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TH8 – AplusMath

AplusMath

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http://aplusmath.com/

AplusMath.com is a website where students can go for extra Math help. This website has help for addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, geometry, and algebra. This is a free website that has worksheets, flashcards, homework help, and interactive games for the students to play.

Pros: 

This website is great for students who need that extra bit of help outside of the classroom or if you want to have a Math technology station set up in the room where the students can get on computers or iPads and play educational games.

Cons:

Students might need a parent or other adult around to help read all the text. (There is alot of text for a Math website!) There are many ads, and because they are for the Math help as well, it is hard to determine what is safe to click on and what is not. This website seems geared mostly towards upper elementary students and beyond.

Assessments:

You could use this website as a check for your students. By assigning a certain game for them to play or by bringing up the website on your computer or SmartBoard, you can check your students’ understanding of the concept and see how many they miss and how many they get right. You could also time them to see how automatic these facts and concepts are to them.

Standard examples:

1.OA.B.3 – Apply properties of operations as strategies to add and subtract

1.OA.B.4 – Understand subtraction as an unknown-addend problem

1.OA.C.5 – Relate counting to addition and subtraction

1.OA.C.6 – Add and subtract within 20, demonstrating fluency for addition and subtraction withing 10

2.OA.B.2 – Fluently add and subtract within 20 using mental strategies

3.OA.A.4 – Determine the unknown whole number in a multiplication or division equation relating three whole numbers

3.OA.B.5 – Apply properties of operations as strategies to multiply and divide

 

Resources:

Aplusmath.com. (2014.) AplusMath. Retrieved from http://aplusmath.com/

Common Core State Standards Initiative. (2012.) Mathematics >> Home >> Mathematics. Retrieved from http://www.corestandards.org/Math

TH7 – Kansas Historical Foundation

Kansas Historical Foundation

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http://www.kansasmemory.org/

The Kansas Historical Foundation has many great resources on its website. Clicking on the tab at the top that says Teachers brings you to a page where you can turn on the “teacher view”. This will cause standards to pop up for all grade levels, and by clicking on any of them, you are taken to pages in their website containing information that correspond with those standards.

Pros:

The History lessons that can be developed from all the super cool information on here are endless! The different articles on here can also be used as supplemental resources for anything that you are teaching, such as the Underground Railroad, the evolution of transportation, etc.

Cons:

The standards on here are for Kansas. Teachers will have to look at the Ohio state standards and compare them to the Kansas state standards to determine which standard to click on to get the best information. There are no lesson plans on this website. This is simply a website that provides additional resources.

Assessments:

Students can use this website, or at least articles from this website to create/enhance projects after learning about specific topics. For example, after learning about the Underground Railroad, students can look up examples of letters and journals written by slaves escaping to freedom and use those as examples as they write their own journal detailing their escape.

Standard examples:

Kindergarten – Historical Thinking and Skills – Personal history can be shared through stories and pictures

Kindergarten – Spatial Thinking and Skills – Models and maps represent places

Kindergarten – Human Systems – Individuals are unique but share common characteristics of multiple groups

1st Grade – Historical Thinking and SkillsPhotographs, letters, artifacts, and books can be used to learn about the past

1st Grade – Markets – People trade to obtain goods and services they want

2nd Grade – Heritage – Science and technology have changed daily life

Resources:

Kansas Historical Society. (2014.) Kansas Memory. Retrieved from http://www.kansasmemory.org/

Ohio Department of Education. (2012.) Social Studies. Retrieved from http://education.ohio.gov/getattachment/Topics/Academic-Content-Standards/Social-Studies/K-8-Social-Studies-Standards-Updated-September-2012.pdf.aspx

TH6 – FOSSweb

FOSSweb – The Full Option Science System website

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http://www.fossweb.com/home

FOSSweb.com is a website dedicated to all things science. You can log in as a teacher, as part of a class, or visit as a guest. (The guest version does not have as many viewable options.) This website has many great resources for students, parents, teachers, and administrators (especially if you have an account with them).

