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2009-11-09T00:00:00-08:00

Myebook - get it out there!

Teaching Math with the 'Tubes

2009-11-01T15:24:00.001-05:00

One of the more popular posts on this blog was one I wrote about using YouTube as an instructional tool. Though YouTube does have its fair share of videos with some educational value, teachers have to be careful when recommending the site to students (hopefully the reasons are obvious). For this reason, many of us have started recommending sites like TeacherTube and SchoolTube to our students. Both of these sites house thousands of videos that were created by teachers and their students.

One problem with the videos on these two sites is that they may not be “just right”—they may not teach the skills or concepts your students are learning the way you would teach them. I've encountered this problem, so this year I've decided that I needed to do more than just direct my students to the sites--I needed to add some instructional videos myself. A couple weeks ago, I started making my own videos using SMART Recorder: the SMART tool that lets teachers record their SMARTBoard lessons, complete with voice narration, and save them as a Windows Media file. After recording the videos, I upload them to SchoolTube and then embed them on my classroom wiki. I’ve created just four videos to this point, but so far I feel they have been a big success. Here's why:

There is more time in class for homework/enrichment/problem-solving - Though we have 55 minute math periods (a dream for most math teachers), I often find myself teaching up until the final minutes of class. Now that my students are viewing videos of the lessons, I can review the concepts/skills on the video and answer any questions the kids might have in a fraction of the time it would have taken me to teach the lesson. This leaves more time for kids to work on homework in class. More importantly, the instruction time saved will eventually free up time for enrichment activities like problem-solving and lessons on math concepts that don’t fall into the traditional curriculum (fractals, Fibonacci sequence, etc.).
I have lessons for kids who are absent – I’ve already heard from parents that the videos have been helpful for students who are absent. They have been watching the videos at home and, as a result, haven’t fallen as far behind as they normally would have.
Students can review the videos to prepare for tests and quizzes – The videos are there for eternity (or until Wikispaces closes up shop), so the kids can always go back and use them as review for tests and quizzes.

Now that you know how using the videos can benefit you, let’s get into how you make them. As I said, I make mine using SMART Recorder. This allows you to set up a lesson on SMART Notebook and teach it like you would in class (without the student interaction of course). Though it takes a little preparation, you don't have to memorize every action and word because you can pause your recording and then pick up where you left off. I keep my videos short--the longest one was just over 7 minutes--and lately I've tried to add a little enthusiasm to them. It's easy to speak in a monotone voice when you're focused on the quality of the lesson in the video.

As with every web-based instructional tool, there are issues with access--not every kid has the Internet at home. To deal with this, I create the videos ahead of time and give enough notice so that students without access to technology can make arrangements to watch them. In my school, we have a computer lab that is open to students after school four days a week and an after school "homework place" that also has computers for students to use. I know that my students who do not have internet access can go to these places and watch videos if they need to. If they get desperate, they can also go to the local library.

Hopefully this post has sparked your interest and you're entertaining the idea of creating instructional videos for your students. The technology is there, why not use it?

Technorati Tags: education| learning | SchoolTube

Check out: SMARTBoard Mini-Movies | Number Properties | Angles in Geometry

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2009-10-31T00:00:00-07:00

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2009-10-28T00:00:00-07:00

Student Report Card Comments: Teacher Report Card Comments | Suite101.com

New Teaching Resources on misterteacher.com

2009-10-24T22:19:00.007-04:00

What's New on misterteacher.com

Clip Art

Rather than offer new mini-movies this month, I've created new pages with a lot of the clip art that appears in them and the related student activities. Teachers can use the clip art in their Notebook presentations or for creating worksheets. You can find the clip art on the mini-movie page, or you can just click below:

Alphabet Geometry Clip Art - If you teach geometry concepts with letters, then you'll want to check out this clip art.
Everything Geometry Clip Art - Here you'll find triangles and quadrilaterals with the symbols that help kids classify them, types of angles, and more.
Dominoes Clip Art - There's a full set of double six dominoes--perfect for teaching addition, subtraction, doubles, and family of facts.
Science Clip Art - This modest collection includes some images for teaching various forms of energy.

Math & Social Studies Printables

Introduce your students to writing in the math classroom with a popular resource on misterteacher.com. The 59 printable math prompts that you can find in the Bright Ideas section of the site (click here to see the prompts) are perfect for assessing disposition, learning, and process.

