Watching Books

Having a copy of a book in their hands while listening and watching its being read was amazing for my English Learners. They would look at their book and then at the screen, comparing the story and illustrations. It was a great teaching tool!

Many read-alouds can be found on YouTube, which is what I typically used. Here is The Very Hungry Caterpillar read by Eric Carle himself. (Since my ELs thought of him as a rock star, they were thrilled to watch it!)

In this video, Bill Martin reads Brown Bear, Brown Bear.

Search for your favorites, and let your students or your own children enjoy and read along!

P.S. If your kiddos LOVE Eric Carle's books as my English Learners did (and my grands do) you can watch this animated version of five of his most popular books on Netflix through the end of June 2016. It includes Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me, The Very Quiet Cricket, The Mixed-Up Chameleon, and I See a Song. (To be honest, $4.99 from Amazon would be a good investment, too!)

Asperger Experts

I am SO excited to share this with you today! I've known, taught, and observed people with Asperger's Syndrome since I was in elementary school (though I didn't know it at the time.) Most people I know in the education field, especially parents and teachers who love someone with AS, are constantly searching for better ways to help that person be successful. 

Danny Raede and Hayden Mears, both of whom have AS, have developed a Facebook page, a blog, a coaching/mentoring program, reasonably priced video products, and a website, where there are links to 47 video clips posted on their YouTube channel that you can access for FREE!

Here's an example: 

Amazing, right? And who is better equipped to teach us about Asperger's Syndrome than real people who have it?

Many thanks to Erica Falvey, who shared this site to the FB group Encouraging Teachers. I'm SO glad to know about it and to share with you, and I hope you'll help spread the word to your friends and colleagues.

For more information about Asperger's Syndrome and other autism spectrum disorders, go to the wonderful Autism Speaks website.  

Storyline Online, from the Screen Actors Guild

How would you like to have 25 FREE read-alouds for your students to enjoy? What if all 25 of them were GREAT children's books? And if the readers were people like James Earl Jones or Jane Kaczmarek, or perhaps Ernest Borgnine or Annette Bening?

If this sounds amazing, then you are in luck! 

The Screen Actors Guild Foundation provides this great resource via YouTube or, for those whose systems block the site, via SchoolTube's Storyline Online channel. 

Here's Betty White reading Gene Zion's classic Harry the Dirty Dog:

As if the videos weren't enough, Storyline Online also provides a downloadable activity guide for each book that includes questions, suggested research extensions, internet activities, and biographical information about the author, illustrator, and reader, plus more book suggestions.

I know you'll enjoy all this site has to offer you and your kiddos!

Cures for the Common Core Blues: BOOKS, Vol. 4

Today's fabulous book for your Common Core blues? Pat Mora's Tomás and the Library Lady, one of my favorite picture books of all time!

"One summer in 1940s Iowa, a librarian welcomed a migrant worker child who found the wider world—and his future—in books. This powerful story is based on the boyhood of Tomás Rivera, who would...become Chancellor of the University of California, Riverside." —Smithsonian Magazine, where it was included in Notable Books for Children, 1997

Inclusive Classrooms Project has activities including discussion questions and writing activities for Mora's book about this amazing man.

You and your students can watch Pat Mora talk about Tomás in this video from Colorín Colorado, where you will also find her biography, more videos, and an annotated list of some of her other books.

 

Mora is the founder of El día de los niños/El día de los libros, Children's Day/Book Day, which is celebrated in April. More about that in the spring! 

In the meantime, grab a copy of this wonderful book and read it to your kiddos. Create a vocabulary card sort. Make an I Have; Who Has? activity for sequencing the story. Lead your students through a research activity about Tomás Rivera. 

And let his inspiring story help cure your Common Core blues!

Metacognition? Priceless!

To be honest, I had never heard the word metacognition until I was in graduate school (again!) adding an endorsement in PreK-12 English as a Second Language. In that program with the fabulous Dorothy Craig and Barbara Young as my professors, I was required to complete a metacognitive unit for English Learners.

