How to Make a Paper Star

This is an activity that I did with my Girl Scouts. It is very easy to make and several of my teacher friends have used it in the days leading up to Christmas (it can easily be combined with a writing assignment. I have a friend in a second/third grade class who will be doing a winter unit in January and will be calling these stars "snowflakes" for the unit).

This is the last day of school for us before the holiday break and I had two fifth grade girls help me make a how to video.

Spelling Test Surprise

One of our fifth grade teachers changed up her spelling words the day of her weekly spelling test. The kids moaned and groaned but hunkered down to do their best with their new words.

The teacher ran the spelling test just like every week. She read the word and put it in a sentence.

1. Merry (Merry is not a name. It means happy.)
2. Christmas (Christmas is celebrated on December 25th each year)
3. You (You will be attending the winter dance tomorrow)
4. All (It is difficult to talk with you all talking)
5. Get (In the morning you get ready to go to school)
6. One (One is the number before two)
7. Hundred (I would love to have a hundred dollars in my wallet)
8. On (Jasmine sits on her chair.)
9. This (This test counts for a large percent of your grade)
10. Test (Every Thursday you have a vocabulary test)

By the end many of the kids have caught on but she allows no talking during the test so they all just are smiling at her and each other. At the end she has a child read the spelling words out loud to review from 1-10. The child catches on while she is reading the words back and then everyone gets it.

I thought it was a fun way to give students a surprise 100 on the test.

Pop Ups in Notebooking

Earlier I wrote a post about this fun pop up card site. I haven't had a chance to use it in a classroom but two Social Studies teachers I know have.

They had their fourth grade students make the pop up explorer ship and write facts about Christopher Columbus. One teacher had her students put it in their notebook and the other teacher put them out in the hall. They turned out very cute!

I did do pop up cards with my Girl Scout troop using the turkey and though that might make a good ELA lesson. Students could practice their writing skills and let their families know what they are thankful for.

Content Carols - Social Studies

A teacher that I worked with years ago did a fun assignment with her students around the holidays. She had her students rewrite Christmas carols to go along with the units they were studying. She wrote about it in her blog.

I filmed a few of her students singing their revised carols this year and thought I would share.

ELA - End of Unit Project

Most subscribers to this blog know that last year I accepted a position as a technology coach within our district. I work with two elementary schools and do a lot of integrated technology projects with teachers as well as model lessons using technology.

While this blog mainly focuses on elementary science I do post other ideas in other subject areas.

Today's blog post features an end of unit project I did with a fourth grade class in one of the two schools I teach at. I team taught with the teacher for a two week period focusing in on the parts of speech (she would teach one part of speech one day and I would do another the next day). At the end of the unit we put her children into groups and they were given a digital camera and allowed to take pictures or videos around the school that illustrated the eight parts of speech.

We got an adult volunteer to go with each group and they were given approximately 45 minutes (along with a check list, dry erase marker and pen). Ideally I would have had the students go to the computer lab and put together their video in Movie Maker Live but we ran out of time so I put together the video above using Movie Maker Live. The students loved the finished product although the boys thought my music choices were "too girly" :)

Weather - End of Unit Tech Project

Here is a technology project that I did with a fourth grade science class at the end of their weather unit. This was my sample project I showed children. I had done a project similar to it at the end of last year and wrote about it HERE.

I had actually helped a teacher do this paper piece project in Social Studies (they were researching explorers) so I felt pretty confident introducing it in science (we had worked out the kinks and problems in the social studies class :)

The project took four days.

Day 1 - Students were introduced to the project, grouped, picked their topic (they could choose between layers of the atmosphere, weather tools and their uses, severe weather and related saftey tips, the water cycle, and clouds and cloud formation), and started working on their graphic organizer.

Day 2 - Students worked on their graphic organizer, script, and paper pieces

Day 3 - Students were at various stages of completion. They were either still working on their paper pieces or ready to film (we sent groups to the library to film where it was quiet - filming took at most 15 minutes. The prep work and dry runs took the majority of time).

Day 4 - All student filming had to finish. Students who were done created a poster of their topic.

They turned out adorably (I'll get a student project posted soon). Some were better then others but it was a fun way for students to demonstrate their knowledge while working with technology.

