POST #3: Share a resource

I went to the aea log in.  Clicked on Gale and logged in.  I clicked on elementary gale infobites, selected animals and chose dinosaurs.  I selected  the general topic of dinosaurs.  We will read the passage together on dinosaurs and then use a four square graphic organizer to write 4 key pieces of information we learned about dinosaurs.  We will then use this organizer to write a short summary on dinosaurs. The target audience is 2nd grade students.  I do not have all the specifics yet but this is the general idea.

The resource that I will be using is BookFLIX.
 
1. Go to iowaaeaonline.org.
2. Choose BookFLIX on the left side of the page.
3. Log in using your school's user name and password.

As a Title 1 teacher, one of my major duties is to progress monitor students once a week on FastBridge.  Thursdays are my day to test and I plan on using the BookFLIX resource during this time.  As I am testing students, one by one, I will have this resource ready and available for the other students waiting to be tested.  This will be an excellent way to keep my younger students occupied during testing time.  My students usually need several reminders to stay quiet, but the headphones and BookFLIX, I feel that the majority of this problem will be fixed. Students would be engaged in reading curriculum using grade level materials.  Topics used could also be searched to correlate with what is being taught in the classroom.   This resource could be used for re-teaching and enrichment!  I am looking forward to integrating this into my classroom!  

One resource I found was Britannica School.  I like it since it can be used for different level of students. Some of you may not remember the days where parents, schools and libraries had to purchase a set of encyclopedias which took up much space.  They were very expensive and had 22 to 26 thick books with information. They lost their use quickly since they had to be updated every few years. With Britannica School the information is easy to search and can be updated all the time. I got to this information by going to Iowa AEA Online Resources.  They I went to Britannica School and logged in. I searched for the information at a high school level related to the ear.  This information is below.
Joe hanks thinks you would be interested in this Britannica image: https://school.eb.com/levels/high/article/tinnitus/72571/media?assemblyId=111239.

Explore Britannica School at http://school.eb.com to find other articles, images and videos.

This is nice for parents, teachers and students.  The ability to search by topic helps for a very fast and accurate search.  

I was able to go on SIRS.  One of the hot topics was Media Bias.  There was a definition of what media bias is as well as a little more information in the information.  I scrolled down to the opposing views.  View 1 was:  Reporters bias affect how news is reported.  The opposing view was:  Viewers own bias affect the perception of media bias.  I used the filter of relevance.  Each view had at least three articles that related to the view.  The Critical Thinking button brought up three questions.  !. What are danger of media bias?  2.  What are some ways to combat media bias?  3. Do you think main stream media has liberal bias?  Why or why not.  Together or separately these provocative questions would make a good essay when addressed with the help of the resources which were just a click away at the SIRS sight.  I had a little trouble getting the screen to scroll. It either jumped too quickly, or it wouldn't move at all.  That could have been a result of my ability.  Student objectives and goals are clearly stated in Critical Thinking questions.

I am going to use Culture Grams to help my resource students in 7th grade Social Studies when they have to complete country projects (could possibly use with 6th and 8th graders too, but will need to look into their topics).  This tool looks to be in depth and fun at the same time.  It is a place where students can gather most of the information needed for their projects.  Students can use this tool and experience so much of the country that they are researching such as daily life, their culture, their history, the make of the country, and so much more.  I also like that the information is up to date and that people who actually live there contribute to it.  I am going to gather the information needed for the students projects and work with them on it.  I plan on having the kids in my resource class work on these projects, but I will incorporate bringing in food or we can make a recipe together as a class.  I am also going to see if I can use the True Flix videos to help students get a understanding or interest in their country before getting started on the project.  The only problem is my time that I have with them, but if I can get them started it should help.
This tool will benefit my kiddos greatly and make learning more hands on and fun!!  Something that my kiddos need!!

http://digital.films.com/PortalPlaylists.aspx?aid=7329&xtid=44414&loid=128448 (Links to an external site.)
 
I will have this website The Grandest Enterprise Under God: The West, a Film by Stephen Ives that is copied above, direct link on a Canvas assignment on the westward expansion chapter in US History.  
 