In my ESL classroom, I talked to my English Learners about how they learned best. I would ask them: do you understand and remember better if you

• hear the information? hear it with pictures?
• read it yourself? read it with pictures?
• read it yourself while hearing it with pictures?
• write or draw it? 
• hold something in your hands (use manipulatives)?
• talk about it with a partner, along with some or all of the above?
• move while you learn? (for younger kiddos especially, the unspoken answer was "ya think?" :-)

They were not really accustomed to thinking this way for themselves, because they were elementary students with good teachers who differentiated their learning experiences by addressing every modality as much as possible. But as we discussed the different ways they might learn, they soon began to tell me what worked best for them. They had begun to think metacognitively.

There is more to metacognition than simply thinking about thinking; it also involves monitoring your learning and controlling it. But simply recognizing their own learning style was a great start.

If you want to start (or continue) working with your students on their metacognitive skills, you may find some of these sites I found useful: 

I love how Amanda, over at The Teaching Thief blog describes how she teaches active reading strategies to her 4th graders using metacognitive modeling. Amanda recommends the video below as an introduction to metacognition, and displays this anchor chart to guide her kiddos.

The positive effects of deliberately teaching metacognitive reading comprehension strategies are described in this research report over at Reading Rockets - Instruction of Metacognitive Strategies Enhances Reading Comprehension and Vocabulary Achievement of Third-Grade Students. PLEASE read this article - it will impact your teaching and your students' learning!

Another important resource is Melissa Taylor's Imagination Soup: Teach Kids to Think About Their Thinking - Metacognition. Melissa offers ideas on HOW to scaffold and direct this skill development for your students.

Finally, if you are an ESL teacher or teach English Learners in your content classroom, you might want to read this more scholarly article from The Reading Matrix: The Effects of Metacognitive Reading Strategies: Pedagogical Implications for EFL/ESL Teachers.

Once you read all of this great information, I'm sure you'll want to work on developing metacognitive skills with your students. It will make a difference in their comprehension now, and in their success in the future!

Happy 127th, Niels Bohr!

If you teach science, you must teach your students about scientists, making sure that they understand they are scientists themselves as you investigate together. You must, of course, also teach them about well-known scientists who have made huge contributions to our understanding of the natural world.

Today is Niels Bohr's birthday. Bohr won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922, fled the Nazis in 1943, and worked on the Manhattan Project. CNET's Chris Matyszczyk calls today's Google Doodle in his honor "beautifully random and humorous (since it) is not some especially significant milestone in the Bohr family. It is not the 100th anniversary of his birth or death, nor his 150th. It's just that Niels Bohr would have been 127 today."

Matyszczyk seems to think this appropriate, calling Bohr a scientist with a sense of humor, citing a Washington Post article that includes "some of his more pithy observations, ones that make one imagine Bohr would have been anything but a bore in company." Here are some of my favorites:

“Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.”

“No, no, you’re not thinking — you’re just being logical.”

“How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.”

“An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes, which can be made, in a very narrow field."

“We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct. My own feeling is that it is not crazy enough.”

Intelligent, intuitive, influential, and yes, funny. A man who so inspired one of his sons that he also received a Nobel Prize. Show your students this short YouTube video tomorrow to introduce them to the amazing man who was Niels Henrik David Bohr:

White Flour - The Book and The Video

There are fourteen white faces in Geita, Tanzania, a rural town of 40,000 souls. Our son Carson, daughter-in-law Holly, and grandsons Jude and Silas are four. The rest are members of their mission team, except for a single German woman who also came to Geita as a missionary.

Since our kids moved to East Africa in 2009, I've spent a total of almost eleven weeks there, and I've glimpsed life as a minority. This has led to a great deal of reflection, as have my seven years of experience teaching English as a Second Language to Hispanic children and working closely with their families.

Holly sent me a link to this video last night, and I had to share it with you. If I were still in the classroom, I would get a copy of the book, download the video, and create a lesson to use with my students. I hope you will.