We used Flip Cameras, Flip Camera tripods, and Windows Live Movie Maker.

Bill Nye - Light Color Video with Lyrics

I put together another Bill Nye song with lyrics for a teachers light, electricity, and magnet unit. The direct link to the video on YouTube can be found HERE.

Calling All Creatures . . . The Secret Science Club presents the 6th-annual "Carnivorous Nights Taxidermy Contest," Friday, December 9, 8 PM @ the Bell House, $7

Just in time for the holidays . . . the beasts are back!

The Secret Science Club presents the 6th-annual “Carnivorous Nights TAXIDERMY CONTEST,” 
Friday, December 9, 8 pm @ the Bell House, $7

Calling all science geeks, nature freaks, and rogue geniuses! Your stuffed squirrel got game? Got a beaver in your brownstone? Bring your beloved beast to the Bell House and enter it to win!

Eligible to enter: Taxidermy (bought, found, or homemade), biological oddities, articulated skeletons, skulls, jarred specimens—and beyond, way beyond.

Show off your moose head, snake skeleton, rabbit relics, and other amazing specimens. Compete for prizes and glory. Share your taxidermy (and its tale) with the world.

The contest will be judged by our panel of savage taxidermy enthusiasts, including Robert Marbury of the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists and feline wrangler Dorian Devins, co-founder and curator of the Secret Science Club.

Plus!

--Groove to furry tunes & video

--See an illustrated lecture on (yes!) taxidermy

--Imbibe ferocious specialty drinks! (They’ll bring out the animal in you.)

Entrants: Contact secretscienceclub@gmail.com to pre-register. 

Spectators: Don’t miss a beastly second of this wild night!

Tickets: Advance tickets are available for purchase here.

This fiercely special edition of the Secret Science Club meets Friday, December 9 @ the Bell House, 149 7^th St. (between 2^nd and 3^rd avenues) in Gowanus, Brooklyn. Subway: F or G to 4th Ave; R to 9^th St. Doors open at 7:30 pm. Please bring ID: 21+. $7 cover.

The Secret Science Club presents Fossil Hunter, Paleoanthropologist, and Human Evolution Expert William Harcourt-Smith, Monday, November 21, 8PM @ the Bell House, FREE!

Step into the Way-Back Machine . . . the Secret Science Club is heading back tens of thousands of years to explore the mysteries of human origins! 

As a species, Homo sapiens is a mere 250,000 years old (give or take). Around 100,000 years ago, we walked out of our homeland in Africa and proceeded to populate the entire world. Now, we're the only species of human left. So how did we evolve into our freakishly amazing selves? And what about the other humans? What were our ancestors and extinct relatives like?

Just returned from Kenya and the northern Sudan, paleoanthropologist William Harcourt-Smith of the American Museum of Natural History and Lehman College lectures on recently discovered hominid and primate species, new research on human evolution and our family tree, and his expeditions to a 20-million-year-old fossil site. Dig it!

Before & After

--Groove to primordial sounds

--Stick around for the scintillating Q&A

--Try our Darwinian cocktail of the night, the Fossil Evidence

--Special guests: Australopithecus sediba, Homo neanderthalensis and Homo floresiensis!

This (r)evolutionary edition of the Secret Science Club meets Monday, November 21 @ the Bell House, 149 7^th St. (between 2^nd and 3^rd avenues) in Gowanus, Brooklyn. Subway: F or G to 4th Ave; R to 9^th St. Doors open at 7:30 pm. Please bring ID: 21+

Free! Just bring your smart self.

Bill Nye Song with Lyrics - Whether the Weather

Just finished adding the lyrics to this fun Bill Nye song on the topic of WEATHER and posting it to Youtube.

Pinterest

I love love love the site Pinterest. For those of you have not heard of it it is a site that acts as a virtual pin board of things you come across the web and want to save.

What is the best part is that you can follow other pinners. I don't have time to look at everything I want to on the web but I can look at other peoples pin boards and repin things of interest to my site.

I have picked up so many great ideas for lessons from other people's sites that it is definitely my favorite new website of 2011.

My site is a bit of a mishmash right now. I need to start sub-categorizing items within my "school" pinboard because right now I have 245 pins in that category (don't get me started on my craft and recipe boards!).

