Updates from Other Great Blogs

I was looking through my PLN blogs and saw a couple websites that I wanted to share.
From Richard Byrne of Free Technology for Teachers-
Rocks and Weathering - a great interactive activity to use with students to learn about rocks.  It shows how different types of rocks form and provides for students to create, inspect, and destroy rocks using different tools.  It also can be captioned (see top menu of website) for those who are Deaf, hard of hearing, ESL, or simply like the captions.  This could be used on individual computers or as an interactive whiteboard activity.


From Digital Goonies -
Wikicards.net is a great way to organize your information and be able to share it with others.  You can create as many cards as you want and organize them into groups.  You can put links, jpegs, videos on the cards and group them under one heading.  You could use this to build your resources for a unit and then share it with your fellow teachers.   Here is an example of using Wikicards from Digital Goonies.

That's all for now.   I am attending two conferences in the next two weeks and hope to have more to share!  CAL-ED for Deaf Educators in California and CUE - Computer Using Educators big conference in Palm Springs! 

Teaching about Money: Earning, Saving, Spending for elementary

Check out Planet Orange for activities on teaching about money:  from earning and saving, to spending and credit.  There are both online and offline activities.  Teachers can download a large activity book (pdf) and lesson plans for grades 1-7.  You can even request hardcopies from ING with a phone number in the front of the book.    The activity book and the website are developed by ING DIRECT.  Vocabulary building and money math activities are seen throughout the lessons, as well as reading for information and problem-solving.  It's a great FREE resource with great ways for kids to learn about money. On the Teacher Resource page, teachers can look up lessons and related state standards to use while lesson planning.
There is a parent permission slip to register kids to use the website (either in school or at home).  For the online activities, the characters talk, but captions are provided.  An online dictionary of important vocabulary is provided that students can click on to get more information about a word they don't know.  Children earn money for completing the online activities and spend money to travel to the different activities.Online activities could be done as an interactive whiteboard activity if you wish. Or you could provide this as an at-home activity suggestion to parents.

Online, students travel to different places and learn about money by reading and/or listening to the information. Of course, they will need to spend money on purchasing fuel! Students earn Obux for completing the lesson and in each section there is a comprehension quiz.  Students may take on jobs to earn more money to continue their travels.  They may also spend some money on games, decorations, or even a robot pet.

This site offers lots of neat activities and resources for teachers about something that everyone needs to learn about.. MONEY!

(http://orangekids.com/ )
Via Richard Byrne @ Free Technology for Teachers