What it is: There are some things that I think should be essential to every school experience. Some place where kids can sink their hands down into the earth and have a part in growing something is one of those essentials. Edible Schoolyard is an incredible site with a goal to bring children into a positive relationship with food by connecting it with nature and culture. The great part: good health is the outcome. The Edible Schoolyard Project shares a food curriculum for schools around the world to put into practice. I share their dream of making an “edible education” as part of the core of every school in the country. I love that Edible Schoolyard wants to provide every student with a free nutritious lunch and interactive experiences in the classroom, kitchen and garden…transforming the health and values of every child.
Maps the grassroots efforts of edible education programs around the United States.
Gathers and shares lessons and best practices of school gardens, kitchens, and lunch programs.
Documents 15 years of Edible Schoolyards.
Trains educators at the Edible Schoolyard Academy.
How to integrate Edible Schoolyard Project into the classroom: The Edible Schoolyard Project has some excellent lessons, tips, guidance, and encouragement for starting an Edible Schoolyard Project at your own school. The great thing about the resource collection on Edible Schoolyard Project is that it has been created by educators. The lesson plans aren’t just focused on food, they are all tied in to a variety of disciplines…you know, like it happens in real life.
There is something so human and important about growing food. It is something that we have separated ourselves from and as a result, we are happy to stuff ourselves with a combination of chemicals and additives. I have taught students who truly didn’t know that potatoes grew. Seriously.
At Anastasis, we are working to start our own Edible Schoolyard Project. Our challenge: we lease space from a church. There is no little piece of land that we can call our own. We don’t let anything stop us at Anastasis, we just have to be more creative. In the past few weeks our students have been composting in 56 2-liter bottles. It can be stinky…but the kids are learning so much about decomposition! My next plan for our own little edible school yard project:
Truck Farm. I learned about Truck Farms from a way cool little restaurant here in Colorado called Beatrice and Woodsley. They take advantage of Truck Farms for some of their produce. Brilliant idea. A truck farm is an old pick up truck whose bed has been retrofitted as a container garden. The result: fresh produce that is mobile. SO great for a school that puts everything on wheels! While it isn’t exactly like getting your hands into a plot of land, students will be able to have their own little kitchen garden that they can grow.
****As a side note, if anyone has an old pickup they would like to donate to Anastasis or help funding this project, please let me know!
Tips: Explore the Movement is a section on the Edible Schoolyard Project where those in the US can find others in their state to network with.
Please leave a comment and share how you are using Edible Schoolyard Project in your classroom!
What it is:Wordia is a site that has been around for a little while, I recently took a look at it again and was pleasantly surprised with the updates. Wordia is game-based platform that helps expose students to a variety of words and vocabulary. The Wordia platform uses a dictionary as its foundation and blends learning games with interactive videos that teach vocabulary. Using Wordia, students build “Word Banks” as they engage in some friendly competition with classmates and other schools. The games in Wordia focus on spelling, grammar, oracy, auditory and phonics. This update has included some helpful goodies with schools and classrooms in mind. Games have been developed for educator led one-to-many scenarios that can be played on an interactive whiteboard or or projector connected computer with the whole class. One-to-one games are perfect for the classroom, computer lab or home. Word lists and lesson plans are available with both options for some great ideas for whichever situation best meets the needs of your classroom.
Wordia keeps track of student progress through a series of badges. Students work to build their own word bank and collect badges.
How to integrate Wordia into the classroom:Wordia is a great place for students to build and practice vocabulary and word knowledge. The games are fun to play as a class or individually and beat a vocab worksheet hands down. Wordia has a pretty impressive search engine. It would be an excellent site to keep bookmarked on classroom computers as a resource center in the classroom. Any time students run across an unfamiliar word, they can immediately run a search that brings them the definition, a video, a game, and related words. If a video doesn’t already exist, your students can record and contribute their own video! The same option exists for games. You and your students can easily build a game on Wordia to share. Just upload a word list, select a game type and voila!
Why not share spelling and vocabulary words every week by building a game from the word list? Much more fun than the boring word list that gets lost on the way home anyway.
