This post is mostly about STEM, but scroll down for some resources on media literacy as well as some early reading resources.
I took the vacation week off from writing a blog post, but did 5 days of PD instead. One of the best overall STEM conferences I have attended recently was the 4 day Elem STEM con. This was very inexpensive with the early bird registration and is still a deal at ~ $50 for the sessions available. You can still register thru the end of this month, only 3 more days. Check out the resources. I spent 4-7 hours/day at this conference for 4 days and still have not even listened to half of the presentations. They expanded to include more secondary STEM, as well as a lot of great information for DEI and Special Ed.
The other great PD I attended was an all day MakeyMakey workshop- "virtually hands-on". Next month will be the Circuit Playground workshop. These are sponsored by CS for MA. STEM Links
These are some of the STEM links from the Elementary STEM CON as well as the Amplify STEM conference. One that I really liked, surprisingly enough was one on math-Through the Looking Glass, Strengthening Arithmetic Skills with Fresh Perspectives. Sunil Singh was so engaging and made this fun. He also shared great links for math games that I will include below.
Reading Resources
These look great- and they are free! Student activity centers for PreK thru grade 5. FLORIDA CENTER FOR READING RESEARCH
Thinking about PD for the summer?
Aside fromInfosys, which I highly recommend, check outEducator Alexander's series. Media Literacy
Wes Fryer recently shared a media literacy lesson he created for his 5th grade class. Thanks Wes, for freely sharing your work! You can access the lesson here.
My go-to resource for media literacy is the News Literacy Project. They now have resources and lesson plans for grades 4 and up. This, in addition to the Checkology program and the NLP Sift make an excellent foundation for all of our students. "The Sift, NLP’s free weekly newsletter for educators — delivered during the school year — explores timely examples of misinformation, addresses media and press freedom topics and discusses social media trends and issues. It also includes links, discussion prompts and activities for use in the classroom."
They have recently introduced an upper elementary unit to help students learn to tell fact from opinion. Check it out here.
This lesson is designed to help students learn the difference between fact-based and opinion-based statements. The lesson includes a fun slideshow activity, handy flowchart, graphic organizer and other materials tailored for grades 4-6.
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Poetry Month This link comes from a Terri Eichholz post. I love the interactive google doc with lesson plans that she shared from Scott Bayer (@LyricalSwordz). With yet more unsettling news on the rise of hate and racism, here are some resources from KQED. Click here or on the image. WordtuneLooking for a new way to improve student writing? Try this Chrome extension- Wordtune. Eric Curts wrote up a great explanation on his site, and created this how to video, as well as detailed written instructions. I tried it out and like having a lot of choices, although, as with most of this type of tool, like Grammarly, I found that having it pop up to be intrusive and used the little dot in the top left to shut it off, unless I asked it for advice. I am curious to see how well the AI works. We all know that the auto-correct can be a godsend or make really funny mistakes. BreakoutEDU's free game of the week is Breakout THE ZOOM!
Math Whiteboard As many of you may know, math is not my favorite subject. This 30 min webinar on a new tool called Math Whiteboard honestly made the tool look really cool, but not being a math teacher, I don't know. He demo'd cool tricks with graphs, etc... made it look easy. He also seems to be available for questions and more demos. Try it and see! Let me know in the comments. Here's a couple of example images from his site. I just saw that Eric Curts is having a webinar on this next week 4/20/21 MakeCode Skill Map This one is in development, but go ahead and give it a shot if you don't mind that there may well be some bugs. I enjoyed the intro webinar and found most of it to be fun and easy to follow along. You can also check out the MakeCode Arcade platform, but this skillmap has potential as a teaching tool. One big plus- MakeCode Arcade has Immersive Reader! Canva If you haven't tried Canva, you're missing out. This platform has grown so much over the last year or so! I guess I'm not the only one who is so impressed with Canva. Richard Byrne just put up a new blog post 19 Canva Tutorials for Teachers and Students - Certificates, Comics, and More! Check out all the great tutorials he has created here. Here's a link to Canva's OnBoarding for Educator's presentation with step by step from setup to presenting remotely and more. Canva offers free pro accounts for educators! You can create classrooms. It is integrated with Google Classroom. Students can collaborate on work. The amount of resources available to teachers is simply amazing! Remove bg is part of the platform... You can find, reuse, recreate worksheets, comics, infographics and so much more. The Canva video below is a bit long, but worth the time. I have sat through several of Leslie Fisher's webinars on Canva and will be back for more. You can also check out Holly Clark's ideas here. I also took a couple of quick video tours ( less than a minute) below to show you some of what is available to teachers- for free!
Yet More Jamboard I attended a Fried.Tech webinar recently on Jamboard, not really expecting to learn anything new. Much of it was the same old, but I did learn more about the differences in using Jamboard on a tablet vs the web version (~ 11:28 on the video) There are some pretty cool things you can do with the app. Check out their presentation and slide deck. Just in from Eric Curts I thought I was done, but just saw this tweet from Eric. Now I have to go check out Monster Mash!
A couple of quick announcements before all of the National Poetry Month info. Did you know that this is also National Library Workers Day? Thank your librarian today!
Looking for resources for National Poetry Month?
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Kenn Nesbitt, former childrens' poet laureate, has a great site for the younger crowd. Check it out here. |
Celebrate National Poetry month with free games from Breakoutedu. Check out the great- free- offerings! We are celebrating National Poetry Month with our exciting games, ‘5 Lyric Poets’ and ‘Spring into Poetry’! Play for FREE this week only at: https://brkedu.com/Poet-SignUp |
Remember to use the link to make your own copy. If you are using this in a school setting, be sure to make your copy in your school account to enable sharing with your students.
It includes a collection of 70 poem/poetry books, 4 extra poem videos, and 26 children-friendly educational videos displayed in alphabetical order defining and showing how to write different types of poems, such as: acrostic, autobiographical, ballad, cinquain, clerihew, color, concrete, couplet, diamante, elegy, epic, epigram, found, free verse, haiku, limerick, list, lyric, narrative, ode, prose, quatrain, sonnet, and more.
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Maureen Tumenas
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