All of the webpages that you'll find in the Slavery in America and Waves of Immigration student activities are printable. Just look for the GRAB IT! button:

The printed pages (or web-based activities) would be perfect for teaching nonfiction reading or as supplements to a social studies curriculum. You can use them to teach about the following:

Slavery in America: The life of a slave before emancipation, the Underground Railroad, Negro Spirituals, and emancipation.
Waves of Immigration: Ellis Island, The Immigrant Experience, Italian Immigrants.

Look for more mini-movies in the weeks ahead. For immediate updates, follow misterteacher.com (jtubbs) on Twitter.

More Social Studies Resources: Declaration of Independence | Constitution WebQuest

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2009-10-16T00:00:00-07:00

Desert WebQuest

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2009-10-08T00:00:00-07:00

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2009-10-04T00:00:00-07:00

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2009-10-03T00:00:00-07:00

LearniT-TeachiT

New Teaching Resources on misterteacher.com

2009-09-27T22:20:00.006-04:00

SMARTBoard Mini-Movies

Using dominoes is an effective approach to teaching addition and subtraction. This month I created almost 40 new SMARTBoard mini-movies that teachers can use to teach doubles addition and family of facts with dominoes.

With the domino doubles, students can write an addition equation horizontally and then click the button to turn the domino vertically and write the equation with one number on top of the other. Family of facts dominoes present students with a domino with no dots on one side. Above the domino is a number. Using that number, and the number of dots on the domino, students must figure out the number of dots on the blank side.

More math resources: Number Properties | Integers | Circles | Alphabet Geometry

Fall is the Perfect Time to Teach about Nature & Photosynthesis

With the change of season comes less daylight. Less daylight results in the fall color change for trees. This is the perfect time to get your students outside into nature to explore a local habitat, gather some leaves, and discuss the connection between the leaf change and photosynthesis. Check out the resources below for ideas and activities:

Nature-Based Learning - A lesson where students take a field to a local ecosystem and then create a presentation about biodiversity.
Teaching about Photosynthesis and the Fall Leaf Change - Resource guide for fall lesson plans.

More science resources: Properties of Light | Thermal Energy | Forces | Magnetism & Friction

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2009-09-18T15:24:30-07:00

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Teach Multiplication with SMARTBoard Version of Circles and Stars

2009-09-07T10:03:00.003-04:00

Now teachers can use SMARTBoard mini-movies on misterteacher.com to teach multiplication with a SMARTBoard version of the dice game Circles and Stars. In the traditional version, students roll a die once to determine the number of circles. They draw the circles on paper. They then use a second roll of the die to determine the number of stars to draw inside the circles. Finally, they write a multiplication expression and product based on the circles and stars.

In the SMARTBoard version, students come to the board, push the CIRCLES button for the number of circles and then the STARS button for the number of stars. From there, students can write the multiplication expression over (or under) the mini-movie. The circles and stars animations aren't revealed until students click the buttons. There are 24 multiplication mini-movies in all so most teachers should be able to create a SMART Notebook presentation with enough problems to engage the whole class.

Have some cool ideas for using this game? Add them as a comment.

Check out: SMARTBoard Mini-movies | Light Energy | Forces | Thermal Energy

New Teaching Resources for September

2009-08-28T20:45:00.008-04:00

Student Activities

Several new student activities have been added since the last update. Teachers can find a set of three activities that will help students learn how to represent and compare integers and determine absolute value. How many computer-generated arithmetic problems can your students answer in 60 seconds? Arithmattac
k is a new math resource on misterteacher.com that teachers can use for drilling math facts.

A number of science activities have been added as well. First, there is a set of activities that teach students about thermal energy and temperature. Next, students will be able to define reflection and refraction after completing activities on the properties of light. Finally, activities on forces will teach your students about contact and non-contact forces like air resistance, gravity, magnetism, and friction.

COMING SOON! Student activities on probability, simple machines, and motion.

SMARTBoard Mini-movies

There are few new SMARTBoard mini-movies for math teachers. You can find one on parallel lines and two on parallelograms: one that shows congruent angles and one that shows congruent sides. Two new probability mini-movies are now up: coin flip and roll of the dice.

I've added a K-2 section to the library. Here you'll find mini-movies on recognizing patterns, addition and subtraction, and adding doubles. The
re will be many more mini-movies to come for this section.

There are four new science mini-movies, all on the topic of simple machines. Teach your students about the three classes of levers with two simple animations. Also, be sure to download both inclined plane movies to teach about the relationship between length and effort force.

