Graphing and Technology

Great Kid Friendly website to enter data and make graphs:

http://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/createagraph/

Multiple Intelligences

I found this wonderful kid-friendly site to test my student's multiple intelligences. I integrated a computer station into after Illinois State Achievement Testing activities, so that my students could each take the test and I would have a better understanding of where their strengths lie. Ideally, I would have done this at the beginning of the year, but since I am just now able to officially take over the classroom (planning included), this is when it got accomplished.

Each student took the test. Some students I was surprised at their lack of confidence in their skills, as I thought some should have been much higher. Others tested right where I would have predicted them to test. The surprising thing, however, was how many of my students tested high in musical abilities. By taking a look at my results, it is clear that musical abilities are lacking, at best. So this is where my research began.

What can I do for these musical students?! I want to bring out their strong points and give them choices in how they are assessed based on the multiple intelligences, but how when I am so musically ungifted? My research tells me to allow students to write song lyrics related to the learned subject, preform a self written rap or make up sounds and sound effects. These options I can handle. The others included: giving presentations with appropriate musics accompaniment, write a new ending to a composition that explains the learned material, create a musical collage to depict the learned material and presenting a short musical on the learned material. How do I go about having my students be able to do the last set of things when I, myself couldn't do them?

I have a starting point (the easier ones), but I want to make this more meaningful for my students and to be able to incorporate this throughout the rest of the school year. Any suggestions?

Give without Spending a Cent!

There are some websites I have come across that allow you to give without giving a cent! By simply using them, they will donate to charitable foundations. The one I like best is a search engine powered by yahoo called goodsearch.com. You pick the charity and every search they donate one cent. The other two are education based: www.freerice.com and freepoverty.com. At each site they donate either water or rice to countries in need. All you have to do is correctly answer questions. This is a great tool to use for extra practice in the classroom! Plus it promotes helping others out.

Who Wants To Be a Millionaire

I just found an excellent website where you can make your own questions for Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. In my classroom I am using it as an assessment, as each student will be writing down the answers to the questions, while only one is in the "hot seat". Once you have created your game, it gives you your own URL to view it in. I made mine on perimeter, volume and area, with a few questions thrown in there just on shapes. Click here to view my game.

Graphing Paper

Next week my class is learning about perimeter and area. I knew there had to be some free printable graph paper somewhere online. The problem I ran into, however, was that I wanted the squares to be larger than that of typical graph paper. I found a site that allows you to adjust the size of the squares, color of the lines, and paper size as well. Here it is. Enjoy!

Current Events

Today a fellow student teacher clued me into a great website. If you have students who are interested in rap, this website could be your link to engaging students in current events. The makers rap the week's current events. This week it was everything from the aftershock of Haiti to the California mudslides to the solar eclipse to Scott Brown getting elected to the Massachusetts Senate position. The rap is done via a video and also shows news clips.

Website

This is a great website for the curious kids in your life. It can be used when kids ask random "why" questions, such as 'why are banana's curved?'. You simply type the question in the search engine and it tells you: bananas grow in bunches up towards the sun, creating the curvature during their maturation time. They go a little more in depth than that, but still in easy enough terms for the average guy or gal to understand.

Website in the Works

Watchknow is an educational website that is getting started. Its aim is to organize all the best educational videos so that teachers and can have them at their fingertips with ratings and additional information concerning them.

Much thanks to Teacher's Musings for sharing this site with me via her blog.