Tips: You (the teacher) will have to create an account before your students can save their progress in Wordia. Searching the site and viewing content can be done without a login.
Please leave a comment and share how you are using Wordia in your classroom!
What it is:Super Math World is a site that has been around a LONG time… I mean, it is on my tenkely.org site for crying out loud! I made that site a good 8 years ago. I took a look at it again today and am very impressed with the updates and changes that have been made. Super Math World isn’t a totally free site but it does have a LOT of free content that kids can access. To utilize the free portions of Super Math World, login as a guest by clicking the “Guest” button. There are math games that teach and reinforce concepts for kindergarten through twelfth grade. Free topics include: adding, measures, number patterns, percentages, place value, area, estimating, fractions, negative numbers, set theory, venn diagrams, and series. The kids will enjoy the arcade-like practice area.
How to integrate Super Math World into the classroom:Super Math World makes a great computer center activity during math. The games are quick-enough that students can filter through classroom computers for their turn over a few periods. The games would also make fun whole-class interactive whiteboard games. These are intended to be one player, so you can split your students into teams and have them take turns at the board. Keep a tally of the correct responses to find out which team is the “winner”. My students always really enjoyed this type of friendly competition.
Of course, the site also makes a great practice area for kids in a computer lab setting. Some of the games are multi-player so kids can team up on computers to play.
If you want a look at how I rotated students through centers on classroom computers, this post explains it.
Tips: The paid subscription brings you LOTS more games (and concepts). If your students enjoy the site, it may be worth getting the subscription.
Please leave a comment and share how you are using Super Math World in your classroom!
What it is: Book Source has a pretty incredible tool called the Classroom Library Organizer. A FREE account on Classroom Organizer let’s you digitally build and keep track of your classroom library, import BookSource orders, import student rosters, track book conditions, generate reports, and more. All of this equals one thing for your classroom library: organization. For an organizational freak like me this is heaven! It makes it SO easy to track your classroom library, check in and out books to students, keep them located where they are supposed to be located in your classroom. Basically it is a miracle worker (not to overstate it or anything). As a teacher you can create book rules (like what you are prompted to enter in about a book upon return or how many days books can be checked out), you can choose which fields to display (including reading levels, word counts and interest level), and which fields to display to students. You can even view reports about students reading habits. Pretty handy. And free. Did I mention free?
So, how does this nifty little tool work? You won’t be spending your time typing in information about each and every book you own, that would be WAY too tedious…not to mention time consuming. Classroom Organizer comes with a handy little (free) app for your smart phone. Search “BookSource” in your app store, download the free app and you are armed and ready to go. The app lets you scan ISBN barcodes on the back of books. In a few seconds you have a complete entry for the book including the name of the book, the author, reading level, interest level, etc. This gets automatically added to your classroom library. You can even set a location on the book so that it is returned to exactly the location it came from. SO smart!
Now for the downside: The site is not very explanatory. You have to play around a bit to find what you are looking for and figure it out. There are no “about” pages or even cues from the home page about what all the tool does. As a blogger and a teacher, I find that annoying. I don’t always have time to sit and figure a tool out without a little pizazz that says “don’t forget to look at me!”. It is a small thing really, the tool isn’t hard to use at all, just not very consumer friendly…it doesn’t sell itself until you play.
How to integrate BookSource Classroom Organizer into the classroom: Do you have a classroom library? Do you like organization? Enough said!
We are using this as our only library tracking system at Anastasis since we are so small. I started adding books to our library today. If you don’t have time to do this yourself, enlist some of your students to scan books as part of their classroom job or clean up time.
Students can use Classroom Organizer to help them find books to read. They can search by interest level, reading level, author, etc.
Tips: If you use BookSource there are even more built in goodies to help you out!
Please leave a comment and share how you are using BookSource Classroom Organizer in your classroom!
