Marsha Rogers 2400 Interlachen Road #110A Spring Park, MN 55384 952-471-1127 msrogers@mchsi.com ©Computers are only a tool.

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September, 2003

September 7

Yesterday, Saturday, I came across a great publication, Family Times . It's one of those newspapers you often find outside your favorite coffee shop. The article "Hooked on Books" caught my attention. It reminded me just how important reading is for students to succeed in life. Some of the statistics quoted are disturbing, but important to remember. Though the publication is geared to parents in the Minnesota area, there are some very good ideas for teachers. For those of you outside the Minnesota area, the newspaper is available online at:

http://familytimesinc.com/ft_static_homepage.htm 

If you are looking for reading/literature lesson plans, check out Carol Hurst's web. She specializes in children's literature. At her site you can find grade-level suggestions, complete with lesson plans and links to other books at all reading levels. Links are available by title, author and grade level. Highly recommended.

http://www.carolhurst.com/titles/allreviewed.html 

Your students can be a critic. The Just For Kids Who Love Books site gives them a chance to comment on their favorite books and authors. They share with others their thoughts. It's a great way to include technology in the literature curriculum.

http://www.alanbrown.com/ 

If your students are like mine were, they groan when you pass out the vocabulary list. If the focus is to develop vocabulary rather than spelling, try something different. My solution was to provide a Word Search on one side of the paper with the vocabulary on it. On the other side was a Crossword with the definitions. They had to find the vocabulary words and then complete the Crossword with the correct word matching the definition. Downloads of a Word Search and Crossword kit are available for a 30-day trial. It was one of my most successful alternatives to the inevitable word list. And students stopped groaning.

http://www.crosswordkit.com/download.htm 
A link to the Word kit is at the bottom of the page.

September 13

By now you have settled into your routine. Now it's time to find a few new ideas for your curriculum. Here are a few ideas for you to look into.

Language Arts Grammar
Kids love Mad Libs. They are great teaching tools for grammar. It's one of the few ways I have found that makes grammar "fun." There are a couple online. Best for students grades 5-12. They do need to understand adjectives and verb tenses.
http://www.fuali.com/bold_words.aspx?story=Fairy_Tale 

Geography
Outline maps were something I found hard to find. If you cannot find what you need here, I don't think they exist.
World Maps
http://geography.about.com/library/blank/blxindex.htm?once=true& 
US Maps
http://geography.about.com/library/blank/blxusx.htm 
National Parks by state
http://data2.itc.nps.gov/parksearch/state/usamap.cfm 

Social Studies
The Second Monday in October is Columbus Day. A different twist in the study of Christopher Columbus might be what foods were available to him.
http://www.castellobanfi.com/features/story_3.html 
Other links for Columbus Day studies can also be found at Kids Domain
http://www.kidsdomain.com/holiday/columbusday.html 

Science and Technology
Women are about 50% of college graduates; only 25% of the jobs in science and technology are held by women. The National Science Foundation has sponsored many pilot programs that teachers can use in classrooms to get girls involved in science and technology. eSchool News requires free registration to access their site, but it's worth the time for the articles available to you.
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStory.cfm?ArticleID=4637&ref=wo 

Math
The BBC has a great site that includes games and "print offs" (downloadable worksheets). Keep in mind that Britain uses metrics. This site is particularly great if you are teaching metric systems. Various levels of learning are available. The basic audience is elementary students.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/mathsfile/ 

Science
Webquests for high school students. They include almost all areas of science.
http://www.what-is-the-speed-of-light.com/webquests/science-webquests-index.html 

Cross-curricular
Graphic organizers that support specific thinking skills. An excellent resource for all disciplines.
http://www.somers.k12.ny.us/intranet/skills/thinkmaps.html 

September 20

Are your students having problems finding a rhyme for a given word? The following site not only finds rhymes, but synonyms, antonyms, similar words, and definitions.
http://rhyme.lycos.com/ 

Sponsored by a translation service, the following site provides tongue twisters in 104 languages. Great for foreign language learners to use vocabulary and pronunciation.
http://www.uebersetzung.at/twister/ 

Another great site for students beginning to learn a foreign language is the following one. I like that there are activities like flashcards, fill in the blanks, spelling and word scrambles. Also great for ELS students.
http://www.pdictionary.com/ 

Now it's bragging time. I will have an article on teaching poetry. I got the following message this week:
Your article will be the featured article on our home page (on Today in TechLearning) for one day within the first two weeks of the month; it will appear in Also Featured for one week, and it will be listed on the New Articles page all month. It will remain on our Web site – accessible by browsing and by searching our database - forever.
http://www.techlearning.com 

September 28

If you don't already know, I live in Minnesota. This week school violence hit close to home. A freshman took a gun to school. He killed one student and another is still fighting for his life. A teacher stopped him with one word, "NO."

It is easy to say "It happened there; it can't happen here." This was in a rural school north of the Twin Cities. This was not in an urban area. There are some lesson plans available to you to help your students.

Creating Alternatives to Violence - a lesson plan for older students by the Constitutional Rights Foundation
http://www.crf-usa.org/violence/alternative.html 

Secret Service report on violence in schools
http://www.ustreas.gov/usss/ntac_ssi.shtml 

School Violence reality check. Invite your students to take the quiz. Grades 6-8 and 9-12.
http://www.ustreas.gov/usss/ntac_ssi.shtml
 
Nickelodeon has some great tips on talking to kids from grades K-8 about tough issues.
http://www.nick.com/all_nick/everything_nick/kaiser/violence.html 

I hope some of these sites help you deal with tough topics with your students. 

msrogers@mchsi.com

For other educational links, please visit my column at Backwash

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