Dec 23
J-E-L-L-O!
Academy #3
Use this post to comment on the reading strategy that you chose for your classroom. Then, browse through the comments left by your colleagues and post a reply. Would you choose this reading strategy again to use with the content you were teaching? Explain. What was the impact on student learning because you utilized this reading strategy?
Sep 16
Sound Waves & Your iPhone
No electricity! No batteries! Just good, old fashioned science know-how makes this iphone amplifier pretty darn neat!
From their website: www.koostik.com
It is the result of a year of prototype evolution, made entirely of solid wood, by hand, in America.
Koostik is the natural alternative to electronically amplified iPhone sound docks.
Using only the iPhone’s built in speaker, it acoustically amplifies the volume output by 2 to 4 times! Think of a solid body guitar that’s unplugged-you strum the strings and get a little bit of sound. But if those strings are placed over a hollow body guitar and you strum the strings-you suddenly have acoustic music. The same principal is at work with koostik. Simply place your iPhone into the center cradle, and immediately you hear your music acoustically amplified!
The koostik is designed so it works with all generations of iPhone and 4th generation iPod Touch. All of the external buttons and controls of the phone are easily accessible while the phone is docked in the koostik. We believe it is the perfect marriage of technology and nature!
Jan 12
The Joy of Stats – Watch 200 Years of History in 4 Minutes
From BBC news:
Instead of studying history for one year at the university, you can watch this video for less than five minutes.
Income per person (GDP per capita) is adjusted for inflation and for differences in costs of living (purchasing power) across countries. You can play with the data yourself in Gapminder World.
This is a short clip from the longer film The Joy of Stats ©Wingspan Productions for BBC, 2010.
http://www.gapminder.org/videos/200-years-that-changed-the-world-bbc/
Jan 12
“Way-In” Books – Ways to Hook Students
I have always been a proponent of using picture books in content area classes. And now, Kent State University professor William Bintz has created a list of books that can help spark some interest for students. He calls them ‘way-in’ books. They aren’t a substitute for actual content – especially as the high school level, but they do provide a great way to introduce a concept. This is an easy way to differentiate in a diverse classroom.
Here are some ideas:
English language arts
Inference:
- The Incredible Book Eating Boy (Jeffers, 2006)
- Beneath the Surface (Crew, 2005)
- The Watertower (Crew, 1999)
- The Collector of Moments (Buchholz, 1997)
- The Invention of Hugo (Selznick, 2007)
Persuasive arguments:
- Earrings (Voist, 1993)
- I Wanna Iguana (Orlof, 2004)
- Detective LaRue: Letters From the Investigation (Teague, 2004)
- The Perfect Pet (Palatini, 2003)
- Dear Mrs. LaRue: Letters from Obedience School (Teague, 2002)
Social studies
Culture and cultural diversity:
- The Hello, Goodbye Window (Norton, 2005)
- First Day in Grapes (Perez, 2002)
- The Pot That Juan Built (Andrews-Coebel, 2002)
- Uptown (Collier, 2004)
- Amelia’s Road (Altman, 1993)
Individuals, groups, and institutions:
- Benjamin Banneker: Pioneering Scientist (Wadsworth, 2003)
- Molly Bannaky (McGill, 1999)
- Immigrant Kids (Freedman, 1980)
Mathematics
Patterns, relations, and functions:
- The Warlord’s Puppeteer (Pilgard, 2003)
- Patterns in Peru (Neuschwander, 2007)
- Sir Cumference and the Sword in the Cone (Neuschwander, 2003)
- If You Hopped Like a Frog (Schwartz, 1999)
- Spaghetti and Meatballs for All (Burns, 1997)
Geometric shapes:
- The Greedy Triangle (Burns, 1994)
