It's getting harder and harder to teach 7th graders about 9/11 because as each year passes, younger students remember less about that tragic day. Lessons about the remembrance of 9/11 used to involve personal anecdotes and raw emotion. Now, 9/11 lessons are consumed with misconceptions and other peoples' stories. My 7th graders have a hard time remembering where they were when the towers were hit and why that moment is significant. This requires a different kind of approach.
I found an awesome lesson idea on the TCI blog that asks students to write about what they remember about 9/11 and then create a word cloud using Tagxedo that can be posted in the classroom.
I love this idea, but like I said, it is becoming difficult to ask the students to write recall their own memories of 9/11. I think this might be a great opportunity to practice interviewing skills. Students can ask someone else, someone older, about their memories of 9/11. As a class, come up with effective interview questions. Then, students can either transcribe the interview into Tagxedo, or they can write a summary of the interview. When they are done, they can create their word clouds and post them around the room. I think the most interesting part would be to see which words are used most frequently. What common themes run through all of the memories of that tragic day?
I absolutely love a well-organized, user-friendly, visually appealing resource that shares links to new web tools and applications! I found a gem. eduTecher (no, that's not a typo). Isn't it lovely?! So clean and approachable.
Using this search criteria sidebar, you can narrow down your search by grade or subject if you're looking for something in particular. Also, as you click, the results are modified instantly. Each item has a detailed description, as well as options to share or comment.
I could honestly spend hours looking through these tools. In fact, I found some great ones already that I can't wait to share with my students.
Ahead. is the new Prezi. Not sure if it's as user-friendly, but neither was Prezi at first. Ahead. is still in beta. Might be a little much for middle school, but looks worthwhile.
Animaps is a user-friendly web-based program that allows you to make animated maps. I love this for my 7th graders. Much easier for them to create than Google Earth tours and they are more animated.
I've heard of CNN Student News, but stumbling upon it on eduTecher made me remember how great it is! As a social studies teacher, with a curriculum that focuses on current events, this has great resources. The news stories are appropriate for my middle schoolers, videos are accompanied by transcripts, and there are discussion questions and quizzes. I think I will be using this much more in the coming school year.
Take some time to explore eduTecher. Even if you don't find anything new, it may remind you of some useful tools that have been bookmarked and put on the back burner for too long.
Welcome back to school! I know I've slacked...can you call it slacking when you haven't even written 10 posts? Let's see if I can be better about posting some resources on this little blog.
Every year, I try to evaluate the technology I've used in the past and the technology I've bookmarked to use, and decide what will make the cut. This year, I think I am making a full commitment Google. I have a tendency to overwhelm my students with technology. We dabble with this and that, and store things here and there. I forget that even though they are digital natives, they do not have the developmental skills to keep all of these resources organized. So this year, I want t make a change.
My school has finally heard my cries and gave all of our students Google accounts! Because Google is basically taking over the Internet, and also other facets of our existence, I am thinking I am going to Google-tize my students!
So here's what I'm thinking...
GMail accounts for email, obviously
Google Docs...no excuses for lost work!
Google Calendar for due dates and homework
Google Task for their personal To-Do lists
Google Notebook to...uh...take notes. Paperless classroom?!?
Google Blogger for a class blog, and create their own
Google Reader to track all of these new class blogs
Google Sites for student websites and possibly online portfolios
GChat for collaboration
Google Hangout for even better collaboration and global connections!
The possibilities are endless! So now the big question is, should each student design his/her own iGoogle homepage to store all of these gadgets for easy access? I have a tendency of overwhelming kids with too many programs and applications. Is iGoogle a solution or is it the same old problem??? I'd love to hear how other teacher keep their kids' technology organized. And how far do you go with Google?
I've mentioned in an earlier post that my students love Current Events Friday! All week the kids watch the news and keep up with local, national, and world events. Two students sign up to present two articles every Friday. We put the desks in a circle to create more of a discussion than a presentation. I like the comfort level this naturally creates. When each presenter is done with an article, he or she asks the class if they have any questions which they should be prepared to answer...as best they can! I'd rather they admit that they can't answer a question and then have someone in the class grab a laptop to learn more. Once all of the presentations are finished, we open the floor to anyone else who would like to share a news story, and then we watch the news and discuss stories that interest us. The kids love it!
