February 15

Digital Scrapbooking

Whether you are studying famous Americans, characters in a book or a location, Scholastic’s Scrapbook is perfect.

Upon entering the site, the student will be asked to type the title of the book and the character. If you were studying a famous American, you would type in the time period he/she was alive or the name of a battle that he was a leader in.

The next screen will have two sides. On the left is a drawing area. It offers options for humans and animals. The animal options are dogs, pigs, mice, a cricket, fish, a mole, horses, cats, a dragon, a monkey, a bull, a rabbit, a giraffe, an owl, a dinosaur, a turtle, or a gorilla. These images are as is and do not offer an option for additional accessories.

The human images offer more variability. You can change skin color, hair, eyes, nose, mouth and clothes. The completed picture is of the shoulders and head.

On the right side of the screen is a table where students can type in various things regarding this person. Using the arrows, you can scroll through the options that are 10 Words to describe the character, details about their appearance, facts about their personality, challenges faced and accomplishments. Each line holds 60 characters where the students can type ideas or complete sentences.

There is also an option to print out a blank scrapbook page if you want them to draw their own picture. Scholastic has created a teacher guide with lesson plans and ideas for use of the scrapbook with various grade levels that can be found in the lower right hand corner of the screen.

How can you use this in a classroom?

  • character study in different forms of media
  • famous Americans, artists, historians
  • analyzing historical and current structures
  • whole group or on an interactive white board
  • independently on student computers

 

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November 9

Past and Present

Students need to learn about history. What happened on a certain date? Who was involved? What is the significance of the instance? True, this is important to know, but what if your Past and Present lesson took a turn in a new direction….

What if your students learned about what happened on the day they were born? The day their parents, or even grandparents were born? How different was life way back when their elder was a child?

Time Capsule gives the student the opportunity to do this. They can type in a date and find out top headlines, top songs, prices of popular items, current President and Vice President, popular books-toys-shows, award winners and famous people born on this date.

Let’s take this lesson one step further. This could be a start of a great research project. Have the students select a show or toy that they never heard of.  From here, they would could find out the use or premise of it, why it was popular, if someone in their family enjoyed it, etc.

Take a step away from the traditional route of research projects and learn about what once was. Besides this project meeting needs of research and writing, it could also lead to primary interviews of people who once loved those items-as well as be a great beginning to fabulous conversations with the child’s elders.

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October 24

Family Heritage Week

Family Heritage week is the week of November 14-18 and coincides with American Education Week.

Below are a list of classroom ideas to recognize Family Heritage Week

  • For homework, the students can list words that distinguish their family heritage. Using the computers, have the students use a word puzzle site, such as PuzzleMaker, to create a word find. Print and hand out to the class for them to complete.
  • For homework, the students can list words that distinguish their family heritage. Use those words to create a poem, a Wordle, or cut out pictures from magazines to show the words visually.
  • Create a flag that defines each child’s heritage.
  • Celebrate life in our town by researching the history of it. Locate pictures of a main street from 100 years ago and compare/contrast the images of then and now.
  • Create a postcard with a picture to show symbols of the child’s heritage. Write a letter explaining the significance of the picture. This could be hand drawn or on the computer using a publishing program.
  • Each student will create quilt squares to represent their heritage. The squares can have pictures, words or both. The quilts can be arranged for a wall display.
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