What it is: I just love when I get lost in a bunny trail of links…you know the kind, you go hunting for something specific and click on something that looks interesting which leads you to a browser of 25 tabs open. I had one of these serendipitous link moments today that lead me to Gamestar Mechanic. Gamestar Mechanic is both a game and an online community that teaches kids how to design their own digital games. In designing games, students learn systems thinking, creative problem solving, art and aesthetics, writing and storytelling, and creates a motivation for further STEM exploration. The free version of Gamestar Mechanic is available with unlimited use for teachers who want to use it with their students. This account option comes with 1 teacher login and 40 student logins. A premium account offers some additional classroom goodies including: class management, the ability for students to incorporate their own custom artwork, live professional training webinars, tools for tracking student activity and assessing progress, the option of having a “walled” school community, and more.
As a teacher you will find sample lessons for using Gamestar Mechanic, an introductory step-by-step guide, and a full learning guide. Teachers can even play a short quest to learn more about how to use Gamestar Mechanic in the classroom to teach core subjects.
How to integrate Gamestar Mechanic into the classroom: There is so much to learn from digital games. As a player, students learn to think strategically, persist through failure and experience epic wins that can translate to what they do and are willing to try out in real life. As a designer students learn systems thinking, creative problem solving, digital art and aesthetics, and storytelling and writing. Students love being able to bring their creations and ideas to life in the form of a game. Gamestar Mechanic could be the key to unlocking the storytelling genius in your reluctant writers. It has been my experience that a student faced with a blank paper and a writing assignment can be daunting. Introduce the idea of designing their own game and suddenly a storyline pours forth. It is pretty neat to watch!
Gamestar Mechanic makes it easy for all teachers to incorporate game design into the classroom and weave it into the core subjects being taught. You don’t have to be a tech-superstar, just create an account, read through the getting started guide and enlist the help of a student who’s passion is game design. This type of designing and thinking is wonderful because it lays the ground work for so much other STEM thinking. It nicely blends disciplines and helps students recognize the overlap in the learning that they do.
Students can each create a game of their own in a lab setting where every student has a computer. If you are limited on your computer options for students, create a game as a class using an interactive whiteboard or projector-connected computer. Students can create games that incorporate other learning or research they are doing to help teach future classes or younger students. At Anastasis, we have Crave Classes. These are classes that the student gets to choose based on personal passions. In the one or two computer classroom, give your students time for a Crave class where they work on Gamestar Mechanic. Other students can follow their areas of passion…almost in a center type of a set up.
Tips: There are a variety of pricing and package options for classrooms. If your students are really enjoying the game design process, it might be worth taking a look at the premium options available.
Please leave a comment and share how you are using Gamestar Mechanic in your classroom!
What it is: Tomorrow is Valentine’s day! While I’m not a big celebrator of this holiday at home, I do enjoy making a big deal of it at school. It is a fun day to build community and culture within a school! Our Valentine’s day plans include jump rope and hoops for heart, the Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, a read-in, book exchange and some fun games/art projects! I am excited! One of the sites I am looking forward to introducing tomorrow is festisite Text Layout. The site is easy to use and yields some impressive results. Students type a bit of text into the text box. Then they click “Layout text” and get their text written as a shape poem inside a heart. The image is delivered as a PDF which makes it easy for students to print and save their creations. Cute and easy!
How to integrate festisite text layout into the classroom: festisite text layout is a neat way for students to play with text. Students can use festisite text layout to write a shape poem about Valentine’s day or a non-fiction poem about the heart. Use the site to create fun Valentine wishes for friends.
Turn the heart text layouts into a game by writing heart-related vocabulary definitions. Students can cut out the heart shape and write the vocabulary word on the back. Students can see how fast their team can get through the deck of cards they have created.
We will be using the heart layout to write a reflection about what we “love” about a book we are reading during our read-in tomorrow. This shape poem can be taped to the inside cover of the book so that when we do our book exchange, it has a personalized message about the book from the giver.
Tips:festisite has other fun text layouts to try including money, card games, logos, iPhones, poems, and text layouts. You can even create spirals, mazes, banners and rebus puzzles out of your text. Way cool!
Please leave a comment and share how you are using festisite text layout in your classroom!