Pros:

Once you become a member, this website has many great resources. You have access to all of the materials, assessments, any kits or data sheets needed, and digital resources. All the topics are connected to the standards of your state (which you choose when you first register). This is a fairly easy website to navigate, and you can bookmark any modules or materials that you like on your account page. Plus, you can create pages for your students to access once you set them up with a class username and password.

Cons:

Not all of the website is available if you are simply viewing it as a guest. Even as a member, some of the resources are still missing. You have to activate the modules with specific keycodes to get access to ALL of the resources. (I’m not sure where to get these keycodes.)

Standard examples:

Kindergarten – Life Science – Living things have physical traits and behaviors, which influence their survival

1st Grade – Life Science – Living things have basic needs, which are met by obtaining materials from the physical environment

2nd Grade – Physical Science – Forces change the motion of an object

Resources:

FOSS. (2014.) FOSSweb. Retrieved from http://www.fossweb.com/home.

Ohio Department of Education. (2012.) Grades K-8 Science Revised Standards and Model Curriculum. Retrieved from http://education.ohio.gov/Topics/Academic-Content-Standards/Science

TH5 – The Field Museum

The Field Museum

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http://fieldmuseum.org/

Fieldmuseum.org is a website that gives information about not only the actual Field Museum itself in Chicago, Illinois, but it also has teacher resources that educators can use. By clicking on the Schools and Education tab, teachers can go explore what the Field Museum has available as resources.

This website includes a few resources for teachers, including lesson plans, programs, and even a way to bring the museum to you (http://harris.fieldmuseum.org/index/default.php).

Pros:

The website has so really cool lesson plans for grades 3-8. Depending on the lesson that you choose to use, there are standards for Mathematics, Science, History, Language Arts, or Fine Arts, or all of these content areas.

Cons:

  • Most of the lessons go hand-in-hand with a field trip to the Field Museum. Unless you live in Illinois or they have some kind of online way to view the exhibits in the museum, you can’t go to the Field Museum and use these lessons before, or after, being there.
  • The standards on these lesson plans are all for Illinois. Teachers will have to change these standards to fit the Ohio standards.
  • Not all of the lesson plans have assessments included in them. In that case, it won’t be that difficult to come up with assessments that go along with the lesson plans.
  • The website does not have as many resources as I would like. More of the resources are at the museum instead of on the website.

Standard examples:

RI.3.1 – Ask and answer questions to demonstrate understanding of a text, referring explicitly to the text as the basis for the answers

RI.3.2 – Determine the main idea of a text; recount the key details and explain how they support the main idea

RI.3.3 – Describe the relationship between a series of historical events, scientific ideas or concepts, or steps in technical procedures in a text, using language that pertains to time, sequence, and cause/effect

Resources:

Common Core State Standards Initiative. (2012.) English Language Arts Standards >> Home >> English Language Arts Standards. Retrieved from http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy

The Field Museum. (2014). The Field Museum. Retrieved from http://fieldmuseum.org/

TH4 – Coding

Code

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http://code.org/

This website is where anyone can go to learn how to code (coding for computers, that is). There are resources for how to use this is grades K-8, but they don’t go very in-depth. This website is more to get students and others interested in coding and then have them go research this topic more on their own.

Code.org helps students (and other beginners) to take baby steps towards writing their own codes. This website introduces coding as a game, using Angry Birds as the game that students use to begin their journey towards coding.

Upsides:

  • This website is very interactive for the students, as they are basically playing a game as they learn how to code.
  • You can use this game, as well as maps that you can rotate and move around, to talk to students about directions and develop their map reading skills.

Downsides:

  • This game does not actually show the coding to the students. They have to hit the “show code” button after they have completed each level to see what they’ve just written. However, unless you are having the students write down the code, or have some other way to keep the students accountable, there is no way for you to check to make sure that they are actually learning the codes. In reality, they are probably just viewing it as a game.