COMING SOON! More mini-movies on K-2 math concepts, probability, and patterns (more advanced).

If you like the resources on misterteacher.com please share this post.

Please help me improve the resources on misterteacher.com. I welcome feedback and I do take suggestions on content that you would like to see as a mini-movie or student activity. Email Jamie Tubbs.

Check out: Everything Geometry Alphabet Geometry Social Studies Resources

Goal for 2009-2010: Integrate iPods into the Subject Areas

2009-08-19T07:28:00.007-04:00

A few years ago another teacher and I received a grant from Best Buy for the Online Science Fair. After purchasing the materials, we had quite a bit of money left over and decided to buy three iPods. Unfortunately, because of other priorities, the iPods were put in a box and set aside for the past three years, wasting away.

NO MORE! This year I have decided to put these tools to use. One of my goals for 2009-2010 is to find the best ways to use these three iPods in my classroom. At this point, my goal is to have my students consume information from the iPods rather than produce information for them. In other words, I have no plans to have my students create podcasts, videos, slideshows, or any other content. Instead, I'm looking to use the iPods in the following ways:

Math Intervention: Students will view video podcasts and Unitedstreaming videos on topics that they are struggling with in math. For instance, say my students take a quiz on prime factorization and a few don't do so well. During a specified time they will be invited to my classroom to watch a video on an iPod that teaches prime factorization. After viewing the video and completing some more practice, they will be allowed to retake the quiz for a better score.
Math Enrichment: It's unfortunate, but we math teachers often are so busy teaching our students the required concepts that we often don't get a chance to show them how cool math can be outside of the classroom. I'd like to have several videos/podcasts on the iPods that show situations in the real world where math is involved (like the Fibonacci sequence in nature, Game Theory, etc.). There are a few on the Math Guy Podcast.
Science Enrichment: If a student shows an interest in a topic we are studying, I'd like to be able to find a podcast or video for him/her and have it ready for them to watch on an iPod. HowStuffWorks has a content channel on the Apple Learning Interchange with some interesting videos.
Social Studies Enrichment: Current event videos come to mind here.

After doing a simple Google search (ipods classroom) I found some sites that will be helpful to any teacher looking to integrate iPods:

Learning in Hand - Here I found out how to download a video from UnitedStreaming, add it to iTunes, and then convert it to a format that the iPod will understand.
Education World has a nice page of links to some sites on iPods in the Classroom.
Apple Learning Interchange

I Need Your Help

I don't get a ton of comments on this blog, but I'd like to ask if any readers have other ideas for using iPods with your students and/or if you know of other resources where I could find some. Thanks!

Check out: SMARTBoard Mini-movies Student Activities

Guest Post: Teachers of Tweens: Top Tips for Grabbing Your Students’ Attention

2009-08-13T09:49:00.003-04:00

If you’re a teacher who works with kids around the “tween” stage – 9-13 years old – you’re probably exhausted by the end of the school day. This age group can be a lot of fun, because they’ve yet to become cynical or snobby and are still young enough to enjoy playing games, going out to recess and doing projects with friends. On the other hand, tweens are just entering adolescence, which means that they’re self-conscious, experimenting with romantic feelings, joining cliques, and starting to get the appeal of sarcasm, eye rolling and rebelling. Teachers, not just parents, may find it tough to catch, and then keep, the attention of teens as they try to educate them day after day, but there are a few tricks you can use yourself to outwit your tween students.

Reference current pop culture: Kids get sucked into the pop culture and celebrity world at an even younger age than the generation before them. If you want to keep up with what they think is cool, educate yourself on the names of a few pop stars or teen actors that your students respect. Use these references when appropriate to help your kids relate to the lesson.
Work with technology. An old-fashioned projector or even PowerPoint presentation isn’t going to impress your kids, so learn how to use tools like Twitter, wikis, iTunes, or Flickr to keep up .
Invite guest lecturers. Show your kids ho relevant the skills they’re learning in class are to the real world by inviting guest lecturers to talk about their jobs and experience. Students are always interested in anyone new who shows up in the classroom, and you’ll get a break, too.
Start with a media clip. Before introducing a new lesson – or as a way of reinforcing an old one – start your presentation with a clip from a popular song, a movie or a TV show that illustrates your point. Your students will be more likely to analyze the situation and discover the lesson’s real-life impact that way.
Host mock or mini events. Get your kids to participate in an important lesson by setting up experiments, mock debates, classroom polls or elections and other projects that allow them to take on an active role. Their experience will help them understand the lesson on a deeper level.

