The website I have found this week is a site based out of Saskatoon (even if it is not Regina, we may end up teaching there and this is a great resource for Saskatchewan). There are 3 lessons that have to do with reading maps and working with grids. It is important to note that the website is interactive so little direction from a teacher is needed, the student can simply go onto the site themselves and work through the activities. You can find the website here.
This website can be connected to the Grade 6 Social Studies Curriculum and the topic of Location. Students will be able to find particular points on a grid, understand Northern and Southern hemispheres, the equator, the prime meridian, etc.
This site will improve students' learning and assist them by relating content to Saskatchewan. Instead of the teacher reading out what the points on a grid mean or what the definition of equator is, the students get a chance to go online and find out by themselves by participating in various activities.
How I would use this website in a classroom would be to get the students to complete the grid activity and to keep in mind a specific fact about a place that they find interesting or did not know beforehand. I would like them to present this fact to the other students and see if they can guess in which area of the grid it was found.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
The Environment
Hello everyone!
As I was searching through a David Suzuki website, I came upon a really interesting site to do with the environment called Forest Adventures.
In this website, students get to pretend they are given a deed to a forest and have to decide what they should do with it. In the end, they get to learn that clearcutting sometimes takes place and is not what we want to do with all of the Earth's forests (especially just for profit).
As I was searching through a David Suzuki website, I came upon a really interesting site to do with the environment called Forest Adventures.
In this website, students get to pretend they are given a deed to a forest and have to decide what they should do with it. In the end, they get to learn that clearcutting sometimes takes place and is not what we want to do with all of the Earth's forests (especially just for profit).
This can be connected to Grade 6 Science - Ecosystems (in relation to effects of change on an ecosystem and a sense of responsibility for the preservation of ecosystems) and also Grade 6 Science - Earth's Climate (you can compare characteristics of different climates and use this as an example of B.C. perhaps).
I think this website would be a fun and interactive introduction for the students to use to begin thinking about what sort of effects clear cutting this forest would have and the reasons why they would or would not do it. This site could be a starting point for students to begin thinking critically together and on their own what results their own actions may have in certain areas of the environment.
How I would use this website in a classroom would be to go through the activity and then create a paragraph response about the reasons why clear cutting forests might be bad and to also tell me some effects that might have on the environment.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
First Website Link
The first website I've found which could be very useful in a classroom is a game called "Fling the Teacher".
In this game, students get a chance to answer questions (with four possible answers, a-d) about a particular topic. They first get to pick a "victim" and dress them up with hilarious features, such as really crazy hair or teeth. When they get a question right, they build up a medieval times catapult piece by piece. If they are able to get all the questions right, the catapult is completely built and they are able to literally fling the cartoon character they created.
There could be many curriculum links for this site. Although it is a site based out of the UK, there are still topics that can relate to our learning here in Canada. It does rely mostly on topics relating to Social Studies, such as Grade 6 Social Studies Interaction (it can focus on African peoples as slaves and many cultures within the Atlantic region to do with the World Wars). It could relate to Grade 8 Social Studies on Interdependence as it talks about many revolutionary changes. Lastly, this could even relate to Grade 7 Health if you are learning about HIV/AIDS because there are some games to do with infectious diseases and the Plague, so you could talk about how the immune system is affected, etc.
I would have students use this in possibly three different ways. The first way would be for them to have a period to just play it and see how far they get (using it as a study guide, perhaps) individually. They could also use it in partners to work together and if they don't know the answer to a question, they could take turns looking it up and researching it. Thirdly, if a unit is almost complete, I would even play this game with the whole class on a data projector so we could work together to review what we had learned and have some fun while doing it.
I think this site would improve students' learning because it provides motivation for students to want to play the game and to find/know the correct answers. It is a good tool for the students to use for studying and reviewing content. I think that by incorporating some fun components into an activity, students will have a great time learning what they need to know.
I hope you enjoy this site as much as I did. There are also other games on this site, but keep in mind most of them are to do with Social Studies and history.
In this game, students get a chance to answer questions (with four possible answers, a-d) about a particular topic. They first get to pick a "victim" and dress them up with hilarious features, such as really crazy hair or teeth. When they get a question right, they build up a medieval times catapult piece by piece. If they are able to get all the questions right, the catapult is completely built and they are able to literally fling the cartoon character they created.
There could be many curriculum links for this site. Although it is a site based out of the UK, there are still topics that can relate to our learning here in Canada. It does rely mostly on topics relating to Social Studies, such as Grade 6 Social Studies Interaction (it can focus on African peoples as slaves and many cultures within the Atlantic region to do with the World Wars). It could relate to Grade 8 Social Studies on Interdependence as it talks about many revolutionary changes. Lastly, this could even relate to Grade 7 Health if you are learning about HIV/AIDS because there are some games to do with infectious diseases and the Plague, so you could talk about how the immune system is affected, etc.
I would have students use this in possibly three different ways. The first way would be for them to have a period to just play it and see how far they get (using it as a study guide, perhaps) individually. They could also use it in partners to work together and if they don't know the answer to a question, they could take turns looking it up and researching it. Thirdly, if a unit is almost complete, I would even play this game with the whole class on a data projector so we could work together to review what we had learned and have some fun while doing it.
I think this site would improve students' learning because it provides motivation for students to want to play the game and to find/know the correct answers. It is a good tool for the students to use for studying and reviewing content. I think that by incorporating some fun components into an activity, students will have a great time learning what they need to know.
I hope you enjoy this site as much as I did. There are also other games on this site, but keep in mind most of them are to do with Social Studies and history.
Newcomer to Bloggin'
So this is my very first blog website! I really hope that I can find some neat websites I'll be able to use in the future. I'm pretty excited to be able to share what I've learned with others, as well.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)