One thing that I require of each presenter is that at least one of their stories is an international event. This can sometimes be a challenge for middle level students, not only locating these stories but also making sense of their context. I have shown them how to use Google News effectively, but yesterday I found something that will be an extremely useful tool for next year.
With this website, Newspaper Map, one can find newspapers from around the world plotted on a map. Now, it couldn't be easier to find international stories. The best part is that they are color coded by language, and if a newspaper is not printed in English, Google Translator will translate it into English (or any language of your choice) with the click of a button! I love a site that truly connects the world.
I love me a good resource! Not one that is hidden behind a lot of theory and data...just stuff you can use! My friend @JohnMVenner retweeted this gem today. Right now, my building is focusing heavily on questioning. Not just teachers asking the right questions, but getting students to ask effective questions. Here is a beautiful resource with graphic organizers and short descriptions for how to help students generate their own questions. These particular examples are designed to use with newspapers, but these tools can certainly be fixed to fit all of your questioning activities. Essential Question Resources
If you go back and read my very first blog, you will find a super-ambitious goal that I set for myself...one post a day on this here blog. So, 2 months and only 7 posts later. here we are. Thank goodness @khornberger got me back on track. How about a new goal? 2 per week? That may be more realistic for now.
So on to the post...
The trouble with setting students loose to do research on Google is that while it can be exciting, it can also be risky. While I am all for free exploration, there are some difficulties that arise when a student is left to his or her own devices. Of course there's the dreaded adult sites, ads, junk sites, and of course, long boring text without pictures...but what about sites that students just can't understand? Or, what about sites that don't challenge those advanced readers?
Google has managed to be awesome again. Within their advanced search options, you can search by reading level! I know this is nothing new, but it is worth mentioning.
I have used this to differentiate reading material for students of different reading levels. What's more impressive is when students use this search feature themselves and challenge themselves to intermediate or even advanced readings. When you are entering your search fields, you can use the drop down menu to either choose a specific reading level, or you can choose for the search to specify the reading levels of the filtered resources. This is something worth checking out when planning lessons, research projects, or directing the students to find resources for themselves.
I love when you stumble upon a hidden gem on the web. The Lottery of Life wandered into my world a few weeks ago and I thought it was awesome way to encourage kids to see the world from another person's shoes. Make sure you have your sound on!
The site takes a looong time to load. You'll know it's ready when a little arrow pops up on the upper right side of the wheel that says Spin the Wheel. Then it will load again. ...I've been lucky and had quick loads here and there, but I have also had to wait quite a bit.
Anyway, you'll spin and spin and then land in a setting. A baby will cry (that's you) and it will tell you where you were born. There will be a list of problems that exist in your country, as well as links where you can learn more about your country. By clicking on the problems, you can learn more about them and also see what is being done to solve those problems.
The students love this site because they talk about where they were born and then exchange stories about what life must be like there. It is amazing to see their level of engagement and excitement. They ask questions and eagerly further their research.
I used this site within our Human Rights unit. On our class blog, I asked the students to write one well-written reply to the question, which human right is most valuable to you? Then, after the spun the Lottery of Life wheel, they have to write a second reply to the same question but this time from the perspective of a child from the country that they landed on. The last step was for students to respond to one another. This piece was invaluable because it created a lot of, "really? that happens?" realizations and other rich dialogue. Something else I observed was that students who don't typically do homework were asking if they could finish the assignment at home, since the website took so long to load. I told them that they would have time in class the next day, but who am I to tell a student that he/she can't go home and learn??? By all means, I said.
Every week, my students celebrate Current Events Friday...I'm not sure how much a of a celebration it actually is, but we enjoy putting our desks into a discussion circle and sharing what's been going on in the news that week.
In the first week of school, I have the students sign up for one day to lead the discussion. They expectation is that they will follow the news that week and come in on Friday, prepared to share two stories--one of international importance and one of their choice. I don't ask that anything be turned in or written because I want this to be casual and not "extra work." I think by removing the pressure of turning in an assignment, the students are more motivated and enthusiastic. After the student shares his/her articles, they answer any questions their peers may have, and then we let the class share any other news they heard that week. If we do happen to run out of things to talk about, which does not happen often, we watch the news. The students really look forward to Current Events Friday! It's also a perfect way to wrap up the week.