If you use this in your classroom with your students (preferably 4th grade and above), it is important to make sure that that students understand that each line of code is for ONE move (or action). This is an important concept that they will need to know if they want to continue writing code themselves.

Standard examples:

Standard 1: Nature of Technology – Students develop an understanding of technology, its characteristics, scope, core concepts, and relationships between technologies and other fields

Standard 3: Technology for Productivity Applications – Students learn the operations of technology through the usage of technology and productivity tools

Resources:

Code.org. (2014). Code. Retrieved from http://code.org/

Ohio Department of Education. (2012). Ohio’s 2003 Academic Content Standards in Technology. Retrieved from http://education.ohio.gov/getattachment/Topics/Academic-Content-Standards/Technology/Ohio-s-2003-Academic-Content-Standards-in-Technolo/Technology_ACS.pdf.aspx

TH3 – Smithsonian Education

Smithsonian Education

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http://smithsonianeducation.org/index.html

SmithsonianEducation.org is a website set up by the Smithsonian for teachers, parents, and students to access. This website contains so much information just waiting for someone to dive in to. This website is free, no subscriptions or signing up needed.

The students page is very user-friendly, with links to different activities that the students can do, as well as different topics that the students can explore: Everything Art, Science and Nature, History and Culture, and People and Places. These topics lead to different games and activities for the students to do to learn more.

The teachers page is also very user-friendly. Here, there are lesson plans that are free to download. Topics include: Art and Design, Science and Technology, History and Culture, and Language Arts. You can also search for other resources by grade, subject, and keyword, or you can search other resources that line up with the Common Core by standard, grade, and subject.

Ideas for usage:

This website already has everything, including how teachers can use assessments and pre-assessments with the lesson plans provided. If there are no assessments provided with the lesson plans, it is fairly simple to come up with one that is based on the lesson plan you are using.

Teachers can so many different topics across the curriculum using this website. They have so many different resources for you to search through.

Standard examples:

Kindergarten – Heritage – Heritage is reflected through the arts, customs, traditions, family celebrations, and language

Kindergarten – Historical Thinking and Skills – Time can be measured

1st Grade – Heritage – The way basic human needs are met has changed over time

3rd Grade – Places and Regions – Daily life is influenced by the agriculture, industry, and natural resources in different communities

Resources:

Ohio Department of Education. (2012). Social Studies. Retrieved from http://education.ohio.gov/getattachment/Topics/Academic-Content-Standards/Social-Studies/K-8-Social-Studies-Standards-Updated-September-2012.pdf.aspx

Smithsonian Institution. (2013). Smithsonian Education. Retrieved from http://smithsonianeducation.org/index.html

TH2 – Storyline Online

Storyline Online

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http://www.storylineonline.net/

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Storyline Online is a website where famous people, such as Betty White, Al Gore, Sean Astin, James Earl Jones, and others, read popular kids books. There are currently 25 different books and readers on the website. No subscription is needed to play the videos. You can search the website by book title, author, or reader. The website has a place where you can give a donation to the Screen Actors Guild Foundation, which is the group that is behind this website, trying to help student literacy grow. (See the link for more information: http://www.storylineonline.net/about/ )

There are so many different ways that this website could be used in a classroom.

Some of the ideas that I came up with are:

  • Use this as a brain break for the students. If you have some free time during the day or need the students to sit and calm down for a few minutes, play a video. This will give them a chance to relax and calm down for a few minutes, as well as still be something educational.
  • Use this when studying a specific author or genre. If I’m introducing David Shannon books to my students, I could play A Bad Case of Stripes written by David Shannon and read by Sean Astin. The students will enjoy it and it will also give them a chance to hear a book read by someone other than you.
  • Use this when introducing your students to reading with inflection. You could read to students one way (i.e., like a robot – no inflection) and then have them listen to a story read on Storyline Online. Read them another book (or the same book) with a different inflection so that the students get exposed to different ways to read the same book.
  • Use this to introduce a project. Maybe you are talking about bullying and being different in you class. You could play them the video of David Shannon’s A Bad Case of Stripes and have the students write how they think the little girl felt when the kids in her class teased her. Maybe they could write her a letter telling her why it’s okay to be different.
  • Use this as a listening center in your classroom. Our students all learn in a different way. By having this website available for the students to access, along with the book in their hands to follow along with, the students who learn best through hearing will have that extra help.