The book is available at WhiteFlourBook.com and at Amazon.com. From the website: "White Flour is David LaMotte’s second children’s book, with illustrations by Jenn Hales. In Seussian rhyme, it tells the funny and inspiring story of the day that the Ku Klux Klan met the Coup Clutz Clowns, who offered a whimsical and wise retort to their racist rally. The poem that provides the text for the book was inspired by true events in Knoxville, TN in 2007. White Flour was written for middle school students and older, but may be appropriate for younger kids at their parents’ discretion."

Common Core Practice | Medical Manga, a Family Grocery and a Restaurant Review

Drum roll, please! I told you earlier this week about The Learning Network's plan to publish a Common Core Practice Feature each Friday, and I'm thrilled to say that it is here!

The series is being done in collaboration with two teachers in New Jersey, Jonathan Olsen and Sarah Gross, and the premiere post includes two argumentative writing tasks and one that is informative. All reference the Common Core Standards that they address.

The one that grabbed my attention is the first, Science: “Manga as Medical Tool,” which refers to a Times news article about Dr. Ian Roberts of London.

To paraphrase from the task description: No pharmaceutical company is willing to devote money to an advertising campaign for a new drug that promotes clotting and should reduce death in trauma patients, so Dr. Roberts has turned to unorthodox means such as cartoons and manga comics to share the information with doctors around the world.

Here is the student task: "Do you think it is a good idea to share research findings through visual media, like manga comics and cartoons? Write a paragraph in which you use information from this article to support your views. Provide at least one example where visual media could be helpful — or harmful — in sharing this kind of information." Students can view the manga comic (the first frame is shown)

and watch the cartoon below before writing. The CRASH-2 comic was created by Dr. Roberts's nephew, and should contribute much to your students' interest in the article!

I want to say "Thank you!" to the writers of this great new feature, so I'm leaving a comment on the post. If you use any of the three tasks proposed this week, I hope you will, too.

Have a fabulous fall weekend! The weather here in Middle Tennessee couldn't be better, and I plan to enjoy it!

Teaching About September 11

I have to share this blog post with you today, from the The Learning Network at The New York Times. It is the first post of the 2012-2013 school year in their series Great Ideas from Readers. 

You'll find two lesson plans there, one by teachers Bev Berns, Shaelynn Farnsworth, Shawn Hyer, Erin Olson and Todd Vogts from schools in Iowa and Kansas, and another by Rachelle Lamoureux of North Dakota. Please read the post, and then watch the video.

Shannon Doyne, who wrote the post, says: "Shaelynn Farnsworth and Erin Olson, along with other teachers...used our collection of 9/11 resources as the foundation for research for the video (below), which was created by students at multiple high schools."

Ms. Doyne continues, "Rachelle Lamoureux...used front-page Times articles from the first 10 days after the attacks as readings to which her “current generation” students responded, then contributed a word for a group collage that captured their reactions." (Lamoureux is a middle school teacher.)

In addition to these two lesson plans, you will find many links to additional teacher resources on the website.

Chemistry/Physical Science teachers, this is for YOU! (And it's great!)

When I was teaching Physical Science, I had a set of samples of chemical elements. They were small, sealed in lucite bars, but they were so much better than pictures in a textbook. My students enjoyed them, and they were able to see some of the elements' physical properties up close.

Your students can see much, much more now that video journalist Brady Haran has created 118 videos about the elements featuring chemists from the University of Nottingham. Check it out at The Periodic Table of Videos.

http://edudemic.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/periodic-table-videos-620x324.png

This is a totally amazing site, with much more than a video for each chemical element. Extra Videos has news, travels, special occasions, and funny stuff, too. The group has also added a new collection called Molecular Videos that provide information about their favorite molecules and compounds. Here's one called "Fire Water":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1z0AVvY9yM 

This video could be used to kick off your study of chemical properties and reactions, during which you have your students investigate for themselves many other reactions.

http://www.upwardbound.unh.edu/images/chemistry.jpg

Hurry on over, and enjoy this great resource!