This post was contributed by Emily Thomas, who writes about the best online universities. She welcomes your feedback at Emily.Thomas31@ yahoo.com

New on misterteacher.com: Thermal Energy | Properties of Light | Arithmattack

New Teaching Resources on misterteacher.com

2009-08-01T22:24:00.007-04:00

Student Activities

On the Everything Geometry website you'll find several new student activities on Angles. With these activities kids can learn to identify and describe the relative size of acute, obtuse and straight angles with respect to right angles. The activities begin by defining what an angle is and how they are measured. From there, students can navigate through three additional pages on right, acute, and obtuse angles. There are several mini-movies throughout the activities and quick quizzes to check understanding.

Coming Soon! Student activities on integers, basic geometry terms, forces, kinetic and potential energy, thermal energy, and light!

Mini-Movies

The SMARTBoard mini-movie library continues to grow with mini-movies on angles mentioned above as well as science movies on thermal energy and properties of light (reflection and refraction). Use them to teach your students the following:

Temperature is a measure of thermal energy.
Light bends, or refracts, when moving from one medium to another.
Law of reflection - light reflects off an object at the same angle it strikes it.

Remember, to preview the mini-movies, just click on the link of the movie you'd like to see. To download them, right click (control-click on a Mac) on the link and download the movie to your computer. To insert it into a Notebook file, open Notebook and simply go to the INSERT menu and select FLASH FILE. From there, just navigate until you find the file you downloaded.

Coming Soon! Mini-movies on simple machines and probability.

If you like the resources on misterteacher.com, please share this post.

Check out: Rainforest WebQuest | Constitution WebQuest | Bright Ideas

Guest Post: 15 Free Math Resources for Students and Teachers

2009-07-09T22:55:00.005-04:00

Learning math can be a struggle, but there are lots of online resources that can help. The web is full of tools, games, and websites that can be used to practice math problems. Here is a list of 15 math resources for students and teachers.

Illuminations - Illuminations is a free website from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. The site offers more than 100 interactive math activities for kids, 500+ lesson plans for teachers, and web links to other online math resources.

NumberNut - NumberNut is a fun math site for people of all ages. It works like an interactive math textbook: it teaches a concept and then provides two activities to reinforce learning. NumberNut includes learning resources for basic math and advanced math.

Arcademic Skill Builders - Arcademic Skill Builders are entertaining educational games that can be played online. Game options include addition and subtraction games, multiplication and division games, and fraction and ratio games.

Math Playground - This website was created specifically for elementary and middle school students who need help with math. The site offers fun games, math videos, and logic problems.

Tutpup - On the Tutpup site, students can compete in educational math games with other students all over the world. Competitors race against the clock to solve math and algebra problems.

Math Arcade - Funbrain's Math Arcade provides access to 25 free math games that can be played online. Returning users can enter a password to try to beat their own high score.

Lure of the Labyrinth - For kids who like to game, Lure of the Labyrinth is the ultimate way to learn math. This online game guides players on a mythological quest to retrieve a beloved and lost pet.

Mathway - At first glance, Mathway looks like it is just a math problem solver, but it so much more. Mathway shows you how a problem can be solved so that you understand how the answer was calculated.

Multimedia Math Glossary - Harcourt's Multimedia Math Glossary is a fantastic resource for teachers and students who want to see visual definitions to math terms. Simply select your grade at the top of the page and browse through the list of terms to find what you need.

Ambleweb Addition Machine - The Ambleweb Addition Machine provides excellent practice for students who are learning addition. Students can choose their skill level, answer the question that pops up, and check their answer to see if it is right. The machine tracks scores so that students can compete with themselves or each other.

ClassBrain - ClassBrain provides a wide range of math games for students of all ages. All of the games are interactive and many can be used with a projector or interactive white board so the whole class can participate at once.

Teacher Led - Teacher Led offers a large collection of interactive white board resources and games for math teachers.

Crickweb - Although this website was created for UK students, it does provide a number of interactive math games that would be useful to any student. All of the games were designed for use with an interactive whiteboard and include fun activities that will reinforce learning in the classroom.

Math TV - Middle school students who are having difficulty solving complicated math problems will love Math TV's helpful videos. Math TV works especially well with projectors and interactive whiteboards.

iknowthat.com - This website offers a wonderful collection of math tools for teachers and students. The site hosts an arithmetic workshop, math stories, math videos, games, and other resources--most of which can be used with an interactive white board so that the whole class can participate at once.