If you haven't heard of it I highly recommend checking it out and start searching the education and school boards for ideas :)

Featured Website - Great Ideas

I had lost and found this site several times over the years and have decided to blog about it so I don't loose it again!

This site belongs to a middle school social studies teacher name Mr. Roughton. Under his assignment tab he has lots of great ideas that can be incorporated into a right hand assignment for notebooks. Often times he has PDF's you can download or details regarding the assignment.

I like to look at it from time to time to see if I can get any new notebooking ideas. I was on it today and was really looking at his game board template and I want to see if I can have students make a game board that will fit into the notebook (oooohhhh....I love a good project to try out).

3-2-1 Pyramid

I saw this done in a social studies notebook and I really liked the structure. It is called a 3-2-1 review, which I have heard of before and use when kids are watching science videos to keep them engaged (list three things you learned, two things you thought were interesting, and one question you had).

In this example of a 3-2-1 review for the notebook students drew a pyramid. On the bottom part of the pyramid the students had to list three facts. The second part of the pyramid they had to list two “whys” and at the top they had to write a summarizing sentence. I liked this as a right hand assignment.

I have friends that are in an astronomy unit and they can use this structure to have children write three facts about the sun, two reasons why the sun is so important, and then a summarizing sentence.

Cloud Viewer

This is an idea I saw on pinterest about making a cloud viewer. This is the site with the idea and here was the idea for the template I was going to use for the outside of the viewer.

I did this with a fourth grade class yesterday and in the planning stages I decided to nix the popcicle stick frame because of time…plus I decided I really wanted them to write on the back of the viewer. I also nixed using a prefab cloud viewer frame because I really wanted children to draw their own representation of the clouds – rather than have it handed to them.

So using the idea from the two sites students created their own cloud viewer. I was dreading the activity a bit mainly because I had never done it before, it was being done on a day before a three day weekend, there was a sub in the classroom, it was a full moon, AND I was being observed. Shockingly the entire activity went textbook perfect in all four classes despite all my concerns J.

The teacher the day before had introduced clouds to the class so they had some prior knowledge before I came in. I started the lesson with a water cycle review and then a review of the clouds. I went over a “recipe” for making clouds where the students got to act it out.

Recipe

Take water vapor (kids stand up and make water vapor signs with their hands) and chill it well (kids went into a “brrrrr” stance with their hands and bodies). Collect more chilled water vapor (kids move toward each other until they are standing pretty close). Pack it as close as possible (children start squeezing in tight) and voila the water vapor turns into a cloud (the kids put their hands in the air and yell “Poof we are a cloud”). (I’ll video tape it and post it to give a better idea of how it looks in a classroom).

Sure it is a bit oversimplified but it got the kids moving out of their seats and the general concept that clouds form by water vapor chilling, collecting, and condensing.

Then I reviewed the three basic types of clouds (adding in the bonus fourth cloud not mentioned in our standards – cumulonimbus). We have hand gestures for that to help them remember the three types which I definitely will have to tape.

I explained that they were making cloud viewers and that they had to draw and label the clouds in the front and tell me something about the clouds on the back. Once they were done they came up to me and I checked it and handed them a blue colored pencil to shade in around the clouds on the viewer. Once we had everyone done we went outside and looked at the clouds through our viewers and tried to identify the three basic clouds. The sub came in handy at this point because anyone not done had to stay in with her while we went outside. I allowed 10 minutes for the outside part of this lesson (which included traveling in the halls and moving around the school to look for different clouds).

The viewers are going to be stored in inexpensive sandwich bags that will be taped in their notebook on the right hand side. The left hand side had the information the teacher went over the day before.

NOTE: The child in the last picture is looking through her viewer the wrong way. The kids should be looking at the drawings they made.

Thanksgiving Idea

Loved this idea! One of the school’s I go between is doing this project on the fourth and fifth grade hall. The idea came from Angie Peterson, one of the fifth grade teachers.

The teachers created and laminated a large turkey for the hall. They gave each student a feather to take home with the instruction that parents, or family members, were to use the feather to explain why they are thankful for their child. They (the parents) had the freedom to decorate anyway they saw fit. Students get to share their feathers with the class and then they get placed on the large hallway turkey.