This video is one hour and twenty five minutes long, but we will not need to show every part of the video.  This movie is broken up into segments to help the students focus on certain questions and aspects of the society that is growing west.
This video speaks on how and why the westward expansion takes place in the United States.   I will use multiple clips from this website to show how the railroad advanced from Omaha NE, Sacramento CA. and meeting up in Promontory Summit.  The video will talk about what ethnic groups are used to build the railroad, the problems that they faced, such as land grants, native americans, terrible working conditions and the major concerns from the investors and United States government.   Also the 9th grade students will see how the railroad affected the country sides such as boomtowns quickly turned into bust towns, the buffalo hunters wiping out thousands and so on..   Once the the students finish the lecture on the transcontinental railroad, There are other clips on this video.   I will lead me into the American Cowboys and the cattle drives.  

The resource I will be sharing is Gale InfoTrac Student Edition: http://galesites.com/state/iowa/actions/link.php?db=STOM

Gale InfoTrac Student Edition is a database of magazine, newspaper, book excerpts, and other articles geared toward high school students. The content is similar to that of general media sources that members of the public might read in their everyday lives. Topics run the gamut from science to history to current events.

One of the standards in the high school physical science class that I teach is "Evaluate the validity and reliability of claims in published materials of the effects that different frequencies of electromagnetic radiation have when absorbed by matter." In the past, after learning about the nature of different types of electromagnetic radiation, the ways it can interact with matter & why it interacts differently under different circumstances, and the effects it can have on the matter, I have given students a selection of 15 or so articles to choose from in order to evaluate the claims made in the articles to determine if those claims are valid or reliable based on what they've learned about electromagnetic radiation and matter.

With Gale InfoTrac, I can teach students how to search for appropriate articles so that each student can evaluate his or her own article, instead of being limited to my selection. I can curate a few articles as a starting point, then students can search for and select an article making a claim about electromagnetic radiation and matter to evaluate.

The resource I use from the AEA site is BookFlix.

The way I have taught my students to access BookFlix is to open Safari. This opens to our Lawson Elementary Homepage. From here I have taught the students to click on grades K/1. Then BookFlix is one of the options listed. As I teach Kindergarten I have many beginning readers, I have taught them what the logo for BookFlix looks like. Our media specialist has entered the username and password into all school computers, so the students do not need to enter the username or password, it opens once they click on it.

The first 3 or 4 times we went to the computer lab, I very deliberately walked the students through this process. I also showed the different categories BookFlix has and how it pairs a fiction book with a non-fiction book. I gave my students the direction of watching both when they select. I also showed them how to make sure it is set to Read Along On, so it will underline or highlight the text for the students.

BookFlix is a fantastic app for beginning readers and is really geared to students in grades K-3. It pairs a fiction text with a non-fiction text and has numerous categories for the students to select from. I have the students utilize BookFlix either in the computer lab or on our classroom iPads as part of our literacy station rotations. It is very important that they are reading often and hearing books read a lot. BookFlix is one very engaging way I can meet that need for all of my students.

 The resource I investigated further was the Britanica School at  http://school.eb.com/levels. I went to https://www.iowaaeaonline.org  and selected Britanica Online from the menu on the left. From thier home page I selected elementary then used the search bar to search articles on sources of energy. A great article about energy sources with headings for different sources of energy, solar, wind, nuclear, coal, and hydro came up. There were 3 reading levels available and links to videos and an interesting fact and a question to think about. It was a ready made lesson for students. I also clicked on the educator link and signed in. There were many ready made lesson plans in this section that could be assigned and sent to students or printed. There were some worksheets that I couldn't figure out how to type on so they may not all be interactive. But there is an option to print them.  I also saw Science Flix on the home page for Iowa AEA andI could not resist investigating it further. I typed Alternative Forms of Energy in the search bar and found some interesting videos that would go along with the articles from Britanica School. I also explored the Science Lab tab and found an amazing lab activity that had instructions for making a solar oven and cooking S'mores. There was also an interactive worksheet for this lab using the scientific process and data collection. Then there was a "What Do Your Think?" section with three follow up questions. And another section called"Show What You Know" which was a quiz. I would definitely use these sites and activities with my 5th grade class to cover our matter and energy standards.