Guest post from Karen Schweitzer, the About.com Guide to Business School. Karen also writes about online college courses for OnlineColleges.org.

Check out: Interactive Student Activities | Mini-Movies for Your SmartBoard | Everything Geometry

A Test

2009-06-27T01:20:00.000-04:00

This is an email to myself.

Take Your Students Around the World

2009-04-01T12:24:00.002-04:00

Picked this one up from AngelaMaiers on Twitter. Panoramas.dk lets you travel the world in 3D by providing full screen virtual panoramas of REALLY COOL PLACES. Obviously we cannot take our students to the top of Mt. Everest, or the Grand Canyon, or to see the Barringer meteorite crater in Arizona; but we can project a virtual panorama of each of these places and let the kids experience them. Would be particularly cool on a SmartBoard!

panoramas, learning, travel,

Teaching Big Ideas

2009-03-31T22:36:00.003-04:00

I've been thinking for a while now about how important it is to teach big ideas. When I speak of big ideas, I'm referring to the enduring concepts that transcend grade level and subject area. Throughout each subject area--science, math, social studies, and language arts--it's possible to take several content standards and group them into a theme-based unit, supporting the learning of a big idea (and creating a highly engaging project-based learning experience).

One of the big ideas that comes to mind is photosynthesis. It's probably not a stretch to say that most elementary educators don't give photosynthesis its due. All the way up to last year, I sure didn't. But consider all of the science concepts connected to what is easily the most important process on Earth, and its significance as a big idea becomes easy to grasp. (Don't believe me? Check out the book Eating the Sun by Oliver Morton). Consider that food chains begin with plants and they get their energy from photosynthesis. The fall leaf change occurs because leaves stop the process of photosynthesis and begin to lose their chlorophyll. Of course, this takes place because of changes in the hours of daylight which means you can teach about Earth's orbit around the sun and its effect on the seasons.

In social studies, westward expansion/progress is a theme that necessitates the teaching of several other big ideas: changes in transportation, settlement, treatment of Native Americans, exploration, the Gold Rush, Oregon Trail, etc. Because they fall under the umbrella of westward expansion, you can teach all of these concepts as part of a theme-based unit and have students create a nice project at the end.

So what are some other big ideas that you think are important to teach? Here's a list that I thought of with some of the other concepts that are connected to them:

Scientific Inquiry (scientific method, developing experiments, identifying variables, scientific communication)
Resources (renewable energy, fossil fuels, design process (have kids build wind turbines), earth science)
Tessellations (polygons (interior angle measures), regular polygons, similarity, symmetry (transformations)
Patterns & Functions
Fractals (multiplying fractions, similarity, patterns, functions)
Rivers (transportation, growth of civilizations, growth of cities & economies)

Technorati Tags: education| learning | teachers

Check out: Symmetry in Nature | Alphabet Geometry

Testing out Twitter

2009-03-24T11:50:00.004-04:00

Where do people find the time? My newsreader is full and I can't post to my blog. So I'm giving Twitter a try. You can follow me at http://twitter.com/jtubbs. Now every time an idea comes to mind, I can tweet it! I find a link, it's on Twitter.

Take the Pi Day Challenge

2009-03-14T13:33:00.002-04:00

"March 14th is a fantastically mathematical day.

Pi Day. Accept the challenge. The Pi Day Challenge is a series of puzzles that are logic-based. A team of logicians adapted or created these puzzles – some require research, some require mathematics, some require pure savvy. Keep in mind that for some puzzles, finding out what you are supposed to do is part of the puzzle."

Also, check out Learning about Pi from misterteacher.com.

Technorati Tags: education | learning | Pi Day

Mini-Movies for Your SmartBoard

Using Google Map Mashups for Social Studies Projects

2009-03-13T15:30:00.000-04:00

I just assigned a social studies project to my fifth graders this week on Westward Expansion. It's a collaborative project that requires them to take the role of a character (a prospector, a settler/pioneer, or a mountain man) and describe a trip west that this character would take during the 19th century.

While researching routes, one group decided to use Google Maps to see if they could find the Oregon Trail. I thought this was a cool idea and wished that I had thought to include that web tool in the project. Since then, I've been thinking of ideas for how I would have used Google Maps with this project. Unfortunately, the power of the software I think is creating your own maps & Google requires users to create an account to do that. A Google account offers a few too many features (since it provides an email account, search history, and more) than I feel my students need.

