Resources for Teaching About 9 Amazing Americans

In addition to running this blog, my RVing with the Rakis blog and homeschooling full time, I also create and sell resources that teachers can use in their classrooms and home schooling parents can use to help out their children.  To be fair, I am not creating nearly as many resources this year as I did in the past 9 years, for 2 reasons.  Reason #1 – I already have over 500 resources available in my Teachers Pay Teachers store, so much of what I need for my kiddos I have created already.  Reason #2 – I only have 3 students this year, so I have need of less resources.  However, I am going through resources that I made while I was teaching in a classroom full time and “cleaning them up” with clearer teacher directions, better fonts, etc.  I am also finishing out groupings or “series” that I have started and putting them into bundles so that teachers who are interested in buying multiple items from the same category have the opportunity to save some money.  For the next few weeks, I am going to spotlight some of the resources I have available in my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

Four years of my teaching career were spent teaching 3rd grade in Georgia.  A large part of our Social Studies curriculum was to teach students about 9 Americans who were important historical figures.  Through these figures we taught geography, history, government and character.  We looked at the events that shaped their lives to make them who they were.  We also looked at the events that they helped to create and how those events shaped history.

The 9 Americans that are taught as part of the Georgia Performance Standards are: Paul Revere, Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Mary McLeod Bethune, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, Thurgood Marshall, Lyndon B. Johnson and Cesar Chavez. 

When I was teaching this unit, it generally covered two quarters or more, so I made sure to have consistency between each person we studied.  We had a large, classroom wide timeline where we posted important events from each person’s life.  This helped students to make connections between those individuals who worked and lived at the same time and eradicated misconceptions like the idea that Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr. were friends – which one student told me before we started our timeline.  Then, after we studied each person, I printed my students these timelines to use as a “cheat sheet” and keep in their notebooks.

One thing I learned while teaching this unit was that most of my third graders had great difficulty understanding what life might be like in 1745 or 1900.  The idea that there was life with no electricity, no t.v., no video games, blew their minds.  Then add in things like girls not being able to attend school and they were flabbergasted.  Additionally, they thought that life in 1745 was identical to life in 1920.  In order to help change their misconceptions, I put together Time Machine Power Points.  These Power Points gave students some information to help them truly understand what life was like for each of these people growing up.  To make it more fun, we would turn off the lights, stand up and spin around as if we were being transported to a new time. 

Once we had learned the important facts about each of the 9 historical figures, I let the students choose one person to become an expert on.  Using my Amazing Americans Technology Project, the students would research their figure and create a Power Point or Prezi to present to the class with the information they found.  This aligned beautifully with my Informational Writing Unit.  Next, they would use the same information to create a brochure explaining why their person should win an award, which worked us into our Persuasive Writing Unit. 

 

Finally, as a review for our Comprehensive Unit Test, the students would explore the Amazing Americans Internet Scavenger Hunt.  This is one of the first internet scavenger hunts I ever designed, and the way the students responded to it inspired me to create many more. I know have over 40!  It also provided a great way for the kids to solidify their knowledge about these historic individuals.

After I taught this for a few years, I put together the timeline, the technology project, the internet scavenger hunt and the comprehensive test into an Amazing Americans Bundle, which you can find on Teachers Pay Teachers.  Just recently, I bundled all of the American History Time Machine Power Points,including the years 1745 (Paul Revere), 1830 (Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass), 1880 (Mary McLeod Bethune), 1900 (Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt), 1920 (Thurgood Marshall and Lyndon B. Johnson) and 1940 (Cesar Chavez),  which you can also find on Teachers Pay Teachers.  I hope that all of these resources will be able to help you better teach your students about these 9 Amazing Americans, whether you live in Georgia or anywhere else in the world. 

  

Keeping Kids Reading – 10 Ways to Get Kids to Enjoy Reading

Building a culture of reading in our classrooms is an important step to creating life long readers.  Kids who enjoy reading read more.  Kids who read more become better readers.  Better readers enjoy reading.  And the cycle continues. 