They are precious to read and you can tell the children loved reading what their families wrote about them.

The two teachers heading up the project said that because November is such a short month for us (we have fall break at the beginning of the month, followed by veteran’s day off, followed by the Thanksgiving break) that they put a Santa hat and red nose on the turkey display and let the display ride through the month of December.

The Secret Science Club presents a live screening of NOVA's "The Fabric of the Cosmos," with special guest astronomer Munier Salem, Wednesday, November 9, 8 PM, FREE!

Grab your gravity boots, hold on to your wigs and keys, and have us pour you a cosmic cocktail . . .

The Secret Science Club shatters the space-time continuum with a special live screening of physicist Brian Greene’s NOVA: The Fabric of the Cosmos---The Illusion of Time. 

Is “time” nothing more than a product of our imaginations? Join us as we hurtle 50 years into the future, then step into a wormhole to travel back to the Big Bang—where the ultimate secrets of time may be hidden.

PLUS! Blast off into the stratosphere with an awesome pre-screening lecture and Q&A on the "Anatomy of the Universe" with Munier Salem of Columbia University's Astronomy Public Outreach Program

Before & After

--Groove to tunes from another dimension

--Imbibe a rocket-fueled cosmic cocktail! (It’ll knock you into orbit . . .)

--Enter our spacey trivia contest and score celestial prizes

This intergalactic edition of the Secret Science Club meets Wednesday, November 9, 8 pm @ the Bell House, 149 7th St. (between 2nd and 3rd avenues) in Gowanus, Brooklyn. Subway: F or G to 4th Ave; R to 9th St.

Doors open at 7:30 pm. Please bring ID: 21+.

No cover! Just bring your smart self.

Special thanks to NOVA and the WGBH Educational Foundation

Image of the Tarantula Nebula courtesy of the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI/NASA)

Water Cycle Song - Bill Nye - With Lyrics

A teacher friend of mine is entering a week of the water cycle with her students and I put lyrics to one of my favorite Bill Nye songs on the Water Cycle this morning for her. The embedded video is above but the direct link to the YouTube can be found HERE.

This is her schedule for the week:

Monday - Water Cycle Introduction

Tuesday - I have them in the computer lab using Smart Art in Word to create a Water Cycle flow chart

Wednesday - They are doing a cut, match up, and paste activity in their notebook

Thursday - They are doing a couple of water cycle experiments

Friday - Students are taking a quiz and watching the Magic School Bus Water Cycle video

The kids are excited about the week but I think more because they get off for a week's fall break on Friday :)

Duct Tape Identification

I happened to be in a friends room who notebooks in Social Studies and noticed her notebooks on the shelf. I love love love that she put colored duct tap on the binding to, not only secure an area that typically starts falling apart, but allows for easy identification.

"I'm Finished Early" Students

In my experience there are three kinds of students - ones that finish an activity on time (yay!), ones that you have to push to finish an activity on time (boo!), and the ones that finish early (YIKES!).

I have been helping a friend who just started notebooking and teaching fourth grade science and those early finishers have been problematic (mainly because they start bugging everyone else who is still working :)

We recently devised the "poster project" for students who are done early. Basically we set aside a part of her wall for these posters (in this case her cabinets as pictured above). Students who are done their assignment early are asked to contribute a poster to the wall. It has to be subject specific (so no random pictures!). The other day she did weather tools and the kids who finished early had to draw and label a poster of their favorite weather tool (she uses regular paper and the kids have to mount it on colored construction paper and put it up on the wall....which they LOVE to do). She was working on weather safety the other day and if they were done their notebook assignment they had to make, mount and post a weather safety poster.

I've been grooving on this idea to the point I think we need to set up a poster supply area for these children so that crayons, markers, construction paper, glue, and tape for the wall are all in one "ready to go" to area. We only get at most five to seven children who might be done early (and they don't necessarily have time to finish their poster - if they are not finished we keep them in an "unfinished poster" file and if they are done something else early they can go back to it.)

If you are short of wall space you could always put the posters out in the hall under "What We Are Studying in Science" header.

Another reason why I like this idea is under our observation rubric we must have student work on display. This activity pretty much guarantees that we have met that objective (another YAY!).