There are however quite a few Google Maps mashups on the Internet that teachers can use in place of Google Maps itself. They also require an account, but to get one students would only need to create a fake email address and username and password. After searching through my bookmarks, I found a couple that I think would work very well in a classroom environment.

Quikmaps allows you to perform many of the functions that Google Maps does: add markers, connected lines, and text labels. I created a map below using every function available except for scribbling. Click on the markers for descriptions.

I could easily envision having my students create a map for social studies. A number of topics in history would lend themselves to a similar type of map as the one above: The Underground Railroad, The Trail of Tears, Westward Expansion (trace the path of the famous wagon trails, Age of Exploration (trace routes of famous explorers like Magellan), and much more. What a cool way to integrate geography with history!

I can also see using these maps on my SmartBoard. I'm wishing I would have created one when I taught my students about the Erie Canal. An interactive map in the front of the classroom that traced the route of the canal--complete with markers--would have been extremely helpful to my students.

Wayfaring is another Google Maps mashup that I've tried out. This one provides essentially the same features but in a different manner. After signing up, you create your maps in a series of guided steps. Whereas Quikmaps provides the tools (map in the center, markers to the side, etc.) with little guidance, on Wayfaring you must use a map editor that directs you through a series of steps to create markers and routes.

I prefer learning to use the mashups without the guidance and I think my students would have no problem figuring out how to use them. As a result, Quikmaps seems like a better fit for the classroom.

Technorati Tags: Google Maps | learning | Quikmaps | Wayfaring

Delivering the Presentation of Your Life

2009-03-08T15:50:00.002-04:00

Creating effective presentations seems to be all the rage right now. Garr Reynolds and his Presentation Zen blog are incredibly popular and the Slideshare website has thousands of presentations (many of them on presentations) and a large community of users sharing them. With all the SmartBoards in classrooms now it's become very important that teachers jump on the bandwagon and learn how to create presentations that are memorable and easily understood. I've been riding the wagon for a few years now and this past February I delivered my own presentation on the topic. You can check out on Slideshare or just click through it below. Let me know what you think.

Delivering The Presentation Of Your Life

View more presentations from Jamie Tubbs. (tags: teachers education)

Technorati Tags: education | learning | presentations | Powerpoint

Check out: Mini-Movies for Your SmartBoard

Mini-Movies for Your SmartBoard

2009-03-07T21:18:00.001-05:00

By far the most popular site on misterteacher.com is Alphabet Geometry. The mini-movies there attract a large number of visitors. What is a mini-movie? It's a Flash-based animation, often interactive, that lasts just a few seconds. The mini-movies on Alphabet Geometry make geometric concepts alive by showing how they relate to letters of the alphabet.

It dawned on me the other day that the mini-movies that appear on AG are the same type of movies that SmartBoard users can insert into their Notebook files. So I decided to make the mini-movies on AG available for download so that teachers can grab them and use them offline. They are free and as long as they are used for teaching lessons in the classroom, you can use them without restriction.

I've been looking around the Internet for a site that offers something similar, and I have yet to find one. Teachers Love SMART Boards has a page that links to SmartBoard Web resources, and those resources have Flash-based movies, but it appears that one must be online to use them. I can't believe that nobody has thought to provide movies that teachers can download and use without going to the Internet.

Check out the mini-movies here: Mini-movies for Your SmartBoard

Check out: Alphabet Symmetry | Symmetry in Nature | Teaching Resources

Smartboard, education, teachers. learning, Flash

Smartboard and Inspiration: A Perfect Match

2009-02-25T07:09:00.006-05:00

Do you have a SmartBoard? Do you use graphic organizers? Want to combine the two? Then it's time to begin using Inspiration on your SmartBoard. If you want to see student engagement soar (even for a lesson involving the interactivity of a whiteboard), open up Inspiration and have your students create a bubble map (as they are known to my kids).

During my first years of teaching, Inspiration was a tool that I used all the time. Over the past few years I rarely used it at all. Last year I switched to a room with a SmartBoard and rediscovered the program. Not only does it engage my students, but it forces them to think and apply their learning. Below is a completed example of a concept map that my math students made on measurement. It was not this neat when I first projected it. The bubbles were scattered across the screen and there were no connections. Over the course of about 15 minutes, my students came to the SmartBoard, organized it, and made the connections. There were some mistakes and it was pretty cool to watch the kids correct them.

