Summer Reading Resources for Students

By Janet Pinto, Chief academic Officer, Curriki

How can we help children keep their minds engaged over the summer break? One of the best ways is by encouraging them to read.

There are a number of summer reading lists which you can find on Curriki. Here we mention a few of those.

Below is a link to a set of eight different reading lists for students in K-12. Each list is well annotated and like a mini book talk – engaging and hooking to even the most reluctant reader. This resource even includes a list for boys who are reluctant readers.

http://www.curriki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Coll_Group_CurrikisThematicCollections/SummerreadinglistsK-12

And here are two lists for teenage students:

For teenage girls -

http://www.curriki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Coll_Group_StorySnoops/SummerReadingList–BooksforTeenGirls

For teenage guys -

http://www.curriki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Coll_jennagel/2012SummerReadingList–BooksforTeenGuys

There are quite a few other resources, just go to curriki.org and search on “summer reading”!

Great resources for March!

By Janet Pinto, Chief Academic Officer, Curriki

We have some excellent resources for March to support your teaching activities. These are in the categories of English Language Arts, Social Studies, Math and Science, and for each subject area the resources cover the elementary, middle school and high school levels.

For English Language Arts, this month’s theme is Poetry. March 21 is World Poetry Day, and March 2 is Read Across America Day. Furthermore, in honor of Women’s History month, we are including resources on female poets.

You can find the ELA resources here:
http://www.curriki.org/welcome/subjects/english-language-arts-7/

For Social Studies the theme is Women’s History. March commemorates both Women’s History (all month) and International Women’s Day (March 8). To help your students learn about these important topics, we’ve curated the top resources for Social Studies.

You can find the Social Studies resources here:
http://www.curriki.org/welcome/subjects/social-studies-6/

March 14 (3/14 or 3.14) is Pi Day. Without this special quantity, that has an infinite number of digits, how would we calculate the circumference of a circle? These resources all relate to the importance of pi in mathematics.

You can find the Math resources here:
http://www.curriki.org/welcome/subjects/mathematics-6/

March 23 commemorates World Meteorological Day. In honor of this day, Curriki is featuring resources for studying weather.

You can find the Science resources here:
http://www.curriki.org/welcome/subjects/science-7/

Check out these great resources – you are sure to find something useful for your teaching!

Common Core and Open Educational Resources Working Together

By Kim Jones, Curriki CEO

Open Educational Resources are important enablers in support of Common Core standards. An article in Education Week entitled “Common Core Drives Interest in Open Education Resources” can be found here:
http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2012/10/17/01open.h06.html

The article notes that Common Core standards are driving increased interest in open digital resources. For example, the state of Utah in the U.S. is creating textbooks made entirely from OER materials, and in the state of South Dakota educators have built a repository of OER content in support of the Common Core. The pilot projects for open textbooks in Utah were highly successful, so the open textbook project was expanded to be statewide during this current school year.

I was interviewed by Katie Ash, who wrote in the article:

“Such projects are exactly what the common core can now make possible”, says Kim Jones, the chairman and chief executive officer of Curriki, a nonprofit K-12 repository for open education resources based in Cupertino, Calif.
“We’re seeing a lot of teachers starting to contribute OER materials that are aligned to common-core standards,” says Jones. “We’re very excited about that and think it’s going to make a huge difference in allowing people across the U.S. to leverage what teachers are doing in other places.”

The article also noted Curriki’s work with the Learning Resource Metadata Initiative, which is working to categorize and tag OERs to make them more accessible and easier to search. Also mentioned was Curriki’s launch during 2012 of a free Algebra 1 course aligned to Common Core standards.

“It’s an exciting time for education, between OER really crossing the chasm and common-core standards coming out, and just the work that’s going on around technology,” says Jones, from Curriki. “It’s all coming together at a great time, and it’s really going to have a positive impact on education going forward.”

For more information on how OER supports Common Core standards implementation, we encourage you to read the full article at:
http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2012/10/17/01open.h06.html

Our Favorite Open Educational Resources of 2012

By Janet Pinto, Chief Academic Officer, Curriki

 

 

Here are a few of our favorite resources from 2012. If you look these over, I’m sure you’ll find at least a couple of them to be interesting and useful! Click on each title to go to that resource at Curriki.