What it is: Google has all kinds of great resources that many of us use daily in our schools. Every year I look forward to the launch of Google Doodle and wait with anticipation to see what kids from around the US have come up with. This year, I am in a place where we can even try our hands at the Google Science Fair. Very exciting stuff!
Doodle for Google is now open for 2012 submissions! K-12 students can express themselves through the theme “If I could travel in time, I’d visit…” as creatively as possible using Google’s logo as their canvas. The winner gets their image displayed on the Google homepage for a day, $30,000 in college scholarships and a $50,000 technology grant for their school. The winning doodle will also be featured on a special edition Crayola box. Submissions have to be postmarked by March 20th.
The Google Science Fair is open to students age 13-18. Students from around the world compete for over $100,000 in scholarship funds, an expedition to the Galapagos, an experience at CERN, Google and LEGO and an award from Scientific American. Nothing to scoff at!
How to integrate Google Doodle and Science Fair into the classroom: Google for Doodle and Google Science Fair are such fun competitions for students to get involved in. Both let students think and express themselves creatively. If you don’t have time to integrate these contests into your regular school day, consider holding an after school club for a few weeks so that students have a place to gather and participate.
I really love looking through the Google Doodles every year. I was thinking that it would be fun to have the students create a doodle with our school name based on our school theme for the year. Yearbook cover? Now that could be fun!
Tips: Share the new Google edu booklet with your colleagues, don’t hog all of those good ideas to yourselves!
Please leave a comment and share how you are using Google Doodle and Science Fair in your classroom!
What it is: Book-it and Suessville have teamed up to do a live read-aloud story time with Tim Tebow. On February 15, 2012, Tim Tebow will be live in a webcast reading Dr. Seuss classic, Green Eggs and Ham. This is especially exciting for our Colorado kids who are huge Tebow fans-HUGE. There are lots of fun printables to pump your students up for the big-day including some tail gate party fun. There are coloring pages, bookmarks, graphing activities, green activities, games and more.
How to integrate America’s Biggest Story Time into the classroom: Set up a reminder for this one, it is sure to be a good time. You just can’t beat a good story…Green Egg and Ham is a classic! Hold a reading party in your classroom, using this event to kick it off. Start by holding a tail gate party complete with fun snacks, a book exchange, etc. Watch Tim Tebow read Green Egg and Ham live in the webcast on an interactive whiteboard or on a projector-connected computer. Set up tents, pillows and blankets around the room where students can choose a cozy spot for a day of reading. This is a fun way to celebrate the joy of reading.
Here are some more ideas I have been collecting on Pinterest for your read-in book party:
Book cakeBook party inviteBubble Gum TimerCaterpillar kabobs
Tips: Sign up for an email reminder for this event on the Book It website! I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: you should be on Pinterest.
Please leave a comment and share how you are using America’s Biggest Story Time with Tim Tebow in your classroom!
What it is: What makes technology SO great is the way that it can make life (and teaching) more productive and fun. Over the years, I have found so many ways that technology can make reading more rewarding for both kids who love to read, and kids who dread reading. Today, I created an “Extreme Speed Booking” website for @michellek107′s class at Anastasis. I created the site quickly using Weebly, an awesome WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) website editor. Drag and drop website building is where it is at! The idea behind the site is to introduce students to a variety of books and form classroom book groups. How does Extreme Speed Booking work? A whole lot like speed dating. 🙂 Students spend a little time with each book and then rate them accordingly with “I want to read more”, “Interesting”, “Not for me”, or “I’ve already read”. Students can also make a note of how interested they are in reading the book (maybe a 1-10 scale)? This process introduces students to a variety of books, genres and authors. Students may come across titles and authors they wouldn’t otherwise find. It also helps teachers form classroom book groups that are of high-interest and investment to students because they had input.
How to integrate Extreme Speed Booking into the classroom:Extreme Speed Booking is a fun way to build book groups/literature circles. I love this method of exposure to a variety of books, authors, and genres.
For our purposes at Anastasis, I created the Weebly website with a link to the “look inside” on Amazon. Because all of our students have an iPad, this was the simplest way to get the book preview into the hands of the students. Don’t have technology? No problem! Just make sure that you have enough copies of books so that each student can sit with the physical book during the Extreme Speed Booking sessions. If you have classroom computers, you can do a blend of both.