In science, I had my students construct a complex food web with a dozen animals. I'm not going to post it here because I took all of the photos from the Internet (you can copy and paste photos to your maps), but below you'll see an example of a food web made with the program:

Check out the Inspiration website and download the 30-Day trial. The site is also full of lesson plans and other resources.

Check out: Alphabet Symmetry | Waves of Immigration | Slavery in America

Technorati Tags: education| learning | Inspiration | technology

2 Bright Ideas for the Science Classroom

2009-01-27T08:33:00.004-05:00

1. Have your students make their own nature films - Wildlife Filmmaker is a cool toy from National Geographic that allows users to make a nature film complete with animal clips, sounds, music, and more. It's easy to use and doesn't take too long. Your kids should be able to make a movie in as little as two class periods.

2. Check out the Killer Clips at animalplanet.com - Sink your teeth into some of the wildest video on the planet. Then get the Killer Clips widget and embed the videos into your website (see below).

Click here for 8 more bright ideas for the science classroom.

Learning about Emancipation

2009-01-16T15:07:00.002-05:00

It's been one of my beliefs for years now that one of the best ways to improve your teaching is simply to learn more about your subject. This is particularly true for elementary teachers--we don't have nearly the content knowledge that our colleagues at the secondary level have. That's why I believe we should all make the effort to learn more about the subjects we teach: more about history, economics, geography, culture, and government in social studies; more about physics, chemistry, life science, astronomy, and geology in science; more about algebra, geometry, number theory, data analysis, and probability in math.

This Tuesday Barack Obama will take the oath of office by putting his hand on the Abe Lincoln's bible. As you know, Abraham Lincoln was the president responsible for the Emancipation Proclamation, the document that freed slaves from the Confederate states. But how much do you really know about the history surrounding this document? Here's a link to a podcast from the NPR show On Point with Tom Ashbrook that will help those teachers interested in learning more about it. The show's title is called Remembering Emancipation. Listen and learn!

Technorati Tags: education| learning | history | inauguration

Check out: Slavery in America | Waves of Immigration | Declaration of Independence

The Federation of Gallery Explorers

2009-01-12T16:21:00.000-05:00

Here's one for the science teachers. The Federation of Galaxy Explorers seeks to inspire and educate kids in space related science and engineering. Galaxy Explorers was created to prepare children for the future; a future that advances a space faring civilization. Kids in Galaxy Explorers attend after-school (or evening) monthly "Mission Team" meetings and periodic field trips. Adult volunteers teach Galaxy Explorers with easy to understand and fun-to-do educational material to provide a hands-on understanding of space science, earth science, engineering, and rocketry.

Members have access to a number of free resources: space suits, meteorite collections, GPS units, science equipment, telescopes, rocketry equipment, etc. They also offer free tours and training (given by NASA and Air Force space professionals) to teachers and Mission Team Leaders.

Check out this nonprofit company's website for more information AND dozens of free lesson plans.

Check out: Tessellations | Rainforest Webquest | Teaching about Photosynthesis

Bright Ideas for Your Classroom

2009-01-06T19:29:00.003-05:00

Looking for some bright ideas for your classroom? I've added a new section to misterteacher.com called Bright Ideas for Your Classroom. As of now this section is still relatively small with two resources: Grants 101 and Digital Photography in the Classroom. Here's a rundown of each:

Grants 101: Grant-writing can be an extraordinarily time-consuming process. It may also be discouraging to receive so many rejection letters. If you want to increase your likelihood of getting a grant, you should at least avoid some of the most common mistakes and get the basics right. Grants 101 provides readers with tips to ensure that they’re on the right track to getting the money they need for the big project. There is a wealth of resources available online to help you find grants and craft proposals. You'll find five of the best sites at Grants 101.
Digital Photography in the Classroom - Built for educators in all grade levels and subject areas, this site provides readers with creative ways to integrate digital photograhy into their teaching. Here you'll learn how to acquire photos and then use them to create engaging activities for your students.

More bright ideas are in the works. Check back soon to see what is in store!

