The New York Times Learning Network

I discovered this website when I was leading the After School Journalism Club, and absolutely love it - probably because I can actually complete their crossword puzzles in a reasonable amount of time.

I pulled language directly from the Network to describe the site - which is actually a blog:

About The Learning Network

Our mission is to offer rich and imaginative materials for teaching and learning using New York Times content. 

Every weekday we offer new educational resources based on the articles, photographs, videos, illustrations, podcasts and graphics published in The New York Times – all for free.
We invite parents, teachers and students who are 13 and older to use our ideas and tools. We hope that through posting your comments you’ll become part of an ongoing conversation about teaching and learning. 

For the 2010-’11 school year, here are 11 great ways to use our blog.
Throughout the year, we offer the following regular features:

• Lesson Plans — Daily lesson plans based on New York Times content.
• Student Opinion — News-related questions that invite response from students age 13 and older.
• Word of the Day — Vocabulary words in the context of recent Times articles.
• Test Yourself — Questions based on Times content that aim to strengthen literacy and numeracy skills.
• 6 Q’s About the News — An activity in which students answer basic questions (Who, What, Where, When, Why and How) about an article.
• News Quiz — Interactive daily news quizzes on current top stories.
• On This Day in History — Listings of historical events and more for each day of the year.
• Student Crossword — Topical puzzles geared toward teens.
• Fill-Ins — Times articles from which word and phrases have been dropped. Fill in the blanks with your own words, or choose from a scrambled list of the words that were removed.
• Poetry Pairings — A weekly collaboration with the Poetry Foundation in which we feature a work from its American Life in Poetry project alongside content from The Times that somehow echoes, extends or challenges the poem’s themes.

The award-winning Learning Network was created in the fall of 1998. In October 2009, we re-launched it as a Times blog. 

We hope teachers will use our blog to get and exchange ideas, parents to share how news stories have resonated at home, and students to express themselves on everything from politics to popular culture.
For answers to questions about the blog, please see our FAQ or our Commenting FAQ, or write to us. We will do our best to respond quickly.

Glogster! - Online Multimedia Posters

Glogster is one of those new Web 2.0 tools that everyone seems to be talking about - and for good reason!  This tool allows you and your students to create posters with text, photos, video, graphics, sounds, drawings, data attachments and more.  Want to learn more about this site?  Check out the "What is Glogster edu? link below:

http://edu.glogster.com/what-is-glogster-edu/

We experimented with Glogster in the 6th grade this spring, with great results.  The students spent several weeks researching a National Park, and collecting a file of photographs.  They then created Glogsters to display their work:

These projects were created with a free trial.  If there is enough interest, I believe we will purchase a subscription for HTS for the 2011-2012 school year.  It does take quite a bit of leg-work to set up a class before they can begin a project, as an individual account must be set up for each child.  Just check in with MB, and she can set it up for you.

Using Netflix to Play Movies in Your Classroom

The After School Program uses Netflix to play movies for our students in the afternoons, but did you ever consider using Netflix to show movies using your Smartboard?    You may be intrigued to know that hundred of Netflix movies and documentaries are now available as an "Instant Play" option.  The 3rd grade recently watched the Disney documentary Oceans this way:

 

https://www.netflix.com/ 

Our HTS login is: nburton@htsdc.org

Our password is: titans1112

You may need a quick software download before you can run Netflix in your classroom - you can contact Charlie or MB to install the software.

Arkive - Website in the Spotlight

The website Arkive believes wildlife films and photos are vital weapons in the battle to save the world's endangered species from the brink of extinction.

So with the help of the world’s best filmmakers, photographers, conservationists and scientists, ARKive has created a multimedia guide to the world's endangered animals, plants and fungi.

At HTS, we have used Arkive in the computer lab for research, and to explore photos and videos endangered animals.

The site also has a number of educational resources.  Suitable for 7 to 16 year olds, ARKive’s free teaching resources cover a range of key science and biology subjects including: adaptation, food chains, Darwin and natural selection, classification, identification, conservation and biodiversity.

These teaching resources include: classroom presentations, activities and handouts, teachers' notes as well as links to ARKive species profiles and scrapbooks.