Explain to your students that they will have 2 minutes with each book. During that time, they can choose to read the introduction or first chapter, read the book jacket, or flip through and look at chapter titles and pictures. The goal during this time is to discover whether this is a book that they would like to read. It is okay if it isn’t a book they would want to read…the goal is to find out which book they are most excited about. After the two minutes is up, sound a bell that signifies it is time to switch. Before they switch, students can quickly make a note of the Title and rate the book. Continue on until students have had 2 minutes with each book. Collect the notes students have made and formulate book groups based on interest in the book.
I’ve added a few extra pages to our Extreme Speed Booking website including places where students can explore other books that they may like to read (Shelfari and Book Wink). I’ve also added a form that book groups can fill out as they are reading. The form gets emailed directly to the teacher. Our students will probably be blogging quite a bit of reflection about their reading. I thought it might also be useful to have a place for groups to answer questions, make comments, or update their teacher with their progress as a group.
@michellek107 created a Google form for her students to fill out while they are speed booking. Great idea! She is so smart. This will make it easy to collect all of the responses in one place to form groups.
Suggestions for books:
Choose books from a variety of levels, make sure you have a few book options for each reading level in your classroom.
Choose a variety of authors and genres, this is a great way to expose students to authors and genres they don’t normally seek out on their own.
Set up classroom computers with some book trailer videos from a site like Book Wink…this is a great “introduction” to a book or genre and acts much like a movie trailer.
Choose a variety of books from ONE author. After students have completed reading in their smaller groups, they can come back together and do an author study as a whole class; each group contributing something a little different.
Choose a variety of books from ONE genre. Students can read books in the smaller groups but discuss common features of the genre as a class.
Choose a variety of books on a similar topic. Students can read books in the smaller groups and then discuss the different character perspectives, author approaches, etc. This would be really neat to do with historical fiction, Holocaust fiction, etc.
Use non-fiction books that reinforce topics and themes that you are using in other academic areas.
Use biographies of presidents, change makers, authors, etc. Students can learn about a specific person in the smaller reading group and share what they have learned with the larger group later.
Tips:Extreme Speed Booking is a lot of fun with tech, but equally doable without tech! If you have access to a 1-1 tech environment, or can reserve the computer lab for a round of speed booking, you can use my technique above. Weebly makes it very easy to do this!
If you haven’t already, check out Shelfari and create a virtual bookshelf of book recommendations for your class or school. You can see our Shelfari shelf for Anastasis below. If you teach 3rd-12th grade it is worth checking out Book Wink!
This post is going to be formatted a little differently than most are-so fair warning. 🙂 I do a lot of digging for resources and tools for our inquiry block at Anastasis Academy. I thought it might be about time I shared the love here! If you find it useful, I may include some more of these kinds of posts periodically.
Right now our students are learning about how the world works. They are inquiring into animal habitats and needs.
Plant and Animal Habitats from BBC has students working with the Sarah Jane Adventures team to complete a habitat interactive activity where students match aliens with the best habitat based on clues about both creature and habitat.
Remember cootie catchers? Or fortune tellers? They are easily folded out of a regular 8.5×11″ piece of paper. Students can use cootie catchers to show their knowledge, and quiz each other, about habitats. Ask students to each choose a different habitat to create their cootie catcher about. Each flap can have a different word that describes the habitat (for example: desert might say “dry”, “barren”, “extreme temperatures”, “low vegetation”). The next flap can have a type of animal that lives in that type of habitat. The last flap can include a fact about why that habitat is perfect for the animal. To play with the cootie catcher, one student chooses a word and the other spells the word out while opening and closing the cootie catcher. The first student chooses a new word and the second student spells the word out while manipulating the cootie catcher. On the final turn, the student chooses a flap to be opened to reveal the fact.
There are SO many fun ways to explore habitats and animals…if you have outdoor space at your school, send students outside to explore the habitats they walk right by every day.