Technorati Tags: education| learning | grants | digital photography

From Hobby to Business - Incredible Social Studies Resources

2009-01-05T09:00:00.005-05:00

As a fifth grade teacher, it's my job to introduce my students to a broad range of content that covers all sorts of subjects within social studies--history, economics, geography, culture, and government. The social studies resources that I've added to my site support standards in the People in Societies and Government strands of the Ohio Academic Content Standards. Two subjects, immigration and slavery in America, were ones that I thought were taught in just about any elementary school in America. Here's a rundown of what is now available at my site:

Waves of Immigration: 1892 - 1954 - This resource totals five webpages and describes the waves of immigrants that passed through Ellis Island. Two pages are dedicated to Ellis Island: one that delivers a brief history and the other telling what it was like for the immigrants when they registered there. Two other pages describe the immigrant experience when they arrived in America. All of the pages are printable so teachers can give students a hard copy--just click the Grab It! button.
Slavery in America - Another resource totaling five web pages, Slavery in America focuses mostly on the life of slaves in the United States. Topics include Negro Spirituals, Slave Narratives, the Underground Railroad, and the Emancipation Proclamation. These pages are not yet printable but will be very soon!
Declaration of Independence - I also have included a one page article on the Declaration of Independence. It talks about what is written on the document and explains a little of the history behind it. This page is printable.

Don't forget about the Constitution WebQuest - not really a WebQuest, but a quiz that takes students all over the Internet to find the answers to the questions. It is interactive and provides students with immediate feeback.

If you teach at the intermediate level, then these resources are perfect for you. Check them out and then pass them on, link to the site, print the pages, etc. Remember, they are all free!

Technorati Tags: education| learning | history | immigration

Also Check Out: Tessallations | Teaching Photosynthesis

From Hobby to Business, PART 1

2009-01-04T21:00:00.000-05:00

Seven years ago I built my first website. Before blogs & wikis - before Web 2.0 - were mainstream, I was looking for a way to publish my students' work online. It was a lot of work having them compose their work, email it to me so that I could copy it to an HTML file on Dreamweaver, and then upload that file to the web server space I had purchased.

During that time I experimented a great deal and ended up creating some pretty cool resources--complete with Flash movies and interactive features--that I've used for instruction over the years. In 2004, I switched to using blogs and in the process saved myself considerable time getting my students' work online. I did, however, keep the original website and continued to make resources for my students.

It was about that time that I noticed my site started to get a little traffic; not much by any means, but obviously more than what my students were giving it. I didn't pay much notice until last year when the numbers starting doubling and even tripling over the course of the year. Seeing an opportunity, I stuck a few Google Ads on the site and a few months later received my first paycheck. I've gotten a few more of those checks since then--the amounts have been nothing substantial--it's made me decide that I would like to make an effort to turn my fledgling website, misterteacher.com, into a small business that offers resources to teachers and their students.

I've spent countless hours over the past few months adding content and other resources to the site. It has nowhere near the amount of resources or content as many other websites for teachers, but I hope to change that in the months in ahead. The best part about all of this for teachers is that I PLAN TO KEEP EVERYTHING FREE! All the websites, printables, WebQuests...everything. If you come across something you like, you don't have to worry about paying any kind of fee to get it or use it.

I plan to post about the changes throughout this week. Each day I'd like to write about one of the new resources and I even plan to work in a post that describes the business model I've chosen. Stay tuned if you'd like to hear about some incredible new teaching resources in the days ahead.

SnagFilms Film Widget

2008-12-05T21:24:00.002-05:00

Last week I wrote about the educational value of some of the videos that you can find on YouTube. This week I'm writing about another video sharing website, SnagFilms. From the site:

SnagFilms is committed to finding the world‘s most compelling documentaries, whether from established heavyweights or first-time filmmakers, and making them available to the wide audience these titles deserve.

SnagFilms.com is a website where you can watch full-length documentary films for free, but we’re also a platform that lets you “snag” a film and put it anywhere on the web. With a library of nearly 450 films, and rapidly growing, you’re bound to find films that resonate with your interests. We make it easy for you to find a film that shines a light on a cause you care about. You can then open a virtual movie theater on any web site, so any one can watch your favorite SnagFilms for free.

The site has films from National Geographic, PBS, and much more. Any number of films from the site are curriculum related meaning you're bound to find something there that you can show in your classroom.

The film below, Paperclips, is a video that I felt I had to share. You may have heard the story--a middle school class in Tennessee collected 6 million paper clips for each victim of the Holocaust. A great documentary that I found, watched, and snagged.

Technorati Tags: education| learning | SnagFilms

Check out what's new at misterteacher.com: Grants 101 | Bright Ideas | Learn about Pi