Origami Tshirts - Part II

Earlier I wrote a post about an origami shirt - see post here. I had my Girl Scouts do the activity as part of an energy badge we are working on. The girls had to make an energy pledge and depict it on the shirt. My example is pictured above.

Sadly the girls pretty much copied my example (isn't that the way it always is????). Next time I think I would do a better job of discussing different things we can do to save energy and NOT show them an example.

I thought this might be a fun activity for teachers to do with Earth Day in April (not necessarily with energy). Students can brainstorm all kinds of different ways they can help protect the Earth.

I showed the shirts to a friend of mine and she used them in her ELA class. Students had to investigate their name - interview their parents, look up the meaning of their name online, discuss how they felt about their name. They then wrote up a short piece in Word and glued it on their origami shirt and decorated around it (she used large pieces of construction paper). It looked like a fun project and the kids seemed to be enjoying it.

I thought it could be done in a social studies notebook. Students could draw a scene from whatever they were studying, glue it in the notebook, and underneath write about the scenes.

Grant for Composters

Composter as Advertised on BuyLifetime

A grant that I wrote up a month ago was just approved (Yay!). The local grant committee surprised us today with a balloon and novelty check for $500.

I will be working with two fourth grade science teachers integrating composting into the curriculum. The grant covered the cost of two tumbling composters (see compost tumbler video here) and child friendly composting books from Amazon for both classes.

We will be composting pumpkins after Halloween and poinsettias after the holidays. These are two items that always find their way into the trash after the holidays. I felt both of them can be easily composted thus eliminating landfill waste. The students are excited about it and are already wondering if decomposing pumpkins make orange compost!

I have never done this project before and I am hoping that we have useable compost in both bins by mid to late May. I want to write another grant that provides students with a pot and plant where they can use the compost to plant their own plant to take home at the end of the school year. Wish me luck!

Pop Up Cube Part II

About an hour after I made my last post, where I uploaded an embedded YouTube video, I made one of the popup cube wallets. It wasn't that hard. I probably wouldn't have any grade below 4th try it. It would be great if I can get our art teacher to do it with the kids (not sure if he would be willing or not). That way they can work on what goes on the cube in science class. I would like it to be a little bit bigger but I am thinking that I can enlarge the template on the copier. You definitely have to use card stock paper for both the cube and wallet for stability purposes.

Above is a short (30 second) video of my finished cube.

The website for the PDF templates can be found HERE. Scroll down until you see the Pop Up Cube in Wallet video and just below it are the templates.

Pop Up Cube

I saw this video on YouTube and thought it would be great for a notebook. Not sure kids can handle the craft or not. I am going to try it tonight and might try with my group of Girl Scouts next week.

Scoot - The Video

I introduced Scoot to two groups of fourth graders today. I video taped the lesson above (and can I say how much I dislike watching myself on tape? Sigh!). The intent was to give folks a visual on how the review game is structured.

I got very lucky with this class. There were only 14 children (five were pulled out for resources so there is actually 19 in the group). They were very good and got the hang of it easily. I gave them an easy Scoot - Abbreviations and Initials so they felt pretty confident going from question to question. The teacher videoing me LOVED it and can't wait to see me do it again with her class on Wednesday with pronouns (we are co-teaching a unit on the eight parts of speech).

I also introduced it to her afternoon class. That would have been more amusing to watch :) They were lower academically and made so much ambient noise that I had to stop several times to get children to refocus. The music seemed the biggest problem...distraction wise...they loved it but got a little crazy dancing and bouncing into each other after they answered the question. I am going to try it again on Wednesday. It may be that I need to choose less energetic music for that group. The first group was certainly dancing (which you will see in the video but nothing like that second group!).

After playing it twice my biggest problem personally was how much paper it wasted. I think I would get paper out of the recycled bin next time and cut it into thirds to reduce the paper waste.

The Secret Science Club hosts the Imagine Science Film Festival and a NIGHT OF SCI-TASTIC CINEMA @ the Bell House, Monday, October 17, 8 PM, FREE!

SPECIAL EVENT: The Secret Science Club is teaming up with the Imagine Science Film Festival for “Controlled Experiment,” a night of science-inspired short films. Documentary. Music Video. Animation. Don’t miss some of the festival’s coolest, most futuristic entries, including Transgenic Spider Goats, Stanley Milgram: The City and The Self, Protein Expression, E. Chromi, Creature Cast: Footage From the Deep, Fossil Carrion Feeders, and Four Letter Words.

