12 Tech Days Before Christmas Break

12 Tech Days Before Christmas Break - Day 9

Use your YouTube downloader to download The Polar Express online (this is the reading of the book by an actor from Storybook Online) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3btRjhWunA&feature=plcp).

Develop age appropriate reading comprehension questions (Who were the main characters? List a character trait they possessed and give an example from the story/book that supports it. What was the story’s main conflict? How was the conflict solved? Summarize the story in 25 words. Etc…). FYI – I attached a list of Character Traits for Kids that I got for free from TeachersPayTeachers in the picture above.

Upper grade levels can add the movie to Edmodo (free and protected social networking site for educators and their classes) and have students watch it on their own (in a center, computer lab, or at home for homework) and give them an assignment (also in Edmodo) where they have to answer questions about the story (if you Google “The Polar Express thematic unit” or “Polar Express Worksheet” you can find LOTS of questions J).

Younger grade levels can create a flipbook – beginning, middle, and end. Have them summarize under the flap and draw a picture to represent the action in the book.

Comments

Picture of the Day - Activity

I attended a training class and a science coach shared an activity that he does with his students to help them differentiate between observations, inferences, and predictions. He puts a picture on the interactive white board as a warm up (he gets the pictures from a variety of sources but uses National Geographic's Picture of the Day a lot). The picture above is from the National Geographic site. He has the students make five observations. Then he makes the students make five inferences. Finally he has the students make five predictions. He does this every day and it really drives home the difference between those three key inquiry vocabulary terms. I've done this activity with both my sixth and fourth grade science classes and the students really got into it and became proficient at telling me the difference between those terms.

Weathering, Erosion, and Deposition Activity

I saw this activity at a science conference years ago and haven't had a chance to use it in a classroom until this week (mainly because I didn't teach weathering, erosion, and deposition). It is a great way to reinforce the definition of the weathering, erosion, and deposition in a highly kinesthetic manner. Basically you break the students up into groups of three. One group is "Weathering" another group is "Erosion" and the third group is "Deposition". Add tape to the back because you are going to stick them to the forehead of the children in each group. The "weathering" students get a sheet of paper that is their "rock" they will be breaking down. At the start of the activity the "weathering" students will start ripping tiny pieces of their "rock" and handing it to the "erosion" students. The "erosion" students will be running their tiny piece of "rock&

Bill Nye Songs with Lyrics

At the end of the Bill Nye videos he always has a fun song that goes with the episode. You can find many of the songs as stand alone videos on YouTube. This came in handy because today I am teaching a lesson on layers of the atmosphere and found a song from his Atmosphere video on YouTube titled "Fresh Aire." I really wanted to remix it and put the lyrics on the video (so the kids could sing along and see how the lyrics matched the lesson). The first thing I did was found a site that has all the Bill Nye lyrics posted used my YouTube downloader ( see instructions here ) and downloaded the song. I then imported the video into Movie Maker Live and used the caption feature to put the lyrics on the different frames (cutting and pasting from the lyrics site into Movie Maker Live). I saved the video and reposted to YouTube so other teachers could use the video with lyrics (the finished video is posted above). The process was pretty easy and I am thinking about doing it for more

Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology

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