Discovery Education Streaming - Use it!

OK team, if you only explore one website this summer, Discovery Education should be the one. Created by the Discovery Channel, it engages students through dynamic curricular resources like Discovery Education streaming and Discovery Education Science.  Many of our teachers use it quite a bit.  If you are one of them, please comment and share your experiences below!!  As it is quite an expensive subscription, we'd love everyone to become familiar with the great resources available.


If you've never used it before, navigate to the passcode/new user tab and enter 13FF-53EE.  Once you enter that, you can then set up your own username and password.

And as you wander through the content, peek at the following document to inspire yourself on how best to integrate Discovery Ed streaming into your lesson plans next year:

50 Ways to Use Discovery Education Streaming

Brainpop

BrainPop is a website with hundreds of short Flash-based movies for students in grades K-12 covering the subjects of science, social studies, English, mathematics, arts and music, health and technology.  The movies are about five minutes long, and can be a great way to introduce or reinforce the information in a unit of study.

At HTS, we subscribe to BrainPop and BrainPop Jr (for K-3)

Our Login is: dtarantino
Password is: seashell

This is for use by a single teacher at at time - that is to say, you cannot have an entire class login and watch their own movies.

The BrainPop homepage looks like this:  Each of the movies are narrated by the characters Tim and Moby, featured in the picture below...

Each subject is divided into major categories:

Then again:

BrainPop Jr is narrated by a character named Annie, and introduces topics with younger students in mind:

And perhaps most importantly, BrainPop has comprehensive resources for teachers:

 

You might enjoy an interview with the director of BrainPop Educators:

http://www.teachhub.com/news/article/cat/14/item/214

Comic Life

 Ever wondered how to use Comic Life?

If you've wandered through the Lower School, you may have seen some of the Comic Life projects we've undertaken this year - Beethoven in the 4th grade, Puffins and Dolphins in the 3rd grade.  It's a very easy program to use - the trick from a teaching perspective is that you need to store a file of photographs for the kids to pull from before they arrive in class.  At Holy Trinity, each class has a storage place in the Y: drive to use in just this situation - the students browse for them in the "finder tab" at the bottom right of the page.  I came across the following Comic Life tutorial - Using Comic Life, from the Daring Librarian blog:

A Few Ideas for Summer Reading

A number of amazing websites exist to help kids and parents identify great choices for summer reading options.  Some of our favorites are:

• Read Kiddo Read - A site designed by Richard Patterson designed to help make children readers for life.  Be sure not to miss: "The Ultimate Summer Reading List".  http://www.readkiddoread.com/home
  
  
  
  
  
• A Book and a Hug - This is a site maintained by a TV reporter who does children's book recommendations for a Baltimore TV station.  Comprehensive lists of suggested books are broken down by interest categories. http://www.abookandahug.com/
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Politics and Prose - This NW DC Independent bookstore maintains lists of recent award winners and suggested summer reads on their website.  Also, a wonderful place to visit during the summer months. http://www.politics-prose.com/
 

Guys Read - Sorry girls, but this is a site devoted to promoting reading for the boys.   This site is the brainchild of Jon Scieszka (of The Stinky Cheese Man fame).   Though I have to say, I'm intrigued by the title of the month "The Strange Case of the Origami Yoda." I think I might have to add it to my summer reading list... http://www.guysread.com/

Bookwink -  According to their website, Bookwink's mission is to inspire kids to read.  Through podcasting and web video, they hope to connect kids in Grades 3 through 8 with books that will make them excited about reading. The videos are approximately 3 minutes long and are updated monthly. Each video booktalk is about a different topic, and additional read-alikes can be found on the Bookwink website.You can look for books by subject, grade level, author or title.  They are constantly updating the book lists with thier newest favorite books. Check out their lists.  http://www.bookwink.com/index.html

Once upon a time, I lived in London, and worked at the American School in London.  The library there always compiled great summer reading lists - and they maintain a list of archived lists.  The only problem is, every now and again you can only find the suggested books in the United Kingdom.  But for the most part, the books are available on "both sides of the pond."  Have a look! Here is the link: http://www.asl.org/page.cfm?p=902