My classroom would benefit from www.culturegrams.com; Britannica; Soundzabound; and GALE. More specifically, I would use Science Flix and Freedom Flix to attach video learning to our classroom site. I use various reflection sources for the students to watch, take notes, reflect, and share out with others. I did have some difficulty navigating to the sites, though, and this worries me. I am going to keep looking into these for success.With our new Social Studies core curriculum, these will help when looking for information for the Great Depression. This is great news, because it is very hard to find resources at an elementary level for this topic area. I also welcome the idea of using Science Flix because we have some opportunities to research a topic. In my classroom, I also love to have the kids engage in a self-directed learning project. I can provide these sites for them to use and cite their evidence pretty easily. We have also gone to stressing lexile levels, and it was great to see that the GALE site provides these. I think that the most difficult hurdle for me will be having the time to look over them and preparing them ahead of time. However, if I can pre-plan and attach the links for the students to use, the student assignments will be rich and the door will be open for them to use these more.

My goal was to prepare a short library lesson for 3rd thru 6th graders on biography resources, in particular Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks. I explored TeachingBooks.net and found books which are in the three elementary libraries where I serve.  As a result I selected the book, Martin's Big Words, by Doreen Rappaport.
 
I investigated many of the Educator Resources at TeachingBooks including brief video and audio clips. I set up two lists and added resources for the future and also went to the various lesson plans available including a helpful one at ReadWriteThink.org. Since I wanted to preview the book before I read it aloud I decided to check on BookFlix.  I was delighted to find under the People and Places section three pairs that would work: Martin's Big Words (and) Martin Luther King, Jr (section 9-12); Coretta (and) Martin Luther King Jr. Day (section 1-4); Rosa (and) Rosa Parks (section 13-16). I played Martin's Big Words which was nearly 10 minutes long, but the audio clips with "I Have a Dream" was excellent. I will definitely use that.

Because my time with the classes is a maximum of 20 minutes and that needs to include selecting books, I will find other titles which relate to Martin, Rosa and the Civil Rights movement to have on display.  I plan to send an email to the classroom teachers in my buildings and let them know what I am using so that they can follow up or advise if they are already using that resource.  

Then I went to PebbleGo and found some appropriate resources under "Biographies/African Americans" and  "Social Studies/Holidays" for the younger grades.  My limited time with the students means that my objective is to introduce resources which they can use.

I navigated around the Science Flix site. I found an abundance of relevant materials I can use in my classroom this quarter. In Science, the 2nd graders in the district will be learning all about the properties of matter. As I browsed Science Flix I typed in the keyword: “matter.” Right away I saw: “States of Matter” so I clicked on it to explore everyday matter in the world: solids, liquids and gases. I decided to see where that would take me:
sdm-six.digital.scholastic.com/article/01002280_10773413/10001989&queryText=matter&docKey=c2Z4d3cvc2Z4d3d1cy8xMDAwMTk4OS5odG1s?authCtx=U.634833739

In case that url didn’t work, I will tell you what I did. I saw several tabs:
1. Watch It
2. Read It
3. Dive Deeper
4. Explore More
5. Related Web Sites
6. Science Lab
7. What Do You Think?
8. Show What You Know
9. Careers

If I wanted to turn on Read Aloud, I could listen to a fluent reader and am also given the option to adjust my reading level: 1, 2, or 3. I can see the lexile level and word count, which will be useful to differentiate instruction. If I wanted to change the information to Spanish, I could reach out to my ELL/ESL students. In the Science Lab I can watch actual experiments being done! How awesome! I also have the option to Look Up a Word in an online dictionary, which would develop my vocabulary and comprehension skills. I can learn technical words about my chosen topic.
All of this just from the first clicking on the first Article Title. WOW!

