Interactive coins!!

Smartnotebook makes learning fun!  As I am working though building a unit on money, specifically coins, I found an interactive learning activity to help teach coins!  The information is very accurate.  The activity shows the front and back of coins and also tells how much each is worth.  It allows students to match the front of the coin to the correct back of the coin.  This gets children out of their seat and helps them recognize each individual coin.

This activity matches the standard of my unit which is SSKE3b: Identify various forms of U.S. money.  This matches the outcome of the unit which states that students will become aware of the similarities and differences in four different United States coins of currency. 

This website, which is www.smartnotebook.com, is very easy to use.  You can simply put in the content area and grade level and it will give you many activities to use.  The particular activity that I chose to use with my unit is http://express.smarttech.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fexchangedownloads.smarttech.com%2Fpublic%2Fcontent%2Fb1%2Fb1c43fbb-8c2b-4e4a-b128-3805300daeaa%2FCoins.notebook  and is also very easy to use.  It is also very interactive for the students.  It allows the to drag the coins to match them and also count how many of each type of coin is in a jar.  The only thing I would change about the lesson is to add more detail about the American Symbols and why they are present on the coins. 

I will use this website for future lessons that I prepare for my classroom!!!

Video Sites!

Video sites are very helpful when it comes to teaching.  They can help make the content relevant by putting it into movie form.  It grabs the visual learners in a classroom and makes it much more interesting than just listening to a teacher lecture the entire time.

I do have concerns about certain sites.  Youtube and Google videos are available to most any person anywhere.  They are not language or content protected.  Any person can upload to these sites.  Most school systems have these sites blocked from being used.  My concern about trusting these videos is showing material that is inappropriate to students.

My thoughts on teachertube are very good.  It is dependable and secure.  The videos that are on this site are all learning videos.  You do not have outside material floating around.  I see the value in using this in a classroom. The videos are able to explain certain content in ways that may be difficult for a teacher to do alone.  Some of them have cartoon characters explaining the material which interests the students.  I will love using this in my future classroom. 

I have also been lucky enough to be set up by a librarian with a Discovery video account.  These are not blocked by school systems either and remind me a lot of teacher tube.  I will depend on these sites for teaching way more than the others.  I feel that any way to make learning fun is the best way to go!!!

Voice Threading...very cool!

Voice Threading is something that is very new to me!  I love the idea of putting your voice to a picture for educational purposes!  It took a little bit of exploring to understand completely how this works. I quickly found an app that worked with my Iphone to make this a very simple process.  It allowed me to talk directly into my phone and not have to worry about a built in microphone in my computer.  This makes it very convenient for a busy teacher! 

I understand the value of using this in the classroom.  If a teacher has multiple classes, it saves her from repeating material so much.  This could be used as a writing prompt. A teacher could possibly talk about a picture and then let the child write their thoughts in their writing journal.  This seems as if it would grab the student's attention more than traditionally telling them about a particular subject. 

Another way this could be useful is if a teacher had plans to be absent from school.  She could voice thread to help teach the material and not become behind from her absence.  This would clear up any confusion that a substitute may have about the material being covered.

My favorite thing about this is being able to complete this right on my phone.  It allows me to find the picture I want and put my voice to it.  It puts it right into my account to be viewed.  As I log into my computer, my item is waiting there completed!  It allows it to be less time consuming and very interesting.  I will be incorporating this in my future classroom for sure!

What is the difference????

As many times as I have used the internet for various reasons, I had no idea there was a difference in the type of sites I was using.  After reading an article for a technology class in school, I quickly realized the difference in Web 1.0 and Web 2.0.  These are two terms I was very unfamiliar with and they seemed very complicated.  I was presently surprised that there is a clear line between the two.

Web 1.0 is simply the way internet was in the past.  There is no interaction with websites.  Websites were used to gain information and once they were put up they were unchanged.  These sites usually do not have a login or any information on the consumer.  There are still sites like this such as CNN or other news sites.  This was how most of the World Wide Web was before 2003.

Web 2.0 is modern and socially involved!  It allows interaction by the consumer.  Changes are constantly being made by updates.  Information about all areas of a person’s life can be viewed such as level of education, birthday, hometown and much more.  Videos, photos and constant text can be uploaded.  This has changed the way people keep in touch.  It makes it very convenient for a person to keep in touch with friends and family from all over the world.  These sites came about in the year 2004.

Many internet users find both of these forms of internet very dependable.  People need to research information on a daily basis.   They also love to stay socially connected.  Both of these forms have been a tremendous help in my schooling.  I use Web 1.0 and 2.0 on a daily basis for educational reasons.  I do not prefer one over the other.  I probably use Web 2.0 a little more than 1.0.  Either way, I am thankful for it because it gives me the flexibility to complete school work such as this assignment as I am traveling down the interstate!  I found this research to be very interesting and I am glad to know the difference in technology.

