of ideas for poetry projects in the classroom.

PoetryTeachers.com - This site claims to be the “#1 Site For Poetry Teachers on the Web”. They do, in fact have some great tools and activities to get your class reading and writing poetry.

PoetryPoetry.com - Sometimes you have to hear a poem read aloud in order to really cherish it. PoetryPoetry presents this great database of audio files of poets reading their poetry. “The Vault” contains such notables as Robert Bly, David Hernandez, and many other readers and features. the rest of the site also has poetry writing tips and exercises.

Shadow Poetry.com - This site offers a way to connect with other poets around the world through a member based community message board. The site also offers support and resources for poets including contests, chapbook publishing information and an array of books and magazines to check out.

AllPoetry.com - Another online community of poets, this site offers the ability for poets to get feedback and take free online writing courses.

FavoritePoem.com - We’ve written about this one before, but it seemed appropriate for this post, too. Enjoy Americans reading their favorite poems and explaining why the words mean so much to them.

With a seemingly endless number of resources on the web for poetry, this list is only a smidgen of what is available to you and your students. If you have ideas of activities or resources you’d like to share, we’d love to hear how you’re enjoying National Poetry Month. - JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

(photo credit: kk+ on Flickr.)

Click Through The Valley of the Shadow

April 3, 2008

Valley of the ShadowIt’s hard to believe sometimes that America’s Civil War was less than 200 years ago, and how far we have come since then. Perhaps one of the greatest aspects of this war was that it was well documented, perhaps one of the first wars to have so many forms of media available to capture it. The Valley Project has collected and electronically reproduced that media in an online archive that includes images, letters, maps, soldiers’ records, and official documents.

There is more content here than you might ever need, but when it comes to Civil War resources, this collection is tops. The site itself is easy to browse or search, so if there is something specific you might be looking for, you’re bound to find it here. Courtesy of University of Virginia’s Virginia Center for Digital History, so be sure your students cite them for any research they might do. Whether you’re a American History teacher or not, this site could be useful to help students understand first-hand what America experienced not so long ago. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

The Valley of the Shadow

Learn Languages with LingQ

March 25, 2008

Give your foreign language students some extra ammunition. No, I don’t mean teach them obscure French curse words. I’m talking about powerful lessons and practice that can supplement the great stuff you’re already teaching in class. They can get it with LingQ.

LingQ lets students sign up for free lessons in the language of their choice (language include Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish). If you’re teaching ESL, they can also study English (or any other language) in their native tongue. In the assignments, if they see a word they don’t know, they can highlight it and hit the LingQ button. LingQ will define it and create a flashcard for later review.

Students will also get a progress snapshot, which keeps track of benchmarks like how many words they’ve learned, the number of hours spent listening to lessons or speaking, etc. They’ll also get a list of Priority LingQs, which are the 25 most important words they should learn at whatever skill level they’re at. Students can review Priority LingQs by clicking on the the word to view the definition, or display them as flash cards.The free account lets students have five active assignments at any given time.

You can pay extra for more active assignments at once, plus points you can use for personal tutoring, though if they heard about LingQ from you, they’ve already got a live-and-in-person language guru. Still, students can get an awful lot of LingQ for free. The only place with more free knowledge is in your classroom -BILL FERRIS

LingQ

Related Stuff:
Mango: Rhymes with Lingo (Sort Of)
Q’est Que C’est LiveMocha
¿Como se dice Podcast? ESL Pod
Escuchen la One Semester of Spanish Love Song

It Doesn’t Get Much Worsely

March 12, 2008

WorselyNot indicative of its title, Worsely School in Canada has an impressive array of resources available to K - 12 Educators here. There are games, tools, and plans aplenty, so you might kill some time just exploring the site. There’s the usual suspects as far as content is concerned — math, science, English, and some areas where you can request the things you’d like to see covered. The site is designed nicely, with intuitive controls, yet lots of pages to click through. However, the resources themselves are incredibly detailed, and have a lot of great visual accompaniment to help you see what they mean.