http://bkflix.grolier.com/?authCtx= 
I chose BookFlix as my resource to share. As an early childhood educator, literacy is an important aspect of early learning and can incorporate so many other learning skills. Students are able to engage in a variety of books, topics and familiar literacy stories. I also think it is great that there are "non fiction" books included as well as extension activities.
Many of the commonly used children books are available on BookFlix. By incorporating these books into lessons and activities, children are able to see a different concept of print using much more interaction.  BookFlix also allows for a variation in reading styles from the narrator which children love! I am also able to expand on vocabulary and newly learned words. Extension activities in the classroom can be easily created based on books on the website. I think too, that using BookFlix gives another learning style that I may not be able to incorporate just by reading aloud to a whole group.
Individual student computer time can also allow for students to re-read familiar stories from class lessons (or even bedtime reading at home) to increase knowledge and vocabulary awareness. Even my 4 year old son has really enjoyed looking at familiar books on the site!

I decided to use Britannica Online. After logging in with my school username and password, I clicked on the elementary icon. This took me to the elementary home page. On the homepage there are several "cloud" shaped pictures of different topics. I clicked on the animal kingdom picture. This brought me to the animal kingdom page where I could then select what type of animal. I clicked on the mammals picture. From there I clicked on the cats and other felines heading. In the center of the page I scrolled down until I saw a picture and word "tiger". I then clicked on tiger. This brought me to the page about tigers. Here you can read information, look at pictures and also watch and listen to an informative video about tigers.  I then went back to the tiger page and clicked on each heading in the center of the page which brought up more information.
My target audience for this information is my third grade classroom. I took these steps because I feel this is the most common way my students will want to use Britannica and become familiar with what information it has to offer. I will demonstrate this example to my class and then let them explore to find the information they need about their animal. These are the first steps I plan on taking with the students.
I think they will be very excited to research in this way.

Post#3
I had forgotten about the Kid's Learning Zone feature of Britannica Online.  I would like to introduce this to my Kindergarten classes.  First I would demonstrate how to access it using the Promethean board in my library computer lab.  My kindergarten students are getting pretty tech savvy, but I always like to demo a new resource whole class and then turn them loose to their computers to follow the steps I've shown them.
Since I have links for the AEA Online databases on my Symbaloo webmix, I would have them:
1. Launch Google Chrome and my Symbaloo page will load www.symbaloo.com/mix/ewstudents?searched=true  (they are very familiar with it) 2. From there they will need to click on the Research Tools tile and then click on the tile with a small branch in the lower left corner - Britannica School. 3. Once here they will need to choose Elementary School and then enter our school username and password which may require some additional help this first time. 4. Once logged into our school account we will then click on Britannica Learning Zone in the lower right hand corner. I will demonstrate all four features in Explore, Play Read and Draw.  I usually like to have them use a resource at least twice before I move them onto something else, but I'm quite certain that by the second class several will be eager to move into Exploring the Animal Kingdom at the top of the main page as well.  I'm eager to try this during my next 4 day lesson cycle.

I plan to use 360 Learning (https://learn360.infobase.com/p_Home.aspxfor) my 4-6th grade general music classes. I will use this as part of my introduction to our composer of the month.

This will give the students an opportunity to bring their laptops to my classroom which is always exciting. I will direct them to the AEA Online Site using my overhead projector and take them to the site and help get everyone logged in. Once we make it to the site (this will probably take awhile the first time :)) and get logged in, we will search Beethoven. There are eight or nine video clips available with various stories about Beethoven. The students will be given nine to ten minutes to watch a video of their choice. Once everyone is finished, they will report one interesting fact they learned about the composer and share it with their class.

Of the dozens of resources I plan to use, I found the Learn360 Resource very intriguing.  The short videos will help supplement many of the lessons I already use in my classroom.  