Plus!
--Groove to cinematic sounds and live music by Victoire
--Sample our animated cocktail of the night, the Stop Motion
--Meet filmmakers and ISFF artistic director Alexis Gambis

When: Monday, October 17, 8 pm 

Where: The Bell House, 149 7th St. (between 2nd and 3rd avenues) in Gowanus, Brooklyn.

FREE! Just bring your smart self. Doors open at 7:30 PM. 21+.

The Imagine Science Film Festival runs from October 14 to 21 at venues all around the city. Visit here for a complete listing of events.

Scoot - The Game

I was introduced to a game called Scoot today through a teacher at my school (thank you Ms. Perry!).

She found the game through proteacher.net - Here is the link to how the game is played

I watched it being played today with second graders. Ms. Perry had printed out task cards from proteacher.net that a teacher had posted having to do with place value. The cards asked a question and gave the student three multiple choice options.

She had the students number a piece of paper with however many students were in the room (in this case 23). At each table she put a numbered task card. The child would start at whatever number their task card at their desk was marked at (so if I was in spot 19 I would start my answers at number 19 on my numbered sheet). Students stood behind their chair (tucked in) and when told they flipped their task card over and answered the question (the teacher played music during this). She stopped the music and told everyone to "Scoot" to the next number on their list to answer the next question.

When they finished at every desk they reviewed their answers.

I thought it was a really fun review game that got the kids up and moving (I can't wait to try it!). I spent some time looking through proteacher.net and found a teacher that had a lot of science task cards that are pre-made and can be downloaded from proteacher (free registration and free download).

Here are some links to those task cards:

Science Process Skills

Light, Electricity, and Magnets

Science Inference and Observations

Science Review Task Cards

Magnets

I think the game would require some modeling and I found some easier tasks cards for that (abbreviations and initials looked like a good one to start with).

The Secret Science Club Goes Off the Grid with Ecologist Eric Sanderson, Thursday, October 13, 8 PM at the Bell House, FREE!

The Secret Science Club presents NYC's wild past and wilder future with landscape ecologist and Mannahatta author Eric Sanderson

What was here before New York City? Ecologist Eric Sanderson wanted to know—and his curiosity turned into a decade-long environmental and cartographic investigation. To discover what Manhattan looked like 400 years ago, he mined through historic documents and scientific data—and plugged every hard-won bit of information into computer models. The resulting 3D maps and visualizations revealed a lost world of diverse ecosystems. Forests covering what’s now Times Square. Beavers in Greenwich Village. Wolves pacing the Lower East Side.

Now, with Manhattan under his belt, Dr. Sanderson has expanded his project to embrace all five boroughs and to explore, not only the city’s past, but also its future. He asks:

--What will NYC’s ecological footprint look like in the year 2411—400 years from now?

--What remains of forgotten ecosystems? Do ghost-like streams still run?

--How can citizens, scientists, planners, designers, architects, and artists reintegrate and re-connect with nature in the city?

--What wildness pulses beneath the Secret Science Club’s Bell House lair? Does the city’s lost wilderness lurk beneath your neighborhood?

Eric Sanderson is a Senior Conservation Ecologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society, author of Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City, and founder of the Welikia Project, which aims to explore, digitize, and map Gotham's wild history.

Before & After

--Groove to geo-referenced tunes

--Sample the cartographic cocktail of the night, the “Urbanist”

--Stick around for the uncharted Q&A

This edition of the Secret Science Club meets Thursday, October 13 at 8 pm @ the Bell House, 149 7th St. (between 2nd and 3rd avenues) in Gowanus, Brooklyn. Subway: F or G to 4th Ave; R to 9th St.

Doors open at 7:30 pm. Please bring ID: 21+

Free! Just bring your smart self.

COMING UP… On Monday, October 17, 8 pm @ the Bell House, the Secret Science Club teams up with the Imagine Science Film Festival for “Controlled Experiment,” a night of science-themed short films, including Transgenic Spider Goats, Stanley Milgram: The City and The Self, Protein Expression, E. Chromi, Creature Cast: Footage From the Deep, and Four Letter Words.