- Mummy Math (Neuschwander, 2005)
- What’s Your Angle, Pythagoras? A Math Adventure (Ellis, 2004)
- Sir Cumference and the Great Knight of Angleland (Neuschwander, 2001)
- Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi (Neuschwander, 1999)
- Sir Cumference and the First Round Table (Neuschwander, 1997)
- The Librarian Who Measured the Earth (Lasky, 1997)
- The Fly on the Ceiling (Glass, 1998)
Numbers and operations:
- Beanstalk: Measure of a Giant (McCallum, 2006)
- If Dogs Were Dinosaurs (Schwartz, 2005)
- Polar Bear Math (Nagda and Bickel, 2004)
- The Warlord’s Puppeteers (Pilgard, 2003)
- A Place for Zero (Lopresti, 2003)
- One Riddle, One Answer (Thompson, 2001)
- Inchworm and a Half (Pinczes, 2001)
Measurement:
- How Tall, How Short, How Far Away (Adler, 2000)
- Greater Estimations (Goldstone, 2008)
- Great Estimations (Goldstone, 2006)
- Measuring Penny (Leedy, 2000)
- How Big Is a Foot? (Myller, 1991)
Science
Experimental and observational inquiry:
- Gregor Mendel: The Friar Who Grew Peas (Bardoe, 2006)
- What’s the Matter in Mr. Whiskers’ Room? (Ross, 2007)
- Science Verse (Scieszka and Smith, 2004)
- Mr. Archimedes’ Bath (Allen, 1998)
- June 29, 1999 (Weisner, 1995)
Observational inquiry and the scientific method:
- Snowflake Bentley (Martin, 1998)
- Rachel: The Story of Rachel Carson (Erhlich, 2008)
- Galileo’s Journal (Pettenati, 2006)
- The Tarantula Scientist (Montgomery, 2004)
- The Man Who Made Time Travel (Lasky, 2003)
- Leonardo: Beautiful Dreamer (Byrd, 2003)
Physics and Chemistry:
- A Drop of Water (Wick, 1997)
- Where Does Electricity Come From? (Mayes, 2006)
- Forces Make Things Move (Bradley, 205)
- The Island That Moved (Hooper, 2004)
- How Do You Lift a Lion? (Wells, 1996)
- Why Can’t You Unscramble an Egg? (Cobb, 1990)
- Why Doesn’t the Earth Fall Up? (Cobb, 1988)
Living systems and life sciences:
- The Way We Work (Macaulay, 2008)
- Alive: The Living, Breathing Human Body Book (DK Publishing, 2007)
- What a Family! (Isadora, 2006)
- Have a Nice DNA (Balkwill, 2002)
- Amazing Schemes Within Your Genes (Balkwill, 1993)
- The Facts of Life: A Drop of Blood (Showers, 1989)
Earth and space science:
- Arctic Lights, Arctic Nights (Miller, 2003)
- The Incredible Water Show (Frasier, 2004)
- Mountain Dance (Locker, 2001)
- On the Same Day in March (Singer, 2000)
- Cloud Dance (Locker, 2000)
“‘Way-In’ Books Encourage Exploration in Middle Grades Classrooms” by William Bintz in Middle School Journal, January 2011 (Vol. 42, #3, p. 34-45),
Dec 31
World Map Created by Facebook Friendship Connections
From BBC News:
Facebook intern Paul Butler has been poring through some of the data held by the social networking firm on its 500m members.
The map above is the result of his attempts to visualise where people live relative to their Facebook friends. Each line connects cities with pairs of friends. The brighter the line, the more friends between those cities.
After tweaking the graphic and data set it produced a “surprisingly detailed map of the world,” he said in a blog post.
“Not only were continents visible, certain international borders were apparent as well,” he wrote. “What really struck me, though, was knowing that the lines didn’t represent coasts or rivers or political borders, but real human relationships.” However, large chunks of the world are missing, such as China and central Africa, where Facebook has little presence.
Dec 31
How Writing By Hand Makes Kids Smarter
From The Week. Posted on October 6, 2010, at 12:59 PM @ www.theweek.com
Younger Americans are typing or texting more and writing less, even in school — and that’s a problem when it comes to brain development
Most grade-school children are spending only one hour a week on penmanship.
