Lunar New Year

The Lunar New Year is upon us, in fact it is Friday, Feb. 16, given this I have compiled some resources for those of you wishing to mark the occasion.

Scholastic, has a page dedicated to the Lunar New Year with lesson plans, articles and videos.

TeacherVision, also has put together a collection of materials with printables, literature, videos and more.

The Teacher's Guide, is focused on the Chinese New Year and has Zodiac, Proverb, Tangrams resources and more. 

TES, is also focused on the Chinese New Year and has wide arrange resources.

Learn about TET, the Vietnamese Lunar New Year Celebration.

Teachers Pay Teachers also has some great (not free) resources for TET, ChineseNew Year, Lunar New Year

 

Vashti Harrison

I am going to share about an author/illustrator because I think it is disappoint the lengths that I had to go to share a video about her with all of you.  Under "normal" circumstances I would have just share the video but since I had to screencast the book trailer below, because it is not available on any of the video platforms that are compatible with this program. I though I would take the time to draw this to your attention and share more about her even though there's little technology connection here.

Vashti Harrison recently published a best-selling children's book called Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History.   Her website has some good information about her writing and illustrating of this book as well as a drawing page that you can print out and use with students of all ages. You can also see a great interview from the DailyShow with Trevor Noah.

 

 

Winter Olympics

The Winter Olympics start on Friday night in PyeongChang, South Korea.  I have scoured the internet to bring you all some resources about the Olympics.

BrainPop Jr unfortunately has nothing related to the Olympics.  BrainPop does for grade 3-6 there are some great lessons, Including: Olympics, Athens, TimeZone X Olympics, & TimeZone X Athens.

Scholastic has a lovely page set up where you can find all of their Olympics materials. Including lesson plans for all ages and book resources.

Read, Write, Think has a lesson where students can act as reporters for the Olympics, write poems or speeches for after winning a gold medal; they can also create stamps commemorating the games and so much more.

Teachers Pay Teachers has a wide variety of materials for purchase and for free including word searches, money activities, reading challenges and much more.

The School Library Journal has an article entitled 15 Tech Tidbits To Bring the 2018 Winter Olympic Into Your Classroom​ there are hyperlinks within the article as well.  There was a link to an article high school and sport hijabs that was in The Washington Post. 

Education World has also set up a page dedicated to this Winter Olympic Games.  There you can find many lesson ideas mostly for grades 3 and up.

The Olympics Website also has lots of great information about all Olympics but specifically these games.

SeeSaw Ideas

 

SeeSaw Ideas

For those grades piloting SeeSaw (PreK, 3 and 5) this year here are some ideas on how to use SeeSaw in your Classes:

• Record your student reading a passage
• Have students take a picture of a completed work and then record their voice explaining why they selected this piece
• Have students take a picture of a book they've read and write a review for the book
• Take a picture of students having an experience and then write or record about what they were feeling.

The link at the top takes you to the SeeSaw Ideas page where you can search by grade level to find ideas on way to incorporate SeeSaw into your classes. 

SeeSaw PD

BrainPop Jr

 

BrainPop Jr

For those in grades K-2 we have a BrainPop Jr account.  Why should those in grade K-3 not use BrainPop?  The videos and activities on BrainPop Jr are geared to younger students are are free from any developmentally questionable material.  They also use vocabulary that is easier for younger students to understand.  The activities are created with younger students in mind, unlike BrainPop which gears it's videos and activities to older students in Middle and High School. 

Looking for ways to use BrainPop Jr in your classroom?  Here are some great ideasfrom BrainPop on how best to use the Junior versions. 

Looking for lesson ideas, BrainPop Jr has lots of great lesson planning ideas for you.

Time Lines

There are a lot of digital Time Line tools out there, here are a few of them that could prove useful in grades 3-6.

Sutori is an online timeline creation tool allowing you to add images, video and quizzes.  Even though it is intended for schools, you can set up your family as a “class” to keep all the timelines in one place.  Sutori claims to integrate closely with Google Classroom, which enables you to import classes and students directly onto their platform. 

Read, Write, Think "allows students to create a graphical representation of an event or process by displaying items sequentially along a line. Timelines can be organized by time of day, date, or event, and the tool allows users to create a label with short or long descriptive text. Adding an image for each label makes a timeline more visually appealing."

BrainPop: Time Zone X is a series of timeline games from BrainPop.  They have an offline version of the game where students use blank Time Zone X cards to create their own game! This printable resource is designed with 4 cards to a page.

 

Human Body iPad App

The Human Body by Tinybop is a one of our newer iPad apps it is on the lap iPads which can be used by booking the lab. 

"Explore an interactive model Dive into the skeletal, muscular, nervous, circulatory, respiratory, and digestive systems. The heart beats, guts gurgle, lungs breathe, and eyes see. 

Discover how hearing works. Play music or talk into the microphone to send sound vibrations through the ear canal. Travel into the intestines. Feed the body a feast and watch out for burps, barfs, and farts!  

Learn in 50+ languages. Interactive labels in over 50 languages, including Chinese, Russian, German, French, Spanish, Japanese — and more!"

ChromaKids

 

ChromaKids

ChromaKids is inspired by the work of author/illustrator Todd Parr. The ChromaKids app invites  children to become storytellers! Discover an interactive artistic experience for children ages three and older. ChromaKids ignites fun and excitement in a creative and collaborative exchange of stories. 

Creators at my use sticker and drawing tools to create original art work like the beloved author/illustrator Todd Parr.