Posted in Character Counts Series, Projects, Roanoke County Schools, Video

Trustworthy Fourth Graders

TrustworthyStudents in Mrs. Thompson and Mrs. Downey’s class have been studying what it means to be trustworthy.  They’ve blogged about it, and created videos (using Videolicious) to describe their understanding of trustworthiness.

Here is one of my favorites!

The Meanings of Trusthworthy

Check out all the videos and blog posts by visiting their class blog, and leave a comment or two!

 

 

 

Posted in Food for Thought, Math, Roanoke County Schools, STEM, Video

Math Class Needs a Makeover

I absolutely love this guy, Dan Meyer, and his push to develop “patient problem solvers.”    He suggests that math teachers should:

1.  Use Multimedia.

2. Encourage student intuition.

3. Ask the shortest question you can.

4. Let students build the problem.

5. Be less helpful.

Here’s his TED Talk.  Love it!
http://embed.ted.com/talks/dan_meyer_math_curriculum_makeover.html

Take a look at his blog too! http://blog.mrmeyer.com/

Posted in Ideas, Links, Math, Reading, Roanoke County Schools, Science, Video

Flocabulary (Hip Hop Videos for the Classroom)

Have you heard of Flocabulary? It’s a website that does hip hop songs to help students remember certain facts. It started with SAT vocab, but has expanded to all levels and subjects. To have access to all the videos/songs you need to pay a fee, but a few are free…including the one for Egypt, which you can watch here.

Note the lyrics below the song (they are clickable) and the resources to go with it on the right hand side of the page. I will warn you…you will be singing the chorus to this in your head all day after you hear it, or at least I did! 🙂

There are other free videos too worth checking out on the site, including Confessions of a Planet (Space), On Trial! (Test Taking Vocabulary), Let Freedom Ring (Civil Rights), This Ain’t Working (American Revolution), Place Value, Scientific Method of Madness, and more!  There is a vocabulary section broken down by grade level and tons of other great videos in the paid version. You can also download songs in iTunes (for $.99 each).  Take a look (and listen).  I think you will love these!

 

Posted in Discovery Education, Roanoke County Schools, Tutorials, Video

Creating Your Own Discovery Education Account

Many of our teachers use  Discovery Education (United Streaming) videos on a regular basis.  Some use the generic school account, but did you know you could have your very own account?   Teachers with their own accounts can save the materials that they use in their own library – making it much easier to find next year. To create your account, you will need your school code (your ITRT knows this).  Then visit http://www.discoveryeducation.com/ .

Step 1: Click on the Passcode/New User Tab.

Step 2: Type in the school Passcode.  Your ITRT has this number.

Step 3:  Follow the prompts to set up your Discovery Education account.

 

You can also follow this webcast that Meg Swecker created:

Creating a Discovery Education Account

I’ll post more soon about using this great resource! 🙂