Winsome Wednesday: Build Your Wild Self

When given half a chance, children love to create and be imaginative. Use the web application, BuiLD YouR WiLD SeLF, and watch kids' creativity and imagination in learning...

run wild....

BuiLD YouR WiLD SeLF is a web application. Anyone can use their imagination or their knowledge of animals to create their own animal for a special habitat using this web application. Provide a platform for your students or children to build an imaginary avatar. Once their WiLD SeLF is created, they can use it as a desktop image, an avatar, or any similar application. Kids can compare and contrast various traits of humans and animals. They will also get a chance to learn about the habitats that some zoo animals would live in their natural homes.

Use this web application as:

A. the anticipatory set for new lessons in science, social studies, language arts, writing or other subject.

B. an example of animal habitat information to be studied utilizing many learning strategies; especially Compare/Contrast You can build a lesson about animals and their environments.

C. a formative assessment to determine if students can describe/explain why they used a particular environment or body part.

D. a reward for effective learning behaviors.

The web application, Build Your Wild Self was created for the Bronx Zoo, New York Aquarium, and other New York City Zoos, in cooperation with the Wildlife Conservation Society.


SHARE SOME FINE EXAMPLES THAT STUDENTS HAVE SHARED WITH YOU:

n2teaching: Substitutes

letter from a student by evchu.nyc
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License

While I've taught more than substituted, I can tell you that substituting is the hardest type of teaching to accomplish. If you plan to truly work effectively as a substitute, here are some ideas that you might want to consider.

The teacher who works diligently to have good lesson plans, deserves a substitute that will effectively use them with the class.

If the teacher leaves good notes, the substitute should leave good notes about what happened through the day.

The substitute stands in for the teacher, and their best philosophy is to help the teacher as well as possible.

Not all substitutes or teachers are equal, so these high expectations may not be implemented by them. Those teachers who have high expectations for the substitute working in their classroom, should request and receive a substitute who agrees with their high standards.

This has always been an important topic, yet it is always helpful to discuss our beliefs about the need and use of effective substitutes.

Promote Global WORMING! Prior Knowledge and Post Project Assessment

Have you considered the various ways to think about this environmental education project? Since it's all about worms, Kitchen Komposting, decomposers and the Biotic Pyramid, it's best to discover what the learners you're working with already know.

I've included this graphic organizer that the wonderful folks at Learning Today created to encourage people to use Bloom's Taxonomy of Thinking. This taxonomy ranges from lower order thinking skills such as remembering to higher order thinking skills such as creating.

For the first activity of the Kitchen Komposting project, the learner will REMEMBER by listing, writing, and naming ideas associated with the four topics listed below.

During this activity, the learners and the teacher can assess BASIC prior knowledge about the topics mentioned here:

• worms
• Kitchen Komposting
• decomposers
• Biotic Pyramid
• Gardening

The LIFE SCIENCE benchmark – The student will develop an understanding of biological concepts through direct experience with living things, their life cycles, and their habitats, Gardening will be the entity to help students evaluate their basic level of remembering, in the manner described in this activity. Gardening is key.

In general, these curriculum standards refer to middle elementary age, but they can be adjusted up or down the age scale. After the pretest, Gardening will be the entity with all its attributes.

Here are the directions for the prior knowledge assessment. These same instructions can be used as a post test. The assessments should be informal and nonthreatening to promote a basic understanding of the topics related to the understanding of the role decomposers, such as worms, play in the real world.

1. Split the learners in four groups. Give each group a set of cards or sticky notes with their own special symbol or color...to indicate the group doing the writing.
2. Ask each group to look at each of the four topics and write as many single terms that relate to the topic. Say this: Please think of as many topics that relate to WORM (then Kitchen Komposting, decomposers, the Biotic Pyramid, and Gardening). Write each one on a card or sticky note. Provide 2-3 minutes to list as many as they can. Decrease or increase this time according to the age of the learners.
3. Each group will take a picture of their list to help them remember their ideas as the project continues throughout our Gardening Inquiry. 
4. Then the group will take their sticky notes to the appropriate chart paper and place them on it. For instance, everything related to WORM will be placed on the chart paper labeled WORM.
5. If another group already listed a the same , that's good....they should put their sticky note next to the first one...they will end up with a type of graph or chart.
6. After all the sticky notes are placed on the appropriate chart paper, a helper, group leader or teacher will take a picture of each chart paper for worms, Kitchen Komposting, etc. These photos will be used to compare to the post test that will be given after the Kitchen Komposting project is complete.
7. The entire group will focus on the lists and discuss ideas about their choices.
8. This data analysis can be continued or expanded to include graphing, writing the lists, and other related activities about Gardening.

After the activity is complete, the leader (teacher) should display the images (pictures) that the entire class created...for further reference throughout the Gardening project.

You can also complete a KWHL graphic organizer for the Preassessment. Kitchen Komposting is one PART of the overarching concept, the entity, called gardening. Gardening is the theme that all the attributes belong to. Composting, Worms, Biotic Pyramid, plants, animals, insects, and more all will be covered as attributes of Gardening.

Basically, a Word Wall is created. As an extension activity when the leader/teacher continues the project, each learner could select a few of the words to make big, colorful flash cards for a formalized Word Wall bulletin board. Usually students appreciate these type of thought centering activities to guide the project, and they will want to refer to them often as we begin our Gardening analysis through various inquiries.

Defend Your Avatar!

What do you think of avatars? Do you have an avatar? If you do, can you defend it? Can you explain what it is and what it represents?

Over the years, I've heard and told various stories of how students created some project, including  avatar development. It's an act of creation from ideas built from prior knowledge and ongoing lessons. If you have an individual avatar, you created it or described how it should be created.

If you don't have an avatar, I'd like to suggest what I consider an appropriate place to begin, no matter your age. The Bronx Zoo website is a wonderful place for teachers and their students. There are the obvious lessons about habitats, with images and lesson plans, but the Avatar Generator, BuiLD YouR WiLD SeLF is not one of the traditional lessons. Making an avatar with this web application provides an opportunity to learn about habitats as you learn to use online web applications, technology and group interactions.

Be a Book Wizard!

Embed this new widget, Teacher Book Wizard, in your website or blog and anyone can use it to find children's books by author, keyword or title.

Scholastic has used Google gadgets to create an excellent teacher resource, a children's literature search engine. When you find the book you listed, you will receive information about the reading and interest levels, as well as purchasing information.

You can search for your favorite book or new titles to help you develop an instructional unit. I selected a variety of keywords to use in the Teacher Book Wizard Widget and a representative list of available books on the topic were found and listed by this search engine.

I embedded this widget in mymindtoyourmind widget wiki. It will make a nice addition to the variety of other widgets that I previously recommended for use by teachers.

Many of the titles are published by Scholastic, yet the search engine results do include book titles from other publishers in this search engine. This search engine is not perfect by any means, so I would encourage you to also use other search engines like Xoost for hard-to-find titles.


When readers at your blog, wiki, or website use the Teacher Book Wizard Widget, they will be taken away from your site to the Scholastic site. I would like to see this widget open in another tab or window. While this is an inconvenience, it is not a major hindrance.

clipped from www.scholastic.com What is the Teacher Book Wizard Widget and how do I use it? FREE ultimate children's book search engine The widget will help teachers find: Book and author information Reading levels Book-based lesson plans, booktalks and discussion guides Series lists embed the Teacher Book Wizard Widget onto your Web site or blog.