Engage and Educate

Arcademic Skill Builders are online educational video games that offer a powerful approach to learning basic math, language arts, vocabulary, and thinking skills.

Our philosophy is inspired by the intense engagement arcade and video games foster between the player and the game. The Arcademic goal is to make aspects of classroom instruction as effective in creating persistence and involvement as observed in video game players. Our games are a result of blending video game features into instructional research in order to achieve a high rate of student learning through increased time-on-task and increased engagement. Students must employ strategy under exciting circumstances to make rapid responses while being given immediate feedback on their decisions.

These educational games provide fun and focused repetition practice that enables automaticity and fluency to be achieved more quickly. With what we now know about automaticity and fluency in academic performance, we can help students achieve masterful levels performance faster than ever before!

Students have more information at their fingertips than ever before, yet the challenge remains for them to find, evaluate, and apply the information they discover in the classroom and beyond.

Applying critical thinking skills through web research can help students:

·         Improve search skills.

·         Evaluate the information they find.

·         Incorporate them in their work.

Explore the ready-to-use curriculum below, including detailed lesson plans, student worksheets, and class demonstrations.

   

Click here to download:

Web_Wednesday_-_Sept._7_2010_t.zip (107 KB)

Big, Huge, Free US Presidents Timeline Poster - http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2010/02/big-huge-free-american-presidents.html

Sign up for a free C-SPAN teacher account and you can receive a free poster.

Newseum Front Pages - http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/flash/

The Newseum displays almost 800 daily newspaper front pages in their original, unedited form from around the world. You click on points on a map to see the front pages. This is a GREAT way to get different perspectives of current events from all over the globe.

KidBlog.org – http://www.kidblog.org

I just ran across this yesterday. This is a protected site that can allow your students to blog within the context of your classroom. What’s nice about it is that the teacher can moderate everything from actual posts to all the comments. Each student can have their own blog with varying privacy protections.

If you are interested in taking writing to the next level, this might be a great platform to try. If you ARE interested, let me know and I will help you set one up. EASY. FREE. SAFE.

QuizHub – http://www.quizhub.com

WE NEED YOUR FEEDBACK!!! We have acquired a trial account for this service and we’d like you all to check it out and provide some feedback. The Quiz Hub is a fun online interactive learning center that features hundreds of educational quiz games for English language arts, math, science, and social studies. The following account will give you full access to the Quiz Hub through March 12, 2010.

Username: stlaurence

Password: 0312

Math Magic – an iPhone App - http://appshopper.com/education/math-magic

Here is a “FREE only for today” iPhone application that can help students with their math facts. My 4^th grade boy could use this application to help him with division fast facts that they do at school. If you have an iPhone and an elementary-aged child, download this today to take advantage of the free offer. Normally, it’s $.99 which is still a great bargain.

100+ Google Tricks That Will Save You Time in School - http://www.onlinecolleges.net/2009/10/25/100-google-tricks-that-will-save-you-time-in-school/

If you’re a Google user, you will definitely find some great tips here. Learn how to generate better search results, use Gmail and Google Calendar to organize your life, and tips on using Google services on your cell phone.

SMART Board Thanksgiving Resources - http://www.teacherslovesmartboards.com/smartboard-thanksgiving-holiday-resources.html

Interactive Thanksgiving timelines, Turkey stories, Notebook files, and primary games related to Tom Turkey Day.

Teacher Training Videos - http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/

This is another nice site with video tutorials mainly covering web 2.0 applications and open source software. Some of the applications covered are PBWorks, Audacity, Jing, XTimeliner, Podcasting, etc.

I’ll be out at the Region 4 Technology Applications Conference on Wednesday so I’m sending this a little early. Enjoy!

We Podcasted Today! So, Did you Learn ANYTHING? - http://langwitches.org/blog/2009/10/19/we-podcasted-today-so-did-you-learn-anything/

Really nice reflection on using podcasting in elementary classrooms. Take a read, take a listen and let me know if when you’d like to start podcasting projects in your classroom.

A Lifetime of Color - http://www.alifetimeofcolor.com/

A collection of lesson plans that incorporates Art in cross-curricular activities including Math, Science, Social Studies, and Language Arts. If you like this, also check out 73+ Lesson Plans for Arts and Media Educators.

Free Clipart - http://www.phillipmartin.info/clipart/homepage.htm

I’ve seen a LOT of clip art sites but none with this kind of quality. This site has clip art that was drawn by one artist so the look is very consistent. Use this site to find images to spruce up your Notebook files. Good stuff!

SMARTBoards and Inserting Sound Into Notebook - http://www.teacherslovesmartboards.com/2009/10/smartboards-inserting-sound-into-notebook.html

This is a short video tutorial to help you insert sounds into your Notebook files. Using sounds for student feedback in Notebook is a great way to make your lessons more interactive and engaging for your students.

SMART Boards and Halloween Resources - http://www.teacherslovesmartboards.com/smartboards-and-halloween-resources.html

If you are looking for Halloween related activities for your SMART Board (or without your SMART Board), take a look at this blog post from Teachers Love SMART Boards. It has an extensive list of games, SMART Notebook files, sound files, clip art, puzzles and interactive activities… all Halloween related.

SMART Boards Teacher Online Training - http://www.teacheronlinetraining.com/library/mod/resource/view.php?id=746

Here are some free training resources, links and tips to help you get more out of your SMART Board.

