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!

Top 10 Learning Resources on Curriki

By Janet Pinto, Chief Academic Officer, Curriki

Are you curious what learning resources other teachers are using? Here’s a list of the top ten most downloaded resources on Curriki this month. I encourage you to check them out – they’re free to use as-is, share or modify to suit your classroom needs.  Let me know which one is your favorite!

1. Geography Learning Pursuit – for grades 6-8; provides students a self-guided unit to learn the five themes of geography.
2. Catcher in the Rye Unit Plan – for grades 9-12; eight week language arts unit play dealing with J.D. Salinger’s work, Catcher in the Rye.
3. Systems of Equations Baseball – for grades 6-10; review game for systems of equations (and gets the students up and moving too!).
4. Politics and Political Parties: Lesson Plans – for grades 3-8; lesson plans to help students differentiate between political parties and why the party system is functioning in our country.
5. Writing Matters – for grades 3-8; gives teachers powerful new ways to improve student outcomes in writing, utilizing 21st century resources to prepare them for success in school and beyond.
6. Athabasca University ESL Course – for all levels; help students to effectively learn the English language.
7. Math T.V./ Math Playground – for grades 3-8; interactive math tool developed by classroom teachers to help students learn how to solve multistep word problems.
8. Geometry Bingo – for grades 5-6; this bingo game involving visuals helps students learn and identify key vocabulary for geometry.
9. Math Pre-k – Math Game Time – for pre-K; fun math games, worksheets and videos.
10. Prepare for the Science Fair – for grades 3-8; here’s a fun way to get ready for the science fair!

Please share this with a friend or colleague! Thank you.

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

 

STEAM = STEM & Arts Enhances Learning

By Janet Pinto, Chief Academic Officer, Curriki

In June, I wrote a blog about STEAM, which is the incorporation of Arts education into STEM learning. I noted that scientific progress and excellent design and engineering require insight, creativity, collaboration, communication and thinking out of the box. An appreciation of the Arts fuels creative thinking and innovation. Furthermore, technology needs to be developed with the human user always in mind. The full blog can be found here – http://currikiblog.wordpress.com/tag/steam/

Here is another interesting blog on how STEAM ties into 21st century learning: http://goo.gl/Zk512. The author notes “Many scientists I’ve met integrate art into their work intentionally or unconsciously.  Communicating scientific concepts and data requires creating visual and even sonic representations.”

Hurricane Fran 1996, Source: NASA/GSFC

Apple, the most valuable company in the world today, creates products that are as much about design principles for the user interface and about the product look and feel as they are about the internal technology. Design and technology are complementary and both necessary in developing everything from automobiles to cola bottles to electric guitars.

The goals of a STEAM-based approach are functional literacy and holistic learning. A good presentation on why STEAM can be found here: http://www.steamedu.com/WhySTEAMshortWeb.pdf

School arts programs can improve student performance. Large enhancements in reading scores have been seen in some trials through the DREAM program, which guides third- and fourth-grade teachers in incorporating arts into their lessons.

And below you can find links to a number of free, curated Arts and Language Arts resources on Curriki, and over 80 STEM resources as well!
http://currikiblog.wordpress.com/2012/10/12/free-language-arts-curriki-curated-resources/

Easy Ways to Integrate Educational Technology into the Classroom

By Janet Pinto, Chief Academic Officer, Curriki

Do you know what digital storytelling is? Think of it as a short “film” that uses a combination of still images, video and sound to more effectively tell a story.

Here is a peek at one new resource on Integrating Digital Storytelling in Instruction that helps students and teachers build on 21^st century skills and introduce educational technology into the classroom in a fun and engaging way.

We are excited to unveil a number of NEW resources on the topic of educational technology now available on Curriki. Other very useful collections are Internet safety and Digital Citizenship, which covers everything from plagiarism on the web, to digital responsibility and cyber etiquette for all grade levels. To give you an idea of what’s included, here is a middle school teacher’s guide on copyright laws and digital responsibility with content from ww.B4Ucopy.com:

We encourage you to check out more related resources that have been recently added:

1. Integrating Wikis in the Classroom
2. Integrating Blogging in the Classroom
3. Web 2.0 and Social Media for Collaboration
4. Teaching with Mobile Devices in the Classroom
5. Keyboarding
6. Study Skills

Curriki features more than 150 NEW COLLECTIONS. See our collections on social studies and health, language arts, and STEM. Please share these resources with your friends and colleagues!

New 3D STEM Game Teaches Students about Deadly Outbreaks

By Janet Pinto, Chief Academic Officer, Curriki

If you’ve seen the movie Contagion, you’ve witnessed the fast-moving race to identify and contain a deadly virus.

I wanted to let you know about a fun and engaging “serious game” that’s just been added to Curriki (we now boast nearly 45,000 free learning assets!). In STEMware: Zombie Plague,  students explore a 3D world where they are responsible for identifying the pathogenic microorganism causing a deadly outbreak, and implementing a cure. Although the symptoms of this fictional disease are “zombieism,” the science content embedded in the software deals with diagnosis, treatment strategies, and career connections that are applicable to any disease caused by viruses, bacteria or fungi.

Get students excited about modern biology, as they interact with game characters and learn about a variety of career pathways and diagnostic technologies used in the real world. There are also embedded assessments, which allow teachers to track student interactions.

This highly-engaging, 3D virtual reality software is courtesy of The Partnership for Biotechnology and Genomics Education (PBGE) from UC Davis. It is downloadable for Windows or Mac OS X and licensed through Creative Commons, allowing for free sharing and installation on multiple machines.

Check it out!