This – and what I’ve seen in action in my classroom - leads me to conclude that getting kids to enjoy reading is an essential part of building good readers.  So, here are some tips to helping students enjoy reading and develop the skills to be life long readers:

1.  Introduce students to different genres and authors through read aloud.  Exposing students to books they wouldn’t think to choose for themselves is a great way to get kids enthusiastic about reading different kinds of books.  I always start the year out with a few authors that I love, to expose kids to quality books on a variety of topics.  Find some of the authors I love in my blog post – Authors that Belong in All Elementary Classrooms.  In addition to listening to books read aloud, I encourage my students to utilize their reading comprehension skills during read aloud, using my Read Aloud Journal.  This helps kids understand that these strategies are something they do every time they “intake” information, in any format.

2.  Let kids choose the book.  Just as important as it is for us to expose students to books and authors that we love, it is also important to take time to let them read about something they love.  My 5th grader currently LOVES World War 2 (don’t ask), so I have encouraged him to read Number the Stars, Anne Frank’s Diary, and Farwell to Manzanar.  My 2nd grader is head over heals for Captian Underpants (and anything to do with bodily functions – again, don’t ask), so we have made sure he had access to the entire series.  These self chosen books don’t have to just be for pleasure reading either.  We are using my Generic Novel Study Packet, which works with any book, to do a full novel study on books that THEY have chosen.  Knowing that there are books out there that make them happy – while keeping their teacher happy – is a priceless moment for most kids.

3.  Encourage reading in other places than just paper books.  Whether it’s an E-Reader, reading articles on the computer or an online magazine, there are so many places to read online books that capture the interest of your “screen kids”.  My family is a Kindle family – we have 3 kindles registered to our household.  However, there are TONS of other places to find online books and access to online articles.  Check out my blog posts – Free E-Books for Kids and Top 10 Reading Websites for Kids to find some great places to allow kids to take reading into the virtual world, their world.

4.  Get students to think and write about the books they are reading.  When kids start thinking about what they are reading – connecting it to their own life experience, to movies they have read, thinking about the big ideas and themes – they not only better understand what they read, but they start to enjoy what they read more, because it now has impacted their life in a new way.  One way that I help students to think about the books they are reading is by having them write responses in their weekly Reading Response Journal.  With a different prompt each week, kids are encouraged to look at different parts of their books than they would normally focus on.  This extension of their thinking also encourages more enjoyment in the books they read.

5.  Let kids be creative with the ways that they report about a book.   There are so many more ways to do a book report than simply to summarize the book in an old fashioned book report.  In my class, we did Online Book Reports, where students choose to make an online project (like a Prezi or LiveBinders) or a video with the information from the book.  Students get so much more engaged with the books when creating these projects and their classmates love viewing the projects.  Often, after we present Online Book Reports, the books presented became the most checked out books of the class library.

6.  Have kids write recommendations to each other about the books they read.  Kids are much more likely to read books recommended by other kids than by us – just like we are more likely to read a book recommended by our friends than by our parents.  In my class, we complete Book Review Bookmarks and hang the recommendations around the class library.  Kids love choosing books recommended by their friends.

7.  Read in fun places! Books – and other reading materials – are extremely portable.  Have your students take their books outside to read under a tree.  Read laying on your bellies.  Bring in beach towels and spread them out in the grass.  Read in the hallway.  Encourage kids to read in the car, in bed, by the pool, wherever they can take a book.  Reading in different places will give students new, hopefully pleasant, memories with their books and encourage them to try reading at many different times in many different ways.

8.    Read with book buddies. Reading with older or younger students give students a chance to practice their fluency, make new friends and discover new books.  The books they read with their buddies will be further cemented in their brains by this new experience and they will be encouraged to read new kinds of books and make new kinds of friends.

9.  Give students a purpose for reading.  Having students read to find information gives them a purpose behind their reading.  Children will read books and articles that are new and challenging to them if they are dedicated to their purpose.  Children working on genius projects or internet scavenger hunts have a new motivation to read things they wouldn’t even consider reading otherwise.  Then, once they realize they can do it, they are motivated to read new and different things.

10.  Have students keep track of their reading.  Using any type of reading log helps students to keep track of how much and what kind of books they have read.  Keep a year’s worth of reading logs together in one notebook and let kids look back at the end of the year, to take pride in the wide range of amazing books they have enjoyed this school year.