Long, Long ago...

Long, Long ago there were no houses, apartments, stores, cars or airplanes.  There were no books or televisions.  No cities, no towns, farms or villages.  People lived in the wild!  This is a subject that most children do not have much background information on.  The Story of Civilization by: Nicholas Harris makes those years come to life. 

In this Social Studies picture book the people live in caves and tents.  They learn to trap and hunt for food.  The people discover fire to keep them warm and cook their food.  They had to move around to hunt for food.  Their hunting gear was spears made from materials around them.  After a while, they discovered seeds and how to grow wheat for flour.  After this discovery, there was no need to move around to hunt for food.  They could live in one place and farm all year long.  This made the first villages.  The book goes on to tell how they found metal and how they heated it to make different shapes.  They had invented a new way to make tools. All of their new discoveries created new jobs for the people.  As people gathered together to work, towns were formed. They begin to swap their goods at markets.  As they gathered, different languages were formed and people began to worship different gods.  Athletes competed to see who was the fastest and people became educated.  This grew the knowledge of people so they begin to research to see how life could be improved.  This led them to learn how to construct buildings. It later tells how cars were invented and how doctors began to treat patients.  The book tells of people going into space and finally with our world today! 

This is a very lengthy book that would need to be read over a period of time.  It is very beneficial because of the amount of history and time periods it covers.  It has beautiful illustrations which makes it more interesting than a textbook to obtain the information.  In my opinion, it would wow the children to know the difference in life from back then until now.  Many writing activities could coordinate with this book!  It will be a tool that I use to teach social studies in my future classroom!

Move Over!!!

Counting can be fun!  I remember many counting games and rhymes from my childhood!  These types of things can be used to help children become interested in counting! The scholastic book Ten in the Bed by: Jane Cabrera is one of the cutest way to teach counting with Pre-K and Kindergarten students!

In this picture book, there are ten animals in the bed.  It is crowded!  They all move over and one falls out.  This allows students to see what happens when you subtract one animal.  Once we lose that animal, there are nine left in the bed.  Each time all of the animals move over one animal is subtracted.  After all of the animals fall out of the bed they all dance around.  Finally, they all get back in the bed and go to sleep. 

This book shows subtraction and counting in sequence.  These are necessary math concepts to study with beginning students.  Not only is this book great to introduce math, it is loaded with phonemic awareness.  The rhymes are great for the students to practice sounds and word families.  You cover two subject areas with this one book!

Students have to have a solid foundation in numbers and counting before moving on to more complex mathematical concepts.  From my experience in the classroom, this is a favorite among students.  With the predictable text, they can read along with the teacher to practice these skills.  It is a great book for a classroom library because children at this young age can pretend to read.  This is the first step to reading.  Students are conquering many skills with this book! 

Buzzzzzz.....

If you live in South Georgia you have most likely been stung by a bee at least once in your life.  Even though these little insects are very aggravating, they are very important to our region!  The book The Honey Makers By: Gail Gibbons gives a great explanation of the jobs of these little creatures.  

This book is a non-fiction book loaded with science content on honey bees.  The illustrations grab your attention because they look as if a child has colored them.  Each page has pictures that relate to the topic being discussed.

Honey bees travel to and from their hive.  They form colonies of over fifty-thousand bees and they all have specific jobs.  They like to make their homes in cold, dark places.  A hole in a tree is a great place to make these homes.  Sometimes a bee keeper has a wooden box that is made like a hive to keep bees in.  In these hives lives one queen, one hundred males and thousands of female workers.  The ladies do all of the work!  The bee has three body parts.  The parts are the head, the thorax and the abdomen.  The queen is the largest of all of the honey bees and she will live the longest.  All of the other bees will live about two months.  There are cells in the hive where they bees will store honey.  In some of these cells the queen will store her eggs since she will lay up to two-thousand eggs a day.  The book goes on to tell each individual job of the bees in detail.  It also says that bees get sweet nectar from flowers. They also collect pollen and carry it from flower to flower.  This process is called pollination.  This book is packed with useful information!

Having this book in your classroom has many benefits especially if you live in a farming region.  Around south Georgia where I am from, many classes visit farms and strawberry patches. At these places there are always bee keepers and the students get to visit the bees.   These experiences make this book relevant for the children.   It is always fun to taste the honey that the bees  have made.  It has also been said that if you struggle with seasonal allergies, having a taste of honey from bees local to your environment will help cure this!  This is a fun insect to study during the spring when you can see them in action!