My 8th grade students complete a African Drumming Unit, and I've already found two resources that I'll be integrating in the next trimester.  First, I found a video of the history of drums, that is brief, but informative.  It's located here:
http://learn360.infobase.com/PortalPlaylists.aspx?wID=193162&xtid=115945&loid=445206

Secondly, the 8th graders learn to play 2 different "Ensembles" on the drums that come from two different countries in Africa: Cameroon, and Nigeria.  I loved seeing all the information on cultures and countries when I was learning about Culturegram, so I will absolutely be tapping into that resource in the next trimester.
http://online.culturegrams.com/world/world_region.php?contid=1&wmn=Africa

The resource I decided to use was TeachingBooks.net.  We have started a poetry unit in my fourth grade class and will be using Love That Dog by Sharon Creech.  TeachingBooks had several resources that look promising.  The URL is https://www.teachingbooks.net/tb.cgi?tid=4204.  

I especially liked the video on how to turn the book into a reader's theatre.  I will be showing this to my students and then having them turn a section of the book into their own reader's theatre.  It will be a great way to meet the standard that compares poetry, prose, and drama.

It was also nice to find several links to lesson plans and discussion questions.  I printed out the discussion questions from Scholastic and plan on using them during our reading of the book.  They can be found at this link: https://www.scholastic.com/content/dam/teachers/lesson-plans/migrated-files-in-body/clubs_pdfs_lovethatdog_q.pdf .

The third resource I will use is a slide show interview with Sharon Creech.  It can be found here: https://www.teachingbooks.net/author_collection.cgi?id=11.  I will be using this at the end of the unit as a way to celebrate and encourage students to check out more of her books.

I am planning to use both Bookflix and Truflix. These two resources provide books and videos for students with many different topics. Being a substitute, there are times when the teacher is gone unexpectedly, and lessons are not ready for the substitute. These resources will be interesting to the students and can be focused on their current classroom objectives.
     To access these resources, students will log in to:  http.//www.aeaonline.org. This will bring them to the AEA homepage. Selecting from the sidebar on the left, students will click on Bookflix, K-3rd grades,  or Trueflix, 3rd-6th grades. This will bring the students to their login page. After logging in with their school's username and password, they will see the site homepage.
    In Bookflix, the students will be instructed with audio to select a topic. This audio helps younger students who are not independent or fluent readers. Students have the choice to have the book read to them, or turn off the sound and read it themselves. Once they select their topic, they will be given many book choices. Each topic gives the student a fictional book and a nonfiction companion on the same topic. After reading, the students can go to the menu on the left and choose to Meet the Author, show what they learned from the book with Puzzlers, and/or explore the web for more information on the topic.  
    In Trueflix, the students are given several nonfiction topics from which to select. Once they choose their topic, they are given a video and a book. Along with reading and watching the video, students may choose from the menu on the left to explore the topic more thoroughly with activities, projects, and exploring the web.
   In each of these AEA resources,  I also have the option to do a whole class lesson by clicking on Resources and Tools in the upper right hand corner (Trueflix) or top center of page (Bookflix).  

As a Middle School English Language Arts teacher, I can see myself using several of the resources available on this site.  One of the main units for my 8th-grade students is about the Holocaust.  I typically use videos to present and give an overview of what we are about to study and to increase their background knowledge of the subject we are about to become more aware of.  I will use two sites, Learn360 and Teaching Books.  On the Learn 360 site,  I will go to the site https://learn360.infobase.com/p_Home.aspx, I will use the video clip tab, I will then type in the keyword Holocaust, narrow the search on the right margin by grade level, I will choose a 6-8 grade level.   I will use the segment: Remembering the Holocaust (SEGMENT), then follow with We Must Never Forget: The Story of the Holocaust (full video). The assignment will be for students to find a mini chronology of the events of this time period. The students will create a mini chronology of the events of the holocaust through video clips, using a maximum of four videos.  The students will use the printable from the printable tab (The Holocaust and its Victims) that will give them a timeline of events that they can use to help navigate the various clips.  At the end, the students will then write a short synopsis of each video and where it would fall within the chronology of the Holocaust events.  The class reads the book The Boy in the Striped Pajamas as a class novel.  We would use teaching books.net https://www.teachingbooks.net/tb.cgi?aid=968 and click on the author interview (John Boyle) and then use the interview site and questions as an overview of his thinking process when writing this book.  I would also use the printable from this page that is found in the left margin under the Reading Guide PDF tab.  We will use this as we progress as a group through the book.