How Can We Reduce Garbage?

Did you know???

Garbology (http://www.naturebridge.org/garbology.php) is an exciting and interactive website that answers the question, "Where should my waste go?" It helps elementary-age students better understand how they can reduce trash and stop polluting. In addition to the interactive game, the “For Teachers” section includes nine lesson plans and five fact sheets.  The “For Students” section includes a waste assessment and seven useful handouts. The “For Families” section will inspire families to reduce and recycle.  You'll find lessons and activities to extend your Garbology experience, from how to pack a waste-less lunch to getting the dirt on composting. Plus, read the Trash Talk blog for stories of Garbology in practice.

Looking for High Interest Informational Text?

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There is a child-centered website called Youngzine (http://www.youngzine.org/) that provides informational articles, images, and videos about world news, science and technology, society and arts, movies, and books. School-age children are encouraged to respond to the content and may submit articles, short stories, and book reviews. All content is reviewed by Youngzine’s editors and updated every two weeks. The site is geared toward students in grades K-8.

 Tip: Do you and your students discuss current events? Use Youngzine as a springboard for these weekly or daily discussions. Students can post comments and reflections in the comments section.

Dress Up Your Lessons in a Tagxedo!

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There are some great, free word cloud Web 2.0 tools available online to enhance teaching and learning in your classroom!  My favorite at the moment is www.Tagxedo.com. Tagxedo turns words -- famous speeches, news articles, student generated lists, slogans and themes -- into a visually stunning word cloud with words individually sized appropriately to highlight the frequencies of occurrence within the body of text. What I love the most about this tool is that the user gets to choose the shape of the word cloud.

I have been using Tagxedo with all of my classes this year as a brainstorming tool.  For example, in third grade, we are doing a research project on Georgia habitats.  To kick off the unit, we brainstormed words related to Georgia habitats and created the following Tagxedo:

To use Tagxedo, the user simply clicks on create, chooses a shape, and types or copies text into the text box by clicking the load button.  Click submit, and watch the magic happen!  You can then play with font, color, and other style features to make your Tagxedo exactly what you want.

Other possible uses of Tagxedo or other word cloud tools include:

•  Brainstorm a topic or create a discussion either inside the  class or online                       
•  Teach vocabulary                                                                                               
•  Use them in reading activities to promote comprehension                                                                    
•  Students can use them to feature important ideas from a  discussion or a video content                                     
•  The entire class can use word clouds to react to a certain topic                                                           
•  Have students create word clouds that generate understanding of a concept, standards or vocabulary word.         
•  Illustrate classroom thoughts or views using a word cloud to survey students.                                              
•  Create a class word cloud that highlights class expectation                                                                

Innovative Civics Resource

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There is a valuable website available to help you teach your Civics AKS.
www.iCivics.org was founded by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor to prepare young
Americans to become knowledgeable, engaged 21st century citizens by
creating free and innovative educational materials.  The site offers the
nation’s most comprehensive, standards-aligned civics curriculum that is
available freely on the Web.  Order in the court. Hail to the chief! Roll
call…yea or nay… iCivics is a game, activity, and resource filled website
that helps people of all ages learn about branches of government,
citizenship, separation of powers, media influences on government, the
budget, and the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Games can be accessed by
topic or playing time. In addition to games and webquests, iCivics provides
lesson plans with supporting resources for teachers. Check it out!

Did you know???

There are so many Web 2.0 tools that will encourage your students to
research and write by giving them a creative way to share this writing.
The most recent tool I have discovered is called Blabberize.  On this site
(www.blabberize.com), you can upload a photograph to the site, add a mouth
to the picture, and record text so that the picture moves its mouth to the
words.  It's hard to describe, so take a look at these two samples:

http://blabberize.com/view/id/1049

http://blabberize.com/view/id/1001146

Can you imagine a student sharing their animal research by having a picture
of their animal share facts about itself?  Can you imagine a student
sharing their famous American facts by having a photograph of the famous
person telling information about him or herself?  The possibilities are
endless!

Measuring Readability of Online Texts

Did you know??? 

There is an amazing tool available to you when trying to determine the readability of digital text. Read-able.com (http://www.read-able.com/) is a website where you can input the url for the text you would like to use with your students. Click "Calculate Readability" and a grade level readability score and suggested ages will appear for the text. If you scroll down a bit further, you can see the scores on various indices such as Flesch Kincaid, Gunning Fog, etc. You will also get statistics such as sentence count, number of words, number of complex words, etc. Finally, you get an explanation of the various indices used to score the text.

For example, I put in a Scholastic News article I found online. I entered http://www.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3758216.  Following are my results:

Readability Test Results
Web Address: scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3758216
This page has an average grade level of about 7.
It should be easily understood by 12 to 13 year olds.

Readability Indices
Flesch Kincaid Reading Ease 75.3
Flesch Kincaid Grade Level 5.2
Gunning Fog Score 7
SMOG Index 6.5
Coleman Liau Index 10.9
Automated Readability Index 4.9

Text Statistics
No. of sentences 80
No. of words 733
No. of complex words 87
Percent of complex words 11.87%
Average words per sentence 9.80
Average syllables per word 1.43

Encourage Your Students to Burst Out Their Stories!

Did you know??? 

There are numerous free web tools to help encourage and inspire writing in your students! One such tool is ZooBurst (http://www.zooburst.com/). ZooBurst is a digital storytelling tool that lets anyone easily create his or her own 3D pop-up books. Using ZooBurst, storytellers of any age can create their own rich worlds in which their stories can come to life. Authors can arrange characters and props within a 3D world that can be customized using uploaded artwork or items found in a built-in database of over 10,000 free images and materials. Students can add speech bubbles, titles, and text to their pages. ZooBurst authors can share books with readers using a simple hyperlink, and books can easily be embedded in any website. As an educational tool, ZooBurst provides students with new ways in which they can tell stories, deliver presentations, write reports and express complex ideas. ZooBurst contains a powerful “classroom management” feature for teachers that lets them easily set up protected, safe spaces for their students. Teachers can assign usernames and passwords to their students without having to input any sensitive or personal information and can manage and moderate student work in a protected environment.

The best way to learn more about ZooBurst is to give it a try! I did! Check out this link! http://www.zooburst.com/book/zb02_51fc58817659b

Let me know if I can help you in any way!