Bill Nye Songs with Lyrics

At the end of the Bill Nye videos he always has a fun song that goes with the episode. You can find many of the songs as stand alone videos on YouTube.

This came in handy because today I am teaching a lesson on layers of the atmosphere and found a song from his Atmosphere video on YouTube titled "Fresh Aire." I really wanted to remix it and put the lyrics on the video (so the kids could sing along and see how the lyrics matched the lesson). The first thing I did was found a site that has all the Bill Nye lyrics posted used my YouTube downloader (see instructions here) and downloaded the song. I then imported the video into Movie Maker Live and used the caption feature to put the lyrics on the different frames (cutting and pasting from the lyrics site into Movie Maker Live). I saved the video and reposted to YouTube so other teachers could use the video with lyrics (the finished video is posted above).

The process was pretty easy and I am thinking about doing it for more of the Bill Nye songs. My favorite is the "Jump Jump" version of the water cycle.

Donor Choose - Grants

I was just recently awarded a grant through Donor Choose for science themed reading material for a classroom at our school. I was required to write a grant through a class I was taking as a final project (we didn't have to get it funded we just had to write and submit). Several of us in the class got our requests funded. Mine was flat out funded but a friend of mine got hers funded through a series of donations to the project (which is a great way to get parents involved by asking them to contribute a little bit to the materials you need).

For those educators who have not heard of Donor Choose it is a site where teachers can put up grant requests for their classroom. The entire process is very easy. The site walks you through everything step-by-step.

Some tips I would pass on are:

1. Put a picture up of you with your class (make sure photos are permissible of your students first). I think if donors can get a sense of who you are and your students you run a better chance of getting funded.

2. Work backwards. I wanted to get a grant for a science newsletter in the classroom but the site works with very specific vendors - none of whom carried the newsletter I wanted. I decided to look at the vendor sites first and then write my grant to match what I could get (in this case Time Magazine for Children for my writing/ELA class).

3. Write your responses in Word and copy into the blocks they give you. Save your Word document. I remember going to town the first time with my write up on the site and my computer froze and I lost everything and had to start from scratch (annoying!). I have used portions of my saved grant write ups with other non-Donor Choose grants this way.

4. Look at other grant requests for ideas. My problem isn't doing the write up...it is coming up with the ideas. Sometimes one project might trigger an idea for another project (I got "build your own telescopes" for an astronomy grant after seeing a grant request for something else related to astronomy).

Paper Pull Outs

I had seen a project on the internet that involved a pull out tab on a teapot and I have been thinking about how it can be used in notebooking. Today I had my "Aha moment" :)

I know my examples above are social studies based and that is only because I happen to be meeting with some social studies teachers this week. The concept would still apply to science.

One social studies teacher is entering a unit about westward expansion. I thought she could take the groups they discuss and students would choose a group (rancher, Native American, Asian immigrants, miners, etc.) to do a pull out tab person for their right hand assignment (my example was of a cowboy/rancher) - the fourth picture is what the back looks like. When finished the edges only would be glued to the notebook (leaving the tab to move freely in and out of the hat). Students would have to finish writing their information on the tab before the edges of the picture got glued in the book (very hard to write on the tab once it is already glued in the book...learned the hard way :)

Another teacher I am meeting with is doing a unit on explorers - so my two bottom examples were of a viking and Christopher Columbus ship.

I freehand copied clip art pictures on the internet because I can't draw at all. I did a Google image search for "viking clip art" and found a forward facing viking and freehand sketched it for this project.

I am hoping to convince these two teachers to do this project. If I am successful I will post some student samples!

Origami Tshirts

This class made origami t-shirts that they then decorated with items that represented themselves. They wrote about the decorations and how they fit into their lives in the computer lab (using Microsoft Word). The teacher took pictures of their heads and they were cut to fit the t-shirts.

I really liked this project. For this class it was a beginning of the year project but I could easily do it with a Social Studies or Science class. I would change the instructions to read: "Create t-shirt designs that match an event in history. Write about how your drawings match what we've studied in social studies."

The instructions for making the origami shirt can be followed from this Activity TV site.

Room Decorating Idea

I liked the wall decal and the fabric around the desk of this teachers room.