Patriotic Internet Scavenger Hunts

Fourth of July is coming!  If you’re still in school, working a summer camp, or homeschooling your own children and you’re looking for a way to get in the spirit of patriotism – try taking some time to explore US history through these fun internet scavenger hunts. Each scavenger hunt is held in a .zip folder that includes a variety of formats of the internet scavenger hunt.
Format 1 – Type On Version – This is a word document, which can be typed directly on by students. In order for students to click on links, they will generally need to hold the control (CTRL) key on the keyboard while they click the link with their mouse.
Format 2 – PDF Version – This version is meant to be printed and written on. Students can have an electronic copy of the internet scavenger hunt open on their computer with its easily clickable links.
Format 3 – QR Code Version – This version is meant to be printed and written on. Students can use any device with a QR Code Scanner (iPad, iPhone etc.) to scan the QR codes and visit the designated links.

  

Happy Independence Day!

Scavenger Hunts on the Internet

For two years, I was the Technology Specialist at a school in Georgia. During that time, I amassed a large collection of websites that I use with my students. You can download my E-Book of Websites for the Elementary Classroom for free from Teachers Pay Teachers or Smashwords, or, you can check back here each week for the website suggestion.

One of the most popular items in my Teachers Pay Teachers store lately has been my internet scavenger hunts.  Some people like them so much that they have been asking to make requests for certain topics.  I am hoping to be open to making internet scavenger hunts on demand by August 2014, but right now I’m just a wee bit busy (end of school year, international move etc.)  So, instead of a Website Suggestion this week, I thought I would go through the steps I use to make an internet scavenger hunt, in case you wanted to make one yourself.

An internet scavenger hunt is similar to a Web Quest, in that students will use the internet to find information. However, internet scavenger hunts are designed for students to search for specific answers, rather than creating an open ended project. Internet scavenger hunts can be done as a whole class, in small groups, individually and even at home.  This versatility makes them so useful for so many different topics.  Currently I have only science and social studies topics like Ecology and Economics, but I hope to add some math and literacy scavenger hunts next school year.

1.)  Decide what information you want students to know.  Internet scavenger hunts are specific, not open ended, so they are great for getting kids to review key facts, dates and concepts.  Make a list of exactly what you want them to know and then use those to create a “quiz” of sorts.  My internet scavenger hunts generally include a balance of about half open ended short answer questions and half fill in the blank or matching questions. 

 

2.)  Next, you need to find websites that students will use to find the answers to the questions you made up in step 1.  For this, you should use a variety of very specific sites where students will be guaranteed to find the answers without clicking off of the site and sites that are more general and simply on the correct topic.  This gives students the opportunity to truly search while guaranteeing that they will find the correct answers.  If you need a starting point for websites, check out my free E-Book called Websites for the Elementary Classroom.  I generally start in these “old faithfuls” and then fill in with new sites that I find through Google Searches as needed.

 

3.)  Decide on your format.  When I first started making internet scavenger hunts, I only made “Type on Versions”, which meant that I would post the scavenger hunt on Edmodo or another password protected site.  Students would then download a copy and save it to their own drives.  Students would click on each link and then type in their answers.  When I started having downloading issues on Mac etc., I made “PDF Versions” where students would print off their copy and write in the answers while clicking on the links in the actual scavenger hunt.  Then, last year, I started teaching with the iPad, so I started creating “QR Code Versions” which allow students to have a printed paper that they write on, but use QR codes to scan and find their websites.   (On a side note, I am currently working on updating all of my Internet Scavenger Hunts that are only “Type on Versions” to have all 3 versions available, but it takes a minute.  So if there is one you NEED the QR code or PDF code version for, leave me a message in the Q & A on TPT.)

Once you have decided on a format, each format is quite simple.  For Type on and PDF versions, you can make the hyperlinks by simply doing INSERT – Hyperlink and copying and pasting the link.  For QR Code versions, you can create QR Codes using a QR Code generator like Kaywa.

 

4.)  Share the internet scavenger hunt with your students on Edmodo or print a QR Code version and distribute to the class.

 

Hope this list will help you create engaging internet scavenger hunts for your own class.  If you’re not interested in making your own, please feel free to peruse the 30+ internet scavenger hunts that are available at my TPT store.  Also, please feel free to follow my store and receive e-mail updates as I add new internet scavenger hunts to the collection.