Scoring Guides and Differentiation

This seems to be the year to explore all aspects of differentiation. Today, I am going to share with you some resources that relate to scoring guides, or rubrics, which can help differentiate learning with respect to assessment. Scoring guides and rubrics are great ways to assess projects that may not be as objective in nature (i.e. multiple choice exams) so that accountable consistency can take place when assessing big assignments with less than clear-cut answers.

RubiStar – http://rubistar.4teachers.org

This is my go-to site for creating scoring guides for class projects. You can start with a template rubric that you can then customize to your needs and then you can save it for future use or editing. Best part of this site is that it is 100% free.

iRubrics - http://www.rcampus.com/indexrubric.cfm?

This is another free rubric generation site. I haven’t looked closely at it but it looks similar to RubiStar.

Roobrix – http://www.roobrix.com

If you rely heavily on scoring guides or rubrics to assess student work, this site is a MUST HAVE. Teachers who tend to use rubrics for grading can inadvertently cheat students out of a grade if they simply use the number of points earned divided by the total possible points. Check this site out to learn more how it works and how it can better generate scores that are more in line.

Assessment and Rubric Information - http://school.discoveryeducation.com/schrockguide/assess.html

This site contains a huge amount of information and resources relating to using scoring guides and rubrics.

General Articles about Rubrics and Scoring Guides
from http://www.bestteachersites.com/web_tools/rubrics/

1. 10 Uses for Rubrics You Never Thought Of
2. 5 Features of a Highly Effective Rubric
3. How Rubrics Make Elementary Teachers Day Easy!
4. How Rubrics Make Middle School and High School Teachers Day Easy!
5. How Rubrics Make Scoring Quick And Easy
6. How to Create an Outline for a Rubric
7. How to Make a Rubric in Less Than 5 Minutes
8. How to Tell If Your Rubric Works?
9. Students Grading Themselves? - Rubrics Can Change Everything
10. The Pros and Cons of Using Rubrics
11. Why Rubrics?

Tutor USA – free Math tutorials and video lessons - http://tutor-usa.com/videos

Geared more toward high school students, this website presents tutorials and lessons from nearly all math subjects including Algebra, Geometry, and for the adventurous, Trigonometry and Calculus.

Real World Math Using Google Earth - http://realworldmath.org/Real_World_Math/RealWorldMath.org.html

Take one of the best geography tools out there and sprinkle it up with some real world applications to create a great way to teach basic math skills. If you need Google Earth loaded on your computer or need some extra training, let me know.

Creating Original Artwork - http://www.teacherslovesmartboards.com/2009/09/smartboards-original-artwork.html

OK, and for you right-brainers (who Daniel Pink thinks will eventually rule the world). This is perfect for those SMART Boards and creating original artwork. Give it a try and appeal to your inner-right brain. Gayle and Leslie, check the site out and schedule some upstairs lab time to bring the kids.

BTW, Wednesday’s after school meeting will be technology training. We will be taking a bigger look at our new technology professional development tool called Atomic Learning. See you all there!

Mini Movies for SMART Board - http://www.misterteacher.com/minimovies/minimovies.html

What is a SmartBoard mini-movie? A SmartBoard mini-movie is a simple (most involve only a click of the mouse), interactive animation that teachers can download and add to their galleries. From there, the movies can be inserted into their SMART Notebook presentations. Each mini-movie is a dynamic Flash file, similar to the same files that are already included in SMART Notebook's resources.

How can mini-movies improve my SMARTBoard activities and lessons? Use mini-movies to make subjects like geometry and motion come alive. Capture the attention of learners by using animation to teach standards-based concepts. Draw on the movies and click the buttons to give students instant feedback!

PBS Kids Whiteboard Activities – http://pbskids.org/whiteboard

A wonderful collection of interactive activities you can use on your SMART Board. Divided into different subject areas (Language Arts, The Arts, Math, and Social Science) these activities are designed for primary grade levels (PK-2). Take a look at the site and you will find many different activities that can meet your curricular objectives including letter recognition, spelling, vocabulary, comprehension, measurement, patterns, operations, observation, categorization, and much more.

As always, let me know if you need assistance using any of these resources.

Survey Taking - http://www.teacherled.com/2008/01/28/survey-taking/

Math teachers, take note! This interactive website is especially suitable for SMART boards. It is designed to help students understand compiling data from a survey, tracking that data, and charting it in order to better understand data relationships. It contains four canned class-appropriate surveys for the teacher to ask students. Unfortunately, you can’t ask your own surveys but that is not the purpose of this activity. Use this to introduce graphing data, proportions, and presenting data in graphical ways.

Map Skills on the SMART Board - http://langwitches.org/blog/2009/09/02/map-skills-on-smartboard/

What a great idea to teach landmarks and local geography. Go to Google Maps, take a snapshot of the area around your school, load it up on the SMART board and have students place different landmarks on the map. Students then create their own map keys. This would be a great geography project for the lower grade levels. If this is something that you would like to do, let me know and I’ll help you build the project.

Interactive Stories for the SMART Board - http://plattsburgh.neric.org/oak/smartboard/stories.htm

ECC-2 teachers, take a look at this! Nice collection of stories you can display on your board. In many of the stories, students can interact with the characters and respond to different question prompts. Take a look and see what you might use in your classroom.