The Worsely School might not be much different than your own (though it might already have the funding you need to get something like this going– who knows?), so what can you do to make your school as full of resources and materials to share with other teachers worldwide? Public education is truly the “village” that raises our children in today’s times, so its up to us to share and inspire others who share our craft. Let us know in the comments what ideas you’ve had to broaden the educational spectrum. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Worsely School’s Teacher Resources  

Monday by the Numbers

March 3, 2008

NumberTurbine5000+ Resources to Do Just About Anything Online - If you have time to look through everything on this list, congratulations. Otherwise, check out Mashable’s list of resources by their categories, which encompass everything from Podcasting to Life Tools. There’s really no reason to explore all 5000+ tools here, but with that many, you’re bound to find something useful.

100 Best Books (For Kids) - TeachersFirst.com gives us this great list of essential books for your young students. Selected by the National Education Association in 1999 - these books are all classics and should be read and reread. Looking through this list is like a virtual window to what made me interested in reading in the first place - Madeline L’Engle, my heart still belongs to you.

35 Chocolate Activities from Becky Settlemoir and Friends! - I don’t know who the heck Becky Settlemoir is, but I like her list. Education World delivers 35 cocoa-licious and educational activities here, but the list might just inspire you to think of some of your own. One of my personal favorites: making chocolate disappear. Nom nom nom…

20 Things I’m Glad Life Taught Me - I’m starting to think DumbLittleMan isn’t so dumb after all. In fact, the musings shared in this article are some great inspirational tactics that might help you keep your life on track, or at least get it back to a place that you feel comfortable and confident. Pass this info along to your students, they’ll thank you for it. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

(photo credit: Robbie1 on Flickr)

Gifted Students: Thankfully, They Could Be Lurking Anywhere

February 28, 2008

Exceptional ChildNot to toot my own horn, but at a very young age, I was identified as AG (Academically Gifted). I spent my first few years in school in a separate class with other AG students, doing artsy things, solving puzzles and doing lots of creative writing. I think, for the most part, this was very helpful in my academic development. I often noticed, though, that I felt very out of place as I progressed in school. I felt somehow disjointed from many of my peers, and so I often only put in the bare minimum amount of effort to get me by. Nonetheless, I’ll be forever grateful for those teachers who were willing and able to provide me with instruction that gave me the stuff I needed to succeed and later go on to college and finally apply myself in the capacity I knew I was capable of. Sure, I’m smart - but we all know that; its the next generation that we need to keep an eye on.

TeachersAndFamilies.com brings us this guide - The Exceptional Child - to help identify and nurture gifted students at an early age. There are charts and resources to help parents and educators explore what makes a child exceptional and how to nurture them in both the home and the classroom. Be sure to check out the guide of ways to make gifted students feel less ostracized by their peers. Additionally, there are links to other resources on the web to help facilitate the education of gifted and exceptional children. If you suspect you might have a baby genius in your home or classroom, take a look here and see how to prepare yourself and the budding Einstein. -JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

The Exceptional Child

Papa’s Got a Brand New Deal

February 21, 2008

NewDeal NetworkThe New Deal Network is the one stop shop for all your New Deal needs, folks. Teaching a lesson in your U.S. History class about FDR and his grand plan to turn the Great Depression topsy-turvy? The New Deal Network has the photographs you need to spice up your lectures. Wait - don’t stop there, friend - because NDN’s got historical documents up to its electronic ceiling.

All-night planning sessions got you down, teach? Let NDN’s lesson plans do the work for you. There’s Discovery Guides, Timelines, and don’t forget about the Additional Resources. Whatever information concerning the Great Depression and the New Deal you might be looking for, this place has it all. Its more fun than the Chicago World’s Fair and a Motion Picture rolled into one - enjoy all the informative information and New Deal resources the Inter-Net has to offer! - JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

New Deal Network

Learn 200 New Things Right Now

January 22, 2008

OEDThe Online Education Database has hundreds of free online courses for your perusal– 200 to be exact. The database has compiled a list and description of these courses to help hopefuls such as yourself to be able to learn the things you didn’t know already. Who has the time to visit the learning annex every Wednesday night just to listen to some old stiff coat ramble on about modern poetry? If your work and home life don’t allow you to go out and do such stuff, then sit in front of the computer and use the power of the internet to guide you toward knowledge.