STEMware Zombie Plague 

Why We Like It: STEM and zombies were popular in 2012– this is a great combination of them both! Contributed By: Barbara UCD

Fiction 

Why We Like It: Karen has always contributed a ton of resources. Most recently several free Kindle versions of books. With the increase in e-readers, this is a good collection of free options. Contributed By: Karen Fasimpaur

Investigating Bikes 

Why We Like It: A cross curricula approach using bikes as a starting point for arts math, science. Way cool! Contributed By: Andy Hannaford

Average speed inquiry lab 

Why We Like It:Students will feel like they are playing while learning about concepts such as average speed, data collection, graphing, extrapolation and interpolation of data. Contributed By: Carol Hagen

Reading Lolita in Tehran  

Why We Like It: A full unit on an eye-opening novel that incorporates music, poetry, group activities, current issues AND is aligned to Common Core State Standards. Contributed By: Sue Costagliola 

Rice Elementary Science Curriculum  

Why We Like It:The RESCu.Rice.edu site contains numerous inquiry based lesson plans for K-5 teachers and super engaging activities for kids. Contributed By: Carolyn Nichol

WikiPremed 

Why We Like It: WikiPremed is a comprehensive, creative commons licensed MCAT course, notable in demonstrating a unified curriculum for teaching undergraduate science is a true treasure trove of learning materials and over 100 hours of course video. Contributed By: John Wetzel

Scatter It!  

Why We Like It: Scatterplotting has never been easier to learn! Contributed By: Mary Richardson

Music Lesson Plans  

Why We Like It: Music is an important subject, even if not part of the core curriculum. This collection is a good starting point for teaching music. Contributed By: Nate Merrill

TED (free app)  

Why We Like It: TED talks are known for being some of the most engaging, timely, and progressive presentations. This is amazing access to all of them–free! And there’s no fear of the content getting stale. There are new videos posted every week. Contributed By: Sandy Gade 

Othello 2012 and BEYOND!– 2012-2013  

Why We Like It: Modernize the teaching Othello through the use of news articles, non-fiction pieces, technology, and recent news events, aligned to the CCSSO. Contributed By: Sue Costagliola East Meadow School District

 

Will You Help Spread the Word?

By Kim Jones, Curriki CEO

This has been an amazing year for Curriki with phenomenal growth in the number of visitors, members and new resources added! I want to extend my sincerest thanks to YOU, our Curriki members, who are helping to make Curriki the leading K-12 community, where people around the world can find and contribute resources, and collaborate with others.

Have you visited Curriki lately? Look how the number of resources in these subject areas have grown!  (We also have thousands of resources in the arts, edtech, health, world languages, info & media subject areas.)

May I ask a favor of you? We have a goal to reach 500,000 members (we’re at 328,000 now) this year and we want people around the world to benefit from the thousands of learning resources available on Curriki – all free of cost, saving valuable time and money. Please forward this email to three people and encourage them to join Curriki (membership is free and it takes about one minute to join). Just look for Share This at the bottom of this blog and click on the Email button.

On behalf of the entire Curriki community, thank you and Happy New Year!

Regards,

Kim Jones, CEO, Curriki

P.S. Thank you if you’ve already given to Curriki’s 2012 annual fund! There are only four days left in the calendar year! We’d appreciate if you would please take a moment to make an online donation of any amount you are able to give, so that we can deliver an even better Curriki experience.

Women’s History Month: K-12 Learning Activities

By Janet Pinto, Chief Academic Officer, Curriki

For the entire month of March, we recognize women who have made significant contributions to society around the world. When and how did Women’s History Month start?  Who are some notable women?  Here are some great resources to use in the classroom as we celebrate women around the world!

Celebrating National Women’s History Month – This Curriki collection includes resources about great women in U.S. History.

Video Chat: Women at NASA from NASA Explorer Schools – K-12 students across the United States chat with three outstanding women who answer questions about pursuing careers in science and engineering.

Movies for Women’s History Month by the Movie Mom.  This is last year’s list, and includes movies such as A League of Their Own, Following Amelia Earhart: Heroines of the Sky, and Eric Brockovich.

Celebrate Women’s History Month – from The New York Times Learning Network, find lesson plans, crosswords and archival materials as well as links to current Times articles and great web resources. 

Scholastic Tools for Women’s History, including resources and profiles of notable women.

March is Women’s History Month includes lesson plans and more from A-Z Teacher Stuff.

Women’s History – FREE Teaching and Learning Resources from FREE (Federal Resources for Educational Excellence).

Portraits of Women in History from Smithsonian Education, including women inventors, photographs of women in Flickr, and the Seneca Falls Convention.

If you have a favorite resource that’s not listed here, please share!