Space Spectacular #4

Week 6 and 7 - Finding Out, Sorting Out, Making Conclusions, Going Further

The activities in these weeks were designed to provide opportunities for students to find out about space and sort their ideas in a range of forms. Students took a test to demonstrate the conclusions they had made from their learning. We then had an excursion to Questacon for students to take their learning further and explore other scientific concepts through hands on exhibits and shows.

Science

Gravity
One of the focus questions for our unit this term is: What is gravity and how does the force of it pull things on or above the Earth's surface towards it?In preparation, I took the text from Ask an Astronomer for KIDS! and spread out the key ideas on a worksheet:

What Is Gravity

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As we discussed each key idea, students drew a picture to illustrate the concept. I found that this was a helpful way to unpack the ideas. I particularly liked the last point and showed students these photos from when I stood on the special scales in the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

We also read and discussed this simple explanation.
We then made artificial satellites as explained in this NASA activity. The gravity of the larger clump of plasticine balances out with the centrifugal force of the smaller clump of plasticine, keeping it 'orbiting'. I'm not sure that this is the best way to describe how orbits work, but it was fun to do anyway! You can see a video of the result below:



Earth's Atmosphere
Jonathan, my teaching partner, crafted the following lesson using this lesson plan found online. In teams of four, students drew the Earth and then added the atmospheric layers using a scale of 1mm=2km. We used this website for further information and also watched this animation to see it all in motion. The only change I would make is that I would make sure the Earth is to scale next time as well, by checking out the diameter of the earth and using a compass to draw it. (I just found this animation that would be helpful as well - too late for us this time, but may help others).

Guest Speaker
"Commander Cooper" (AKA Captain Lister) came to talk to us about his experiences with Space travel. We actually combined two grades - the Year 1s who are learning about transport and the Year 4s who are learning about Space. Yet again, Commander Cooper did an awesome job of engaging students with costumes, photos, videos, student participation and valuable, kid-friendly information about Space travel. Thank you Commander Cooper!

Making Conclusions - Taking the Test
I created this test to determine whether students had achieved the key learning outcomes for the unit of work. I asked them to give as much detail as possible and not just take short-cuts with their answers. I was impressed by how much students demonstrated in their responses and was also surprised when some students asked for a spare copy so they could do it again at lunch, just for fun! As you can see, the test ties very closely to the activities we did throughout the unit.

Space Test

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Going Further - Excursion to Questacon
I've found no better place to take students to experience science on a large scale, than Questacon. It is fun, kid-friendly and brings science to life. Rather than post all the photos separately, I've added a slide show here for you to see.


Integrating with Literacy

Journey to the Moon
Jonathan crafted and taught this lesson. He began with astronaut training, briefing students on some key information about the Moon. They then buckled in as Jonathan used Celestia to take them to the Moon. As they got close, their lunar module experienced difficulty and crash-landed on the surface of the moon. Students worked in small groups, to prioritise a list of items they would need as they travelled toward a space station for support. I found a similar lesson plan here. Students then reported back to the group giving justifications for their choices. This was a very engaging activity and provided students with opportunities to use language to discuss the problem in small groups and also to share their ideas with the whole class.

Descriptive Writing
This activity is similar to one we did about spiders earlier in the year. We looked at some photos of nebulae and created a list of words that could be used to describe them. Students then played with the words (and their own adjectives) to create descriptive pieces of writing. Some had a poetic structure and others were descriptive paragraphs. My plan is for students to type these up and display them with their Nebula Watercolour Paintings from Week 4.

Evaluating Explanations
Earlier in the term students wrote explanations of the life cycle of a star. This week I displayed their posters around the room and gave students mini post-it notes on which to write constructive feedback (one + and one - ) for each other and attach to the posters. I asked that they ensure every poster had some feedback. They continued with this process of reading and providing feedback for about 10 minutes, collecting additional post-it notes as necessary. At the end of the 10 minutes, students collected their own poster and made a circle sitting on the floor. We went around the circle with each student sharing the feedback they received and what they had learnt about themselves as a writer and the process of writing an explanation. It was a great way for students to reflect on their work and learning and to consider areas for improvement in the future.

Reading with Expression and Comprehension
We have had a strong focus on writing during Literacy this term, so I wanted students to have an opportunity to practise some reading as well. Some of the students in my group have become a little lazy with their reading: not self-correcting when reading aloud, and not focusing on what they are comprehending. I decided to address that with some reading aloud about space.
We only had 7 copies of a book called "Life in Space" which provides explanations about elements of space travel, so I grouped students to read together.
Each person was given a topic to master. They needed to be able to read it fluently with expression and to have full comprehension of what it is explaining. Students took turns to read aloud to their group, who then provided feedback on their expression/volume etc.
Next week students will 'perform' their reading to a larger group and explain their topic and/or any diagrams on the page.


If you enjoyed this post, why not check out previous posts in the Space Spectacular Series.

Space Spectacular #3

Week 4 and 5 - More Finding Out and Sorting Out

The activities in these weeks were designed to provide opportunities for students to find out about space and sort their ideas in a range of forms. Students typically "found out" through books, videos, websites, songs and experiments. They "sorted out" using writing, diagrams, reports and art.

Science
One of the focus questions for this unit is: "What are the relationships between distance and apparent size of objects to an observer?" My first thought was, "Huh?" closely followed by "Hmmmm." The models we made in weeks 2 and 3 touched on this but didn't really EXPLAIN anything or help students to make these deductions. I found an explanation of Emmert's Law on Wikipedia, but it was still too confusing for Year 4 students to really grasp. Somewhere along the way I thought about the funny photos you can take that play with this concept. Like this one by Andy Hay:


http://www.flickr.com/photos/andyhay/ / CC BY 2.0

I found a bunch of these at 100+ Funny Photos Taken At Unusual Angles and pulled out some appropriate ones to use with my class. (WARNING: Some are inappropriate, so do not use this site uncensored with your students.)
We looked at these at the start of the lesson and discussed the concept about apparent size and distance. I compared this to the apparent sizes of the sun and moon from Earth. I then gave students two different sized balls which they took outside and had to space apart in such a way that they looked the same size when viewed through the camera. Students then glued these pictures into their books and wrote an explanation of what they did and what they learnt. Those who finished early had time to create their own funny photos using their creativity.


Integrating with Literacy

Writing an Information Report

We needed to assess students' writing in preparation for end of year progress reports, so we decided to have students research and write about the sun. Information was provided through:

• a double-page spread from a book about space (including a diagram)
  
• this NASA diagram of the sun
• this Space School video on the sun
• and the following 'music video'

Students took notes while we explored these together. We watched the videos twice each and I demonstrated how I would take notes and add to them during the second viewing. Students then had the rest of the session to begin sorting through their notes to determine which ideas could be grouped together and to consider paragraph headings.
In the following session students began writing their report and drawing a diagram. In our next session students will review their work. You can see a copy of the Assessment Booklet below:

An Information Report About The Sun

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Integrating with Art

Nebula Watercolour Paintings

Having just explored the lifecycle of a star together, I showed students some photographic images of nebulas and super novas. We discussed the range of colours and the shapes and lines that were used. We then looked at these watercolour paintings by Ken Bandaruk. I gave students a large sheet of paper and some watercolours and left them to their own creativity to make nebula watercolours of their own. Once the painting was complete, students used a bamboo skewer and some white paint to add a layer of stars. Students who finished early went on to create super nova paintings using crayons and watercolours.

One Point Perspective

Building further on the concept from Emmert's Law, I taught students how to draw with one point perspective using these step-by-step instructions. Now that students have the basics, they are going to take it further, creating scenes of their own.

If you enjoyed this post, why not check out previous posts in the Space Spectacular Series.

Space Spectacular #2

Week 2 and 3 - Finding Out and Sorting Out

The activities in these weeks were designed to provide opportunities for students to find out about space and sort their ideas in a range of forms. Students typically "found out" through books, videos, websites, experiments and guest speakers. They "sorted out" using writing, diagrams, models, reports and art.

Science
Students experimented with different sized meteors - an orange, a golf ball and a marble. They dropped these from a control height to see how meteor size affected crater size. In addition to this, they dropped the items from a greater height to see how speed affected crater size. Students enjoyed this activity immensely and learnt more about craters as a result.

Special Guest
We had a special guest visitor in our classroom this week. Susan was involved with an experiment involving a small rocket which was sent 400km above the Earth's surface and returned about 400km away from the take-off location. She explained the process involved and showed a video of the take off. Students were fascinated!


Integrating with Literacy

The Planets
As we read through two big books about the planets, students created "wonder clouds" on a worksheet. Students considered the questions left unanswered on each page and wrote them in their wonder clouds to revisit at a later point in time. This activity was designed to develop students questioning activities during the reading process.
Students were then provided with a range of books to use for research. They each chose a planet to research and created a mind map to gather information about the planet's appearance, features, location, history & exploration. When they had gathered sufficient information, they began to write a report using the format on Writing Fun. They then edited it (or had ME edit it!) and began working on a final draft to be made into a class book.

Life Cycle of a Star
Students began by taking 10-15 minutes to write down their prediction of the stages that a star goes through during its lifespan. Following this, we talked about the different ways we find out information - written text, diagrams, pictures, videos, podcasts, songs, teacher-talk. We viewed an explanation of a star's lifecycle through this interactive website. We then listed the positives and negatives of this form of gathering information. I then gave students a photocopy of an explanation from a book. They read through the information, and again we listed the positives and negatives.
In the following lesson we watched this video:

Life Cycle of Star - Click here for the funniest movie of the week
As they watched, students recorded the positives and negatives in their books. When the video finished, they compared notes with a partner and then with a group of four. Finally, we looked at this diagram and discussed the effectiveness of a diagram in the absence of any other information.
Students then began work on their own creations to explain the life cycle of a star to someone with no prior knowledge. They referred back to the resources, discussed their thoughts and ideas with others and considered the aspects mentioned in the positives/negatives charts.

Integrating with Art

Plasticine Models
We used this great activity that I found online to make scale models of the Earth, Mars and the Moon. I gave each student a ball of plasticine and asked them to make a model of Earth, Mars and the Moon to show their comparable sizes. Once students had completed their models, I went around the classroom capturing their "before" photo. I then took them through the process outlined in the lesson plan and took their "after" photo. We looked at the relative distance between the Earth and the Moon for these models. In a follow up lesson (after I had time to print the photos!) students glued their before and after shots on a page and wrote about how their thinking changed as a result of the activity. This will go in their student portfolios as an example of their learning this term.
Before:

After:

Space Art
We looked at some examples of space art that were created using spray paint. I didn't have access to this video at the time, but you might find it useful if you were to teach a similar lesson (not so sure about the choice of song!) We considered the shapes and colours used in these paintings and looked at the way that colours merged together. We discussed elements that would be realistic/unrealistic given what we currently know about space (eg. no trees on other planets.) Students were then given a sheet of black paper and oil pastels to create their own space scene.

Tech Tips Tuesday

This Week's Tip - Take a Tour Through Space

Last Friday I went to a Professional Development session on the Celestia Software. Celestia is a free program that lets you explore space in 3D (download it here). I find it amazing that someone has been able to create such a great simulation that even shows the movement of objects over time. I enjoyed experimenting with the program and considering how it might be used in the classroom.

I see that it will be useful for showing students the movement of objects in space and demonstrating night and day and the phases of the moon. It will also be useful for students to explore these things for themselves and to capture images and video of the things they explore. It will be useful for helping students to deduct their own information and question things further. As you start out with Celestia, it is really helpful to have this chart of keyboard shortcuts. You can click on it and save it to print out at a larger size.



If, however, students are writing a factual report about a planet, this program doesn't offer much support. Instead students could use the World Book fact sheets at the NASA website. The NASA website contains up-to-date information including the plight of Pluto. This is very useful given that many books still list the "Nine Planets of the Solar System". The NASA website also contains a great bank of resources for teachers and interesting projects for students including (at time of posting):

• Put Your Video in Space
  
• Send your name to Mars
• Do-it-yourself podcasts
• Education Materials
  

Enjoy!

Space Spectacular #1

This post is the first in a series of posts about an Integrated Inquiry Unit about Earth and Beyond.

Week 1 - Tuning In
This week our activities were designed to activate students' prior knowledge about Space and to stimulate questions they would like to investigate. We began with some brainstorming, where students listed words that come to mind about Space. They then worked in small groups to bundle their words into categories. Following this, students wrote questions they would like to know answers to. They chose the best question for their group and shared it with the class. We collected their ideas and will use these for a word wall and to guide our investigations.

Integrating with Literacy
Predicting and Questioning Skills
Prior to reading the big book "Watching The Night Skies" the class formulated three questions they felt would be answered by the text given the title and list of contents. Students wrote the questions and the answers they predicted, leaving space for the answer from the text. We then read the text together, discussing the information we were finding out. After reading, students went back to the questions and wrote the answer from the text.
In the next literacy session, students were given an individual text on Space. They repeated the activity for themselves - choosing a question, writing their answer, and finding the answer in the text.
This activity is useful for helping students to engage with a text and seek out information.

Creative Writing - Description
I told students that they would be doing a piece of creative writing, imagining that they are the first person to step onto the surface of Mars. We began by looking at some photographs of the landscape of Mars and then watched these NASA Vodcasts: Soaring Over Mars and Mars Exposed. While they looked at these things, students jotted down notes on their clipboards. They then returned to their desks to begin writing. I gave an initial prompt sentence which they could use to get them started: I stepped from my space craft and there, stretched before me, was Mars. I walked around while students worked and, with permission, read out their writing to help those struggling to get started. There were some really descriptive passages being formed and many were including details from their notes including the names of some of the places.

Integrating with ICT
Students were given some terms to investigate eg. morning star, evening star, shooting star, the sun comes up, the sun goes down, the sun goes behind a cloud. They needed to use the internet to research the accuracy of these statements. Students used a variety of online resources including wikipedia, google search using 'define:' and yahoo answers. This was a great activity for students to practice using the internet for quick clarification.

4th Teaching K-6 Blog Carnival

Welcome to the April edition of the Teaching K-6 carnival. This month I had a great response from bloggers who were busy writing great articles. With this month's edition comes a new category for blogs that gripe or brag about things that are happening in the classroom. We have lots of innovative ideas for teaching and thought-provoking articles to inspire you. Thank you to all the contributors for this month. Enjoy, and please, spread the word.

Gripes and Brags

In The Last Zebra the Professor encourages people to keep children's safety in mind by keeping them close. He offers suggestions on how he has succeeded with this with his own children at Professor of Protection.

Gerald Aungst shares ideas for Keeping Kids Focused at Quisitivity.org. He encourages teachers to accept that doodling assists with concentration during teacher-led discussions and points to research that suggests this may be a coping strategy for gifted students.

At My English Pages, Mohammed Rhalmi presents Teach with love and logic- Breaking the ice! He gives suggestions on how teachers can create a positive, caring environment for students. His 'ice breaking tips' are sensible ideas to help teachers to develope mutual respect with their students.

Dana, a homeschooling mum, presents What my daughter has learned through blogging posted at Principled Discovery. She shares about her daughter's learning successes with starting up a blog and creating a science e-zine with multiple contributors.

Innovate - Beyond the Slate

Remember the ant farm of yesteryear? C Merrick presents Gel Ant Farm - A Space Age Habitat For Ants posted at Gel Ant Farms. If you've ever considered becoming a myrmecologist, or want to provide that opportunity to your students, be sure to check out these gel ant farms!

This month at Keeping Kids First, Kelly Hines challenges us to openly explore new learning with our students. Rather than simply go by the book, she encourages us to venture Off the Beaten Path and create learning experiences that are highly memorable to students.

While most of the content of this carnival is focused on K-6 education, Fiona Lohrenz shares some Ideas For Day Care Activities And Games posted at Child Care Only. These ideas are great for developing skills in the early years and engaging children's curiosity.

In these times of great economic crisis, we are all sadly searching for ways to save money and prepare students to act responsibly with finances. Debbie Ducker presents Your Children and Grandchildren Must Learn to Save Money posted at Ducker Promotion Ezine, saying, "Teach your children how to save money at an early age and you will save them a lifetime of heartache."

Meaghan Montrose presents some simple ideas on using flash cards in Effective Learning Strategies and Study Skills- Part 2 | posted at Tutorfi.com.

In the News

How are you a teacher-feminist? Have you noticed the impact of gender, race, and other social schemata in your classroom? Educatorblog presents Ways of the Teacher-Feminist: Text, schema, and stereotypes, oh my! posted at An (aspiring) Educator's Blog. Take the time to read and reflect on this article and consider its impact for your own teaching philosophy and pedagogy.

Chris Mauger has taken a closer look at the development of healthy self-esteem. In Kids and Self-Esteem: Avoiding a Culture of Proud Failures posted at Maugeritaville he encourages us to provide opportunities to try and try again. Chris sees the value in helping students to achieve success for themselves rather than stepping in to do it for them.

This month I present my Thoughts on Globalisation here at Teaching Challenges. I share my personal experiences of globalisation in terms of applying for and obtaining a job in an overseas school.

Brain Strain

This month's brain strain is The Iowa series - Wrap-up posted at Dangerously Irrelevant. It's actually not a hard read this month, and contains lots of great diagrams and videos to present information visually. Scott McLeod provides a brilliantly informative resource discussing the future of education. He introduces five 'levers' to move schools forward and help students thrive and survive in this digital age. This is a resource I would confidently recommend to anyone interested in bringing about change in our schools and making them sustainable in an uncertain future.

Look No Further

Sarah Scrafford presents a helpful resource in 100 Free Online Books Everyone Should Read posted at Best Colleges Online. Here you can link to many of the classics including favourites like "Alice in Wonderland" and "Treasure Island". Her 50 Awesome Open Courseware Classes on Space & Astronomy posted at Rated Colleges may help you to touch-up on your own knowledge as you prepare to teach students about space. (I know I'll be checking it out!)

Erika Collin has gone all out with tips for Twitter this month. Her 100 Tips, Tools, and Resources for Librarians on Twitter posted at Learn-gasm, and Top 100 Tools for the Twittering Teacher posted at Best Colleges Online will keep you twittering away all those spare moments.

Margaret Garcia presents 100 Best Web Tools and Tips to Organize Your Inbox posted at Radiology Technician Schools. Prior to reading this post, I never realised there was so much one can do with email. If email is getting the best of you, check out this post!

Why not submit your post for the next carnival?

The Teaching K-6 Carnival is posted monthly on the 7th. I am collecting submissions throughout the month, looking in particular for posts that discuss and exemplify innovative teaching and the integration of technology in the K-6 classroom. I also invite a few "brain strains" to keep our minds alert and challenged. Please submit only articles of which you are the author and refrain from using this merely as a sales pitch. For full details, please read my call for submissions.

If you have a relevant post that you would like to submit to the next edition of teaching k-6 carnival use our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Support this Carnival

If you enjoyed this edition of the carnival, you can support its continuation by sharing it with others. Link to us, add us to a tweet, stumble or digg us. Thanks!

2nd Teaching K-6 Blog Carnival

Welcome to the February edition of the Teaching K-6 Blog Carnival. Those of us in Australia and New Zealand are back into the swing of teaching and have no-doubt been very busy setting up our classrooms, preparing teaching programs and establishing behaviour agreements with our students. In this edition we have some great examples of tools to be used in the classroom. There's plenty here to keep your mind active and stretch your skills and expertise as a teacher.
This month I was inundated by posts about free online open coursesware classes, so I've added a separate section for these at the bottom. There's quite a range of interesting courses, but I haven't explored each of these thoroughly - I'll leave that to your discretion.


Innovate - Beyond the Slate

HappyCampers presents LookyBook: Bibliovores Beware! posted at Reese's View Of The World. Find out about Looky Book and how you might use it in your classroom.

Gerald Aungst shares Gifted Thinker, Meager Writer posted at Quisitivity.org. He describes how he uses Audacity to allow students to express their ideas in spoken word before converting to written text.

In Why Bother getting Connected? posted at Digital Learning, Justine Driver shares a discussion on the importance of embedding learning technologies in our teaching. She has embedded a simple but inspiring video: "A Vision of K-12 Students Today". She writes about her early journey with the integration of technology and includes some great resources that she developed as part of this journey. Justine also shares her Learn to Read resources that she has tried with great success in two schools. These are useful with 5-6yr olds, students for whom English is a second language and students with Special Needs.

Jim McGuire presents Free Writing Choice Friday posted at The Reading Workshop. He encourages students to think and plan for a free choice writing session on Fridays. Students are allowed to choose their genre and topic for writing and Jim is there to conference and support them.

Christina has been very busy integrating technology this month she shares three posts at Early Childhood Teacher. In Podcasting and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Christina describes what she has been doing with podcasting in her early childhood classroom. These ideas are great for connecting the language skills of reading, writing and speaking. In Google Maps she outlines an excellent lesson idea for using Google Maps to placemark the birthplaces of students in her class, thus making a geography lesson more relevant.

Laura Milligan presents 25 Safe, Fun & Educational Virtual Worlds for Toddlers, Kids, and Tweens posted at eLearning Gurus. (Please note that there are varying degrees of what constitutes 'safe'. If an adult can register, how safe can it really be? Please be mindful of this when introducing students to virtual worlds and test them for yourself.)


In the News

Kelly Hines provides a thought-provoking discussion about 21st Century Skills in Why the Fight? posted at Keeping Kids First. This topic has been hotly debated in the past month and this is Kelly's response to a Washington Post article. Kelly brings new light to this discussion and shares her own perspective -well worth checking out.


Brain Strain

Gerald Aungst gets us thinking this month with his posts on Creativity vs. Discipline and Finding the Ace in Every Child posted at Quisitivity.org. He writes about finding the balance between discipline and creativity in our classrooms. He points out that some highly successful people were particularly unsuccessful in traditional classrooms. He challenges us to find ways to support all students and explore their individual talents.


Look No Further

Helen Eddy shares First issue of Early Childhood News for 2009 is on space posted at Helen Eddy's Blog. Given that 2009 is the "International Year of Astronomy" this post may provide you with some useful resources for exploring space further with your class. Here you will also find other resources about a variety of topics relevant to teaching in Early Childhood.


Thinking about taking an online course?

Kelly Sonora presents Top 50 Educational Policy Blogs posted at Online University Lowdown.

Patricia Turnerp presents 101 Killer Open Courseware Projects from Around the World: Ivy League and Beyond posted at The .Edu Toolbox.

Jessica Merritt presents 100 Weirdest Open Courseware Classes That Anyone Can Take posted at Online Best Colleges.com.

Alissa Miller presents 101 Free Open Course Classes to Learn How to Build ANYTHING posted at Best Universities.


Why not submit your post for the next carnival?

At this stage, editions of The Teaching K-6 Carnival will be posted monthly on the 7th. I will be collecting submissions throughout the month, looking in particular for posts that discuss and exemplify innovative teaching and the integration of technology in the K-6 classroom. I also invite a few "brain strains" to keep our minds alert and challenged. Please submit only articles of which you are the author and refrain from using this merely as a sales pitch.

If you have a relevant post that you would like to submit to the next edition of Teaching K-6 Carnival use our carnival submission form or the widget at the bottom of this page.
Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page or on the widget at the bottom of this page.

Support this Carnival

If you enjoyed this edition of the carnival, you can support its continuation by sharing it with others. Link to us, add us to a tweet, stumble or digg us. Thanks!

The 1st Teaching K-6 Carnival

Welcome to the first Teaching K-6 Carnival. As we begin 2009, we are considering what this year will look like in our classrooms. Some of us will soon be meeting our new classes for the year, focusing on classroom management and getting off to a good start with our teaching programs. Others are past that phase and are now busy teaching their programs and finding the most effective ways of assessing students. This edition of the Teaching K-6 Carnival kicks off the new year with some great posts to motivate and challenge. I encourage you to visit the featured posts and leave your comments.


Innovate - Beyond the Slate

Tiger Lily shares her thoughts on Innovative Ideas for Integrating Technology posted at Teaching eVentures. She provides tips on how to teach using technology in innovative ways without breaking the budget. Her tips include classroom websites, blogs, podcasts, movie making, interactive e-books and digital storytelling.

Christina of Early Childhood Teacher posts about her experience with and use of Interactive Whiteboards in early childhood. She found a way to keep all her students engaged in the lesson through pairing the interactive whiteboard with individual student whiteboards.

Kelly Hines encourages us to consider Are Textbooks So Last Century? on her blog Keeping Kids First. She talks about the benefits of engaging students in their learning and drawing on multimedia resources to develop greater understanding of the topics being covered. She shares her argument for the use of laptops in the classroom in place of textbooks.

Jim McGuire at The Reading Workshop has a new way of grading where The More You Do, the Better the Grade. In Jim’s class students can improve their grades through regular reading at home, detailed online journal entries and by leaving comments on the class blog. He shares the rubrics he uses for grading this additional effort.

Rita Phillips would also like us to consider the ways we assess students and the support we provide. She shares three posts from Your Teacher Links. Teaching Test Taking Skills Doesn’t Mean You Are Teaching to the Test – tips on supporting students with preparation for classroom tests. Scissors and Glue and Glitter, Oh No! – tips and tools for providing students with opportunities to demonstrate their learning through projects. Teach Success Part II – tips on supporting students with note taking for research projects.

I share my article Tech Tips Tuesday - Making Good Use of Your Digital Camera which suggests a number of ways you can use a camera to enhance the learning and record progress throughout the year.


Brain Strain

Alvaro Fernandez of Sharp Brains wins the position of Brain Strain in this edition. He shares a review of The Overflowing Brain: Most Important Book of 2008. Included in this post is an article by the author Dr. Torkel Klingberg. It’s not a leisurely read, but gets you thinking more about the ways we require our brains to function in the information age. Make sure you read the comments at the bottom as Kenneth Cooper offers a different perspective that is also worth your time.


Look no further

Looking for textbooks? One Family’s Blog has a comprehensive list of Elementary School Guides, Workbooks and Assessment Resources , Elementary Public School Textbooks and Resources for Kids with Special Needs and Learning Disabilities.


Why not submit your post for the next carnival?

At this stage, editions of The Teaching K-6 Carnival will be posted monthly on the 7th. I will be collecting submissions throughout the month, looking in particular for posts that discuss and exemplify innovative teaching and the integration of technology in the K-6 classroom. I also invite a few "brain strains" to keep our minds alert and challenged. Please submit only articles of which you are the author and refrain from using this merely as a sales pitch.

If you have a relevant post that you would like to submit to the next edition of Teaching K-6 Carnival use our carnival submission form or the widget at the bottom of this page.
Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page or on the widget at the bottom of this page.

Support this Carnival

If you enjoyed this edition of the carnival, you can support its continuation by sharing it with others. Link to us, add us to a tweet, stumble or digg