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April 2010

Impementing cancer lessons in your classroom

Submitted by Peggy on Sat, 2010-04-24 09:09


The LIVESTRONG resources in Joann’s picks this week shed light on a very important topic in many of our lives and the lives of our students. A cancer diagnosis can bring questions that you, the educator, may be unprepared to answer. The LIVESTRONG resources give you tools to tackle the subject with confidence. The resources are very comprehensive, including student and teacher reproducible materials, extension activities, and videos. They even have a booklet that goes along with an ARTHUR PBS Go episode called “The Great MacGrady” to introduce the topic to younger students. The problem remains that I discussed in the last post, though. How do we integrate this into our standards-based teaching?

Having Fun with Water Conservation, a.k.a. Using the Standards Suggestion Tool on The Gateway!

Submitted by Peggy on Sat, 2010-04-17 16:08


Do you want to do a water conservation activity in your class for Earth Day, but you are scrambling to make sure you cover all the mandated standards by the end of the school year? With standardized testing taking place in many of our schools right now, it’s the perfect time to introduce activities that break the monotony, especially if those activities are easily aligned to our state standards. Try our new tool on The Gateway this week so you can do both. When you find a resource you want to use in your class, you can get state standard suggestions for this resource using CNLP's Content Assignment Tool (CAT) and JES & Co.'s Achievement Standards Network (ASN). This tool will suggest which of your state standards are aligned to the resource you plan on using in your class.

The Ins and Outs of Taxes

Submitted by Peggy on Sat, 2010-04-10 09:15


As April arrives and I think about my own taxes, I realize how little I understand about how income taxes work. Benjamin Franklin believed “… in this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.

T.C.B.A.* (This Can't Be Algebra)

Submitted by Peggy on Sat, 2010-04-03 09:30


Math: you either love it or hate it. Some people get it and some people feel kind of like Scottish comedian Billy Connolly when he said, “I don't know why I should have to learn Algebra... I'm never likely to go there.” If your students are asking where they will ever use math in the future and you are wondering how to show them what an important tool math is, maybe it’s time to try some new activities. There are some really neat resources online for struggling students and for those who just need a little change of pace in the math classroom. Let’s not treat math like a required class that we just have to push our students through so they can pass the test. Math can be fun, too!

Joann's companion column: 
Death By Algebra