Standard examples:

SL.K.2 – Confirm understanding of a text read aloud or information presented orally or through other media by asking and answering questions about key details and requesting clarification if something is not understood

SL.1.2 – Ask and answer questions about key details in a text read aloud or information presented orally or through other media

SL.2.2 – Recount or describe key ideas or details from a text read aloud or information presented orally or though other media

Resources:

Common Core State Standards Initiative. (2012). English Language Arts >> Home >> English Language Arts. Retrieved from http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy

SAG Foundation. (2014). Storyline Online. Retrieved from http://www.storylineonline.net/

 

TH1 – The Glories of Pinterest

Pinterest. It can be an amazing resource in your classroom (if used correctly!)

https://www.pinterest.com/

But what is Pinterest?

Pinterest is like an online version of your bookmarks bar, only in website format. Plus it has pictures! On this website, you can search any idea that you might have, find pictures of it, which will link you (in most cases) to a website where you can get more information, and then you can pin these links (in the form of the pictures) to a virtual bulletin board.

Pinterest Boards

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To start a new board, you simply have to create a free account, and then just have something you want to look for. You can name your boards anything you like, make them secret or public, decide if they belong in any specific category, and even provide a description of the board.

Creating a board

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But what’s the point of using Pinterest? Is there anything educational about it at all?

It depends on how you use it. If you are using this in a classroom to work on a class project, then yes, this can be very educational. But if you’re just using it to post funny quotes that you find or pictures of your favorite TV show, then no, it’s not very educational.

Standards you could use:

First Grade:

  • RL.1.2 – Retell stories, including key details, and demonstrate understanding of their central message or lesson

Some students are visual learners and need pictures to help them understand and fully connect to what they are hearing. Students can create boards on Pinterest that include pictures of the events in the story being told. As the students retell the story, they can point to, or click on, the pictures that pertain to that part of the story.

Three Little Pigs Story Board

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  • RL1.7 – Use illustrations and details in a story to describe its characters, setting, or events (RL1.3 can be used for this same purpose)
  • RL1.9 – Compare and contrast the adventures and experiences of characters in stories
  • SL.1.5 – Add drawings or other visual displays to descriptions when appropriate to clarify ideas, thoughts, and feelings

Second Grade:

  • RL.2.9 – Compare and contrast two or more versions of the same story (e.g., Cinderella stories) by different authors or from different cultures
  • SL.2.5 – Create audio recordings of stories or poems; add drawings or other visual displays to stories or recounts of experiences when appropriate to clarify ideas, thoughts, and feelings

Third Grade:

  • RL3.3 – Describe characters in a story (e.g., their traits, motivations, or feelings) and explain how their actions contributed to the sequence of events
  • RL.3.9 – Compare and contrast the themes, settings, and plots of stories written by the same author about the same or similar characters (e.g., in books from a series)
  • RI.3.3 – Describe the relationship between a series of historical events,scientific ideas or concepts, or steps in a technical text, using language that pertains to time, sequence, and cause/effect
  • SL3.2 – Determine the main ideas and supporting details of a text read aloud or information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and orally
  • Sl.3.5 – Create engaging audio recordings of stories or poems that demonstrate fluid reading at an understandable pace; add visual displays when appropriate to emphasize or enhance certain facts or details

These standards all relate to English/Language Arts, but I’m sure that if you looked for them, you could find ways to incorporate Pinterest into Science, History, Math, and Art standards.

Head out to Pinterest.com to get started in your class today!