GOOD NEWS: YouTube For Schools

I LOVE good news, and I have some for you, in case you haven't already heard!

I was frustrated near the end of my classroom career, because I knew that great resources were available on YouTube, but teachers couldn't access it at school. This was, of course, due to inappropriate content on the huge video site.

For a year or two, I would download at home videos such as Eric Carle himself reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar, take my laptop back to school, and share it with my kiddos. Then my school system subscribed to Gaggle, which gave us access to filtered YouTube. We were thrilled, and used it well.

Some teachers, however, were still left out because their systems didn't subscribe to Gaggle. But YouTube came through, launching a new portal in December called YouTube for Schools, and it's FREE!

If your school hasn't already set up a Google account to allow you access to this great resource, you can do it here. Your students will be able to watch only content from YouTube EDU or videos added by your school. And you? YouTube Teachers has playlists ready for you to access by grade band and subject area, and many are already aligned to the Common Core State Standards!

You are SO welcome for this good news flash! Hope you enjoy this great resource, and that your kiddos do, too!

TED-Ed Lessons Worth Sharing

So. TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) is a global set of conferences owned by the private non-profit Sapling Foundation, formed to disseminate "ideas worth sharing." (Wikipedia) I've watched a few TED Talks when recommended by my son and another person or two. I was impressed with the knowledge and skill of the speakers. And that was about it. Until today.

Actually having time to look for great resources for my own learning and to share with you is one of the best things about having retired from the classroom! Today, I discovered TED-Ed, which was just launched in April. And it's too cool for school!

How would you science teachers like a 5 minute animated video called, "Just How Small Is an Atom?" with lesson suggestions?

Or, math teachers, how about 7 minutes of "How Big is Infinity? (The Most Important Unsolved Problem in Mathematics)"? This one has lesson suggestions, and even links to a site by Dennis Wildfogel, where he has posted videos called "Making Sense of Calculus". Seriously?

My teacher-daughter will love "The Case Against Good and Bad" which urges the use of vivid words instead of worn-out ones. (A couple of years ago, she and her middle-school students created a graveyard for overused words in the hallway outside her classroom.)

 TED-Ed even allows you to "flip" these lessons or ANY YouTube video, creating a customized lesson for yourself and your students. I am simply amazed, and I'm going to let you read this post on the website Cool Hunting.com to get the details. CH's explanation is much clearer than mine would be!

So. I'm learning something new every day, and I'm glad today brought me (and you) TED-Ed!

Teaching Channel - Pinterest for Teachers, But Better

Back in the day (say the late 1980s), there were filmstrips and old reel-to-reel films, but teaching videos? Not so much. Flash forward to the early 2000s, and my librarian best friends had amassed hundreds of VHS tapes and indexed them for our faculty. We were rich!

Now here we are in 2012, with YouTube, TeacherTube, and Gaggle, oh, my! Gaggle even has a "my videos" button, but sadly, not every school system has a Gaggle subscription for its teachers. 

Enter Teaching Channel, which features videos of lesson ideas in addition to exemplary lessons and strategies:

• "Teaching Channel is a video showcase -- on the Internet and TV -- of innovative and effective teaching practices in America's schools."
• "Videos labeled 'Lesson Idea Common Core' are Common Core aligned."
•  It's my favorite price - free!

All good, right? Well, I saved THE (absolute) BEST for last. Once you register for your free Tch account, click on the Workspace tab, and choose Lesson Planner from the My Workspace menu, you can

The Button enables you to "pin" not only videos and ideas from the Teaching Channel website, but also those you find anywhere on the web! I just pinned this great 2-minute video from Tch :
https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/classroom-silent-communication-signals?fd=1 
AND
this one from YouTube, an animation of one of my favorite children's books, Swimmy by Leo Lionni: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=442ie2qFANQ

Simply amazing!!!