Weather Channel App in Math

Hi, we've decided to venture off with our own blogs! Please go to teachitivity.blogspot.com to find a revised version of this post. See you there. 

Why not teach kids about temperature using something we use everyday - the Weather Channel app! I'm a huge fan of double dipping whenever I can. This activity brings in geography and statistics while the kids have fun calculating temperatures. The day my kids did this, I tweeted it on our class twitter account and the Weather Channel retweeted us. Of course, I flipped out and took a screenshot of it to show my kids the next day. Find this activity HERE!!
-Katharine

Teaching Food Webs with Facebook

Hi, we've decided to venture off with our own blogs! Please go to teachitivity.blogspot.com to find my new posts. See you there. 
Kids love social networking but often times, it's hard to incorporate it safely in the classroom. I put together this mock-Facebook template for science this year and it turned out to be a blast for the kids. I just used Pages (or Word) and made text boxes. The kids chose an ocean organism from the bottom of the ocean food web and made a "Facebook" profile for them. They showed their understanding of the food web by writing statuses. For instance: "Just had a nice meal of algea, plankton, and bacteria with my family!" Then they might post a status as if an organism higher up on the food chain consumed them today and tagged them on Facebook. It was so easy to differentiate too. Students who needed a challenge either imported images from the internet, staged photographs using photobooth, or created videos using Videolicious. Many of the students included each other's organism in their statuses which made it seem even more authentic. I can't wait to see how else I can use this template next year!

-Katharine

Edmodo and Discussion

Edmodo is obviously a great resource to use in the classroom in many different ways.  I just wanted to share one way that I use Edmodo and how I use it to promote discussion.

Edmodo is a great way for students to discuss their self-selected reading text.  I created small groups with in my class group.  These groups are heterogeneous so that the students can gain information from each other and learn about a variety of different books.  By grouping the student heterogeneously, the students can build off of each other, gain vocabulary, and learn about books that they might not even be capable of reading.

Basically, every week I post a question or a topic for them to discuss about what they are reading.  The students have to post about their book and then respond to two other people's posts within the week.  Not only is this pushing their reading to the extra step, but it is integrated reading and writing.  It is also a great way to promote literature discussion.  Sometimes, I even post something during the week to get them thinking at a higher level if their discussion seems to be surface level.  The students participate in literature circles online through technology!  They love getting to share what they are reading and learning about other good books from fellow classmates.

Just a quick idea!
-h