How To Have Fun With Poetry

Last week I posted on Black Out poetry.  Maybe I should have put this one first but oh well.  If you are teaching a unit on Poetry you might want to check out the post on The Secondary English Coffee Shop.  It includes a one page survey for your students and some ideas you might implement in your poetry unit.  To see the post click here.

Crash Course Biology and Ecology

I have posted about the Crash Course series before.  The Green's do a great job in almost all their videos.  This series is produced in conjunction with Khan Academy.  They have a whole slew of videos for biology and ecology, just look on the left hand side of their page.  To see the page click here.

Chronically Absent Students.

Below is an article from National Public Radio on chronically  absent students.

To read the article click here.

Open Ed - Huge Educational Resource Library

This education site has according to edshelf, "OpenEd is the largest K-12 educational resource library, offering over a million lesson plans, assessments, videos, and games for every Common Core Math, Language Arts, Literacy and Next Generation Science standard (in addition to other state and international standards)."

I selected Resource Library at the top.  Then there are many filters to get to the stuff you want.  I clicked off the boxes 9, 10, 11 and 12 under grades, then you have several choices.  It might just be easiest to go to Subject and select your subject you are teaching.  Play around.  I am sure there is something for all of you.

Overlap Maps

On Saturday my Brother-in-law was over and my son asked him a question about a place he used to live in, namely Belgium.  My son was wondering how big Belgium was.  Well my brother-in-law looked up the size of Belgium but that only gave him the size in acres or square kilometers.  Not very useful for my son.  This site will let you do it graphically.  See below to see how to select Belgium and Canada.  I then moved Belgium over to Southern Ontario as that is where we live.  To see the website click here.

Black Out Poetry

I have seen many articles on Black Out Poetry but I wanted to share this great Prezi from Laura Randazzo with you.  She also has some other great poetry suggestions that you can find by clicking here


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Mathematics Assessment Resource Service

This site has lesson plans for math from grade 6 through high school.  To see the lesson plans click here.  I have used a lesson similar to the one on the ferris wheel for modelling the most general cosine function.  To see that lesson plan click here.  

Venn Diagram Maker

Classtools is a great site for teachers.  They have many widgets and gadgets I have posted about before.  I just noticed this one today.  If you need to make a Venn Diagram for your class you can use their Venn Diagram Maker by clicking here.  By clicking the gear icon you will get an embed code or a url that you can use.

By the way 1+2+1+2+(12-x)+x+(9-x)=24 therefore x=3

Forced Perspective Photography

If you are teaching a media arts class with a photography component you might want to have your students try something like these photos.

Some more examples of forced perspective can be found by clicking here or here or here.

Alternate Facts = Fake News

Well fake news has been in the .... wait for it ....news quite a bit lately.  If you are discussing this in your current events class you might want to look at this resource by Seneca by clicking here,

 

This site allows you and your students to make multimedia timelines.  To see the website click here.  See the video below for more information.

Pixton to create comics strip

To start second semester you might want to have your students make a comic strip about themselves so they can introduce themselves to you.  Pixton is a drag and drop tool that allows you to change backgrounds in your comic.  To see the website click here.  

Chemistry Now

Chemistry Now is an NBC Learn Special Collection that reveals how chemistry contributes to everyday life, with lesson plans from the National Science Teachers Association.  To see the website click here.

White Board Desks in the Classroom

In the above example each student came up with questions and then they traded desks and another student answered the question.  This could be be done in many different subjects or if you want the students as a group to brain storm, white board / dry erase desks would be great.  However if your desks are not like the ones above you need to make them that way.  Here are a few great links on how to do this.  Click here or here.  If you would like to see the Spanish teachers blog about the above white board lesson click here.

Economics / Personal Finance Lesson Plans

Here is another set of Economics/Personal Finance lesson plans you might want to look at.by clicking here.

The Avalon Project

Looking for a public domain digital copy of a primary source in Law, History or Diplomacy?  Try the Avalon Project from Yale Law School.  To see it click here.

Writing Prompts in English & Spanish

If you would like some writing prompts in English and Spanish, Bill Zimmerman has a free 73 page downloadable pdf.  You might just want to print one page or multiple pages to give to your students.
To see the pdf click here

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Inquiry Maths

If you want your students thinking critically about math concepts maybe Inquiry Math is a site for you.  It has prompts for Geometry, Algebra and other topics.  To see the site click here.

How to conquer the classroom trouble maker

Welcome back to the first day of second semester.  Good luck :)  Here is a nice video by Laura Randazzo that might help you this semester.