I came across this on Twitter today thanks to @shannonmmiller. I'm not sure if it has a place in my classroom, but it might be a fun way to quickly share the news with students. I'd like to see my kids create something like this themselves, but then I wrestle with the question of whether the time and work is worth the desired outcome? Do my students already effectively meet the learning objectives of becoming aware of the news around the world via Current Events Friday or would this be a valuable addition to the routine? Maybe make it an option???
That's my poor attempt at a word blend for Bloom and Google. Here's why. I am working with my team to become a sort of school within a school. We want our team to move ahead when it comes to technology integration. I came across this great blog post by Richard Byrne (@rmbyrne) on his blog Free Technology for Teachers. By the way, this is an incredible site for resources! He is actually sharing the work of another amazing blogger and tech-leader, Kathy Schrock.
Anyway, back to Bloogle. As my team is figuring out how to best integrate technology in order to create the optimal learning experience for our students, we are finding ourselves stuck between an overwhelming number of resources and trying to figure out how to use those resources most effectively. In trying to incorporate technology, we don't want to lose sight of learning objectives, standards, and anchors because--well, let's be honest--the kids must do well on the test! I hate admitting that.
I take a lot of time to teach my students Bloom's levels of understanding. I challenge them to take their own learning and understanding to the next level...and they do! Yet I also tend to overwhelm them with technology tools. I try to show them Web2.0 possibilities, but it gets lost when we jump from program to program to achieve different outcomes. They are overwhelmed by passwords and account creation...in fact, that takes up a great deal of our class time.
I am a big fan of Google and believe that they are leading the way when it comes to integrating tools and content. I am excited to say that my school finally took the jump to allow each student a Google account! now, we can use these great programs with them. One user name, one password. Consistency!
She has created a resource where you can see which Google tools support different levels of Bloom's Taxonomy. I especially love that each icon is a button that takes you directly to the program! Very useful. This is something I would share with the teachers on my team, but also with my students. In fact, we just had a discussion this morning about how we do not want to use technology to deliver information, but let the kids use the technology to demonstrate their learning to us...duh. As if this is new. We just want to keep reminding ourselves.
I'm not sure if I have mentioned this, but we recently rewrote the social studies curriculum. I was teaching the Middle Ages around the world. Even I had trouble seeing the relevence and worth of this content in the 21st century classroom. My new course is Global Awareness. We look at world issues, follow current events, and use technology to make global connections. People worried that 7th grade might be too young for this type of curriculum, but I think it's a perfect age. They are open-minded, interested, and inquisitive! Plus, our department wanted to test a sort of backwards approach theory. In 7th grade, students will learn where we are currently and generate an interest in social issues, culture, and geography. Then, studnets might be interested in learning the history of how we got here and what came before us.
This is my first year teaching this course and so far I think it's going very well! Students are going home and talking about real issues. They are asking questions that matter and debating topics that impact them directly.
I am excited about all of the great resources out there that help to support my textbook-less classroom. Thank goodness I hopped on the Twitter bandwagon when I did. You can check out our Links page for all of our great finds. Well, mine anyway. Ian has yet to link up.
Here is one that I found via Twitter yesterday. I can talk to the kids all day about the state of affairs in different countries, but numbers don't mean much unless that have something to compare them to. IfItWereMyHome.com is a great website that does just that.
If you choose one of the countries from the tag cloud on the bottom of the page, it creates a map that overlays an image of that country on top of the U.S. to give an idea of the realtive size. Then, there is a list of comparisons that relates infant mortality rates and income per capita, but it kid-friendly language. For example, If you lived in Burma instead of the United States, you would make 93.76% less money. By the way, I never realized how big Burma was!
We'll be using this in class to make comparisons to different countries as they come up in discussion. I have also been working closely with the math teacher on my team (new to Twitter, @JohnMVenner) who has been creating infographics with students to represent country data. This will bea great resource for us to share as we work to make our 7thgraders more aware and empathetic of the way people live around the world.
I was recently looking for something just like this! I love the way it is so easy to navigate and how the color coding offers a quick glimpse of the chain of events in each country. Also, I am a keep it simple kind of girl. When you hover your cursor over each event on the timeline, a short summary of events pops up in the upper left country. Even better, they give you a link to more complete article. I showed this to my students and they loved it! Definitely check it out.
Update: Today we started the research activity as part of our World Water Day unit. The kids were really interested in the articles provided by water.org.