The database is broken up into several categories that might sound vaguely familiar such as Math, Science, Language Arts, and Health. The real gems lie in the categories such as Theology, Business and Finance, and Social Sciences. The courses themselves are from real universities and colleges such as The University of Notre Dame, Utah State University, and Tufts University to name a few. If you’ve got some spare time at home, and you can’t swing going back to school, this might be a great option. Send your students to this site, too, if they don’t have too much homework already, that is. - JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Online Education Database

Monday by the Numbers

December 17, 2007

Numbers6 Things to Remember When Cramming for Finals - Some of the advice here might seem pretty obvious, but study skills are usually not the type of thing anyone is close to perfecting any time soon– so any advice is good advice. Take a peek at this list of 6 things that might help you or your students focus enough to ace those finals. From CollegeScholarships.org

50 Top 10 Lists of 2007 - Normally, I wouldn’t put this kind of hooey on an upstanding site like our own, but this list is actually as fun as it is informative. Plus, with Time Magazine behind the wheel, these lists are actually interesting and well put together. The topics range from categories such as News, Entertainment to Business, Tech & Sports. This might inspire your students to come up with their own Top 10 lists, or it might just serve as a reminder of all of 2007’s best (and worst) moments.

13 Web Based Word Processors - Personally, I am about at the end of my rope with Microsoft Word. It feels familiar and yet archaic at the same time. With so much open-source software and web based applications, it seems a shame to waste what’s available for free. So, how do you decide how and when (and to what) you’d like to make the change? This guide from Lifehack might be a great place to start. My current crush is on iNetWord.

-JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

(Photo credit: Stewf)

It’s All Greek (Mythology) to Me

December 6, 2007

MythwebAs far fetched as some of the ancient Greeks’ ideas seemed, they sure did get a lot done when it came to technology and storytelling. Though it’s safe to say that the polytheist society of the Greeks has long since gone, there are still symbols and repetition of ideas in modern society. Mythweb.com is a fun, educational site dedicated to retelling the Greek myths of yesteryear in a fashion that is befitting of a modern time. The site itself is well put together, with fun illustrated versions of the Gods and heroes’ tales. All the classics are here, including The Odyssey, Hercules’ Labors, and even Perseus– everyone’s favorite Gorgon-slaying hero.

Mythology was one of the first things I can remember learning in grade school, and I still retain a lot of information to this day. This site offers a great way of reading the legends and speaks to people of all generations. There are printable versions (.pdf) of many of the tales, so these might make for great handouts to accompany any mythology lesson. There’s even a new comprehensive section that relates how we use Greek mythology in today’s world. — JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Mythweb

Make Science U Your Alma Mater

November 28, 2007

Science UForget about struggling over getting that Ph.D. or Master’s degree– now you can get all the science knowledge you need from Science U online. The site is actually designed to help younger students understand the many aspects of science through a series of activities and sections in a cartoony online university, but my guess is that it’s just as accredited as Phoenix or  the ilk. Science U is chock full of activities, illustrated and animated explanations, experiments and a Science graphics store if you’re willing to shell out some change for a star chart or something.

Check out the “studio” if you want to add pictures from the site for larger viewing sizes, or sign up for a free “locker” which will keep the files and photos you’ve visited for the next time you log in. In the “library,” you can search the articles within the site, or you can browse the Special Exhibits, where you’ll find things like this neat Fractal Landscape Generator. Science U might not get you that job at Cedar Sinai, but it will at least aide you and your students in finding all the science info you can shake a stick at. –JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Science U

Don’t Waste Time Studying, Learn it the First Time Around

November 19, 2007

Lifehack comes to the rescue once again by providing this useful and succinct article that suggests that studying less and learning something right the first time around is more beneficial than repeating and reviewing information over and over again. In ‘How to Study Less by Learning Things Once’ writer Scott Young helps readers to imagine the brain as a structure full of holes, and that by reviewing study material over and over, we are really just putting a band-aid over a sieve.

A student himself, Young seems as good a candidate as any to write about effective study habits. He breaks the process into steps, offering guidance along the way and giving tips on how to maintain the techniques that work best for you. Some are merely mnemonic devices that we should all know by now, but there are other bits of wisdom such as ‘your brain is not a computer,’ that will help learners rethink their study habits. Students can surely benefit from the steps here, and they might even stop blaming you when they claim to be ‘tired from studying ALL night’. –JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

How To Study Less by Learning Things Once