Bozeman Science

Bozemanscience is a website by Montana's 2011 teacher of the year, Paul Andersen.  It covers many science courses and the website has many videos.  I have previously posted about this site in May of 2013. To see his website click here.

Happy Leap Day

If you were born on February 29th you have a birthday every four years. Here is a nice video explaining what a leap year is.

Instructional Strategies

Jim Bentley has these interactive Instructional Strategies cue cards on his website.  To see them click here.  Just click on the card you are interested in and it will give you an example of how to use that strategy.    Jim's twitter can be found by clicking here.

Art Project with Zentangles

From Art Room 104 and Ms Impey from New York she discusses her work with Zentangles.   Shown below is her project sheet and rubric.  To see her write up about this unit click here.

The Ultimate Canadian Geography Quiz

If you think you are a Canadian Geographic Genius then try the 50 question quiz on the Canadian Geographic website by clicking here.  This might be a nice to have your students do in pairs at the beginning of the semester.

Great Gatsby Writing Prompts

Luke Neff has made 60 Gatsby writing prompts on TeachersPayTeachers.  The digital download is only $2.  To see that click here.  To see his Tumblr site that has 3 free prompts on Gatsby click here.

If you click on HOME on the Gatsby page it will take you to his main page where he has other writing prompts.

Data Maven

Data Maven by Crunchzilla is an interactive website that runs a tutorial on Data and Statistics.  To see this website click here.

Photos for Class

If you have your students insert pictures into their projects, how many of you ask if the pictures are properly attributed to the author?  How about when you have a picture in a presentation, did you just right click and "borrow" it from Google Images without proper citation?  Are they Creative Commons?  If you or your students use Photos for Class then this problem is solved.  The photos are age appropriate, have automatic citation and licensed by Creative Commons for public use.  If you are trying to teach your class not to plagiarize then it also includes photos. To see Photos for Class click here.  Below is an example of a "musical note" that I searched.  When you download the image you will get a black band at the bottom with your citation of the name of the author, name of the photo and  a link to the original photo.

Artificially Bred Crops

How much have certain crops changed in 9000 years due to artificial breeding?  James Kennedy a chemistry teacher from Australia has produced some interesting infographics that could be used if you are teaching about genetically modified foods.

To see the website click here.

How Many People Have Been Shot In Your Neighbourhood?

This article by Chris Kirk and Alex Yablon includes a map that shows all the locations of shootings in America this year.  Over 30 people die every day from gun violence and 200 are injured daily.  Just blows my mind.  You can put in an address and check out all the shootings.  You can zoom in and check out certain neigbourhoods.   Check out Detroit, Chicago, New York or LA.  Below is a picture of shootings near Windsor.  All the red ones are fatal.  You can click on the "bullet" (pun intended) to get information about that shooting.  The green bullets are clusters that contain multiple shootings this year.  Some of these could also be fatal. Scary stuff.  To see the article click here.

DuoLingo

DuoLingo is a do it yourself website that helps a student learn many languages such as French, Germany and Ukranina to name a few.  It is free and interactive.  There are many different levels and you can test out of a level rather than work through it.  If you are working in French, you will be asked to translate from French to English and English to French.  You will also be asked to write out in French some spoken phrases.  The lessons are organized in groups like the ones below.

 Duolingo is more like a game than a lesson.  To see the website click here.

Java Script

Happy Family Day!

If you are teaching Java Script this tutorial by crunchzilla called Code Maven may be a great introductory lesson for you.  To see the tutorial click here.  If you have younger students then you might want to try Code Monster.  To see that tutorial click here.

Quick Rubric

If you have used Storyboard then you know the makers of Quick Rubric.  Here you can make up your own Rubrics with your own point system and your own exact language.  You can also edit previously saved rubrics so you don't have to reinvent the wheel.  This site is free.  Check it out by clicking here.

Self Portraits

From Samantha Johnson's website, the Secret Life of an Art Teacher, I found this nice article/lesson plan on student self portraits.  She got the idea from Dean Russo at deviantArt.  The pictures here are from Dean Russo's site.  To see the article click here.

AP Human Geography

I noticed that Daniel Eiland has posted some of his slides and some guide notes for the units of the AP Human Geography course.  Unit 1 Basic Concepts 198 slides can be found by clicking here.  The Guided notes can be found here.  You can find some of the other units on the right hand side of this site.  They might not be complete as he sells them on TeacherPayTeachers.  If you teach this course it might be worth while taking a look at his free material and his pay material by clicking here. 

To Kill a Mockingbird & the Scottsboro Boys Trial

Mary Edmonds has put together a series of  lesson plans that  span 5 to 8 periods  The learning objectives for this unit are as follows:

• to expose the students to the history and cultural milieu of the deep south in 1935 America
• to demonstrate close contextual reading
• to gain an awareness of how one's society might force its citizens to take unpopular, but moral stances in order to promote change 

To see the lesson plans click here.

Algebra and Calendars

"Why do we need Algebra?"  A common refrain from students.  This problem might work for some of your junior students.  Cynthia Lanius from Rice University posted this over a decade ago about using Algebra and Calendars.    She starts by asking students to pick for days that form a square and adding the dates together.  The students tell her the sum and she tells them the 4 days.  She uses some basic algebra in her head to do this.  To see the site click here.  If you want to see the algebraic solution to the problem click here.

Instagrok - a mind mapping search engine

This is one of my favourite sites this year!  Here is another way for your students to search for information rather than Googling it.  Instagrok puts all the information that it searches on a topic in the form of an interactive  mindmap. This is great for students that have a problem with linear progression.  Instagrok has an algorithm that rejects inappropriate sites and sites with bad language.     Check out the site by clicking here.  Here is an example of what I received from inquiring about Begium and Food.

You can now click on each element of this mindmap and it will further search that subtopic. If you notice the left red arrow in the picture above.  If you move the slider I am pointing to you can change the level of difficulty you want to search.  So if you have a more advanced class, you might want to pull the slider all the way to the right or to the left if you have a more basic class.   The right red arrow points to an information box.  In this box there are a bunch of very short Key Facts with a link to the page source.   You can change from Key Facts to Websites or Videos or Images or Concepts. Below is a video about instagrok.

Woven Painting

Make two identical drawings, paint both, number the strips, cut, weave, done.  To see  a complete description go to "A Faithful Attempt" by clicking here.