Today is World Water Day! You can visit water.org for excellent resources. They also have great videos to share with students. Here is one that I will be showing....
On this day, we like to not only teach our students about the global water crisis, but also about solutions. On a local level, we use this time to teach safe and conservative water habits. I am so lucky to work with a team of people who are always enthusiastic about interdisciplinary projects! Here is what we did this year to celebrate World Water Day.
Thursday, March 17
I introduced World Water Day to my social studies classes through an apple demonstration and a water commons simulation. I also wrote on the board, "we all live downstream." This was our essential question of the day. We opened up with this and then kept coming back to it after each activity.
For the apple demonstration, I brought the largest apple I could to each class and told the students it represented Earth. I asked them how much of the Earth is water, to which they quickly replied "75%!" So I cut away 1/4 of the apple and told them it represented the land on our planet. I picked up the other 3/4 and told them that it represented the water. We agreed it looked like a lot of water so we started to discuss how there could possibly be a water crisis? I cut a tiny sliver of the apple and told them that it represented the freshwater on our planet, 3%. Then, I cut 1/3 of that away. I asked why we couldn't drink it. 1/3 of our freshwater is locked up in glaciers and ice caps. Then I cut the remains 2/3 in half. I asked why we couldn't drink one half of what remained. The students promptly replied: pollution (we discussed what kinds of pollution exist), access, political boundaries, fear of attacks, etc. It was a great discussion and got us ready for the next few days. We also got to eat the sliced up apples! ...any excuse to give healthy food to students!
After the demo, I followed up with this water commons lab.
After lab, we discussed, again, what it means to say that "we all live downstream." I think the message really began to sink in. All the pieces were in place for World Water Day.
Friday, March 18
Again, I can't thank my team enough for jumping on board. Our science teacher gave all of the students a weekend task. They had to track their water usage for one weekend. She found this great handout in a Google Doc. We only used the tracking sheet for our purposes.
Tuesday, March 22 - WORLD WATER DAY!
During 3rd period, all of our classes did the same thing. We all looked at the data that the students collected over the weekend and also looked at some of the curriculum resources from water.org and held whole-class discussions. We mostly discussed some of the facts provided by water.org and watched the video above.
The afternoon was the best! Each teacher had a team of about 20 students and each team had their own color to help with team unity. First, we read and discussed "Women Bear the Weight of Water" which we used from water.org. It can be found on page 8 of the following curriculum resource.
After discussion and some team building, we headed outside. We started off with water relays. Teams of 10 had to pass off gallon jugs of water, on their heads! Then, we had an endurance competition. 10 representatives from each team had to walk as many laps as they could carrying a one gallon jug of water, of course, on their heads. It was great! The kids had fun coming up with cheers and making posters. We gave them all team colors to help their team spirit. In the end we had a reflection worksheet and follow-up discussion. This really was a fun way to let the kids get a glimpse at what life is like for people who have to travel far distances to get water for their families. Also, it was great for morale!
Wednesday, March 23 & Thursday, March 24 - Follow-Up
Math and social studies are taking the reigns from here. In math, the students are doing a few things. They are looking at real water bills and learning how to decipher them and determine water usage. Also, they are using GapMinder to find the water usage for other countries. They will use this data to create an infographic where the area of a country's circle will represent the water usage for that country.
In my social studies classes, students will be grouped to research the water crises in India, Kenya, Honduras, Ethiopia, and Bangladesh. This was also borrowed from water.org, excpet slightly modified to fit my needs. They have great information on these five countries, short enough for quick research but thorough enough to really impress the point that people do not have equal access to safe drinking water. You can find the lesson on page 4 of this curriculum resource, again, from water.org.
We had a great day today and I am really looking forward to seeing the student's infographics and mini-presentations. Hopefully you can use some of these ideas in your own classroom. Happy to share...afterall, this lesson wouldn't have been possible without others' willingness to share!
Are you as excited as Ian is?!? So...only four years into teaching, we have accumulated quite an archive of resources. Each night, we read other people's blogs and benefit from what they have to share. After he and I went to TEDxNYED (amazing experience by the way!), we decided it was our turn to share. Here is our best attempt at blogging about what we find and how we fix it to make it our own.
Goal: to blog about one new find and/or fix each day! Ambitious? Yes. Possible? Totally.