With the ubiquity of keyboards large and small, neither children nor adults need to write much of anything by hand. That’s a big problem, says Gwendolyn Bounds in The Wall Street Journal. Study after study suggests that handwriting is important for brain development and cognition — helping kids hone fine motor skills and learn to express and generate ideas. Yet the time devoted to teaching penmanship in most grade schools has shrunk to just one hour a week. Is it time to break out the legal pad? Here’s a look at how the brain and penmanship interact:
Writing by hand can get ideas out faster
University of Wisconsin psychologist Virginia Berninger tested students in grades 2, 4, and 6, and found that they not only wrote faster by hand than by keyboard — but also generated more ideas when composing essays in longhand. In other research, Berninger shows that the sequential finger movements required to write by hand activate brain regions involved with thought, language, and short-term memory.
Writing increases neural activity
A recent Indiana University study had one group of children practice printing letters by hand while a second group just looked at examples of A’s, B’s, and C’s. Then, both groups of kids entered a functional MRI (disguised as a “spaceship”) that scanned their brains as the researchers showed them letters. The neural activity in the first group was far more advanced and “adult-like,” researchers found.
Good handwriting makes you seem smarter
Handwriting also affects other people’s perceptions of adults and children. Several studies have shown that the same mediocre essay will score much higher if written with good penmanship and much lower if written out in poor handwriting, says Vanderbilt University education professor Steve Graham. “There is a reader effect that is insidious,” he says. “People judge the quality of your ideas based on your handwriting.” And the consequences are real: On standardized tests with handwritten sections, like the SAT, an essay deemed illegible gets a big zero.
This isn’t only an English-language phenomenon
Chinese and Japanese youths are suffering from “character amnesia,” says AFP’s Judith Evans. They can’t remember how to create letters, thanks to computers and text messaging. In China, the problem is so prevalent, there’s a word for it: “Tibiwangzi”, or “take pen, forget character.” “It’s like you’re forgetting your culture,” says Zeng Ming, 22. So closely are Chinese writing and reading linked in the brain, says Hong Kong University linguist Siok Wai Ting, that China’s reading ability as a nation could suffer.
New technology is part of the solution
New touch-screen phones and tablets, like the iPhone and iPad, are providing a countervailing force, translating handwriting into digital letter forms or making writing practice fun (a $1.99 iPhone app called “abc PocketPhonics” rewards kids with “cheering pencils”). In Japan, an iPhone game called kanji kentei — a character quiz with 12 levels — has become a hit with all age groups.
Science may just be catching up with common sense
Heather Horn in The Atlantic Wire says that while all this research is fascinating, it mostly shows that “scientists are finally beginning to explore what writers have long suspected.” She notes a 1985 article in the Paris Review in which the interviewer asks novelist Robert Stone if he mostly types his manuscripts. His reply: “Yes, until something becomes elusive. Then I write in longhand in order to be precise. On a typewriter or word processor you can rush something that shouldn’t be rushed — you can lose nuance, richness, lucidity. The pen compels lucidity.”
Sources: Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic Wire, AFP/Reuters
http://theweek.com/article/index/207846/how-writing-by-hand-makes-kids-smarter
Dec 29
Dan Meyer: Insights On Teaching Math For All
My favorite quote from Dan Meyer is when he says he creates activities “that provide an entry point into a mathematical conversation for all students”. What a powerful way to instruct…
Dec 24
Why Economists Hate Presents, And How Seventh Graders Solved the Problem
This story is from NPR and would be a great introduction to trade markets. Beware, it does mention that there really isn’t a Santa…
You can listen to the entire 12/24 episode of Planet Money or listen to just the clip.
Dec 22
Search Google by Reading Level
Google recently added a new feature to its advanced search. You can now filter your searches into three categories: basic, intermediate, and advanced.
I am interested to see how well it works for teachers and for students.
Here’s how to search.
Go to Google’s main search page and click on the advanced search link. This can be found right next to the search field.
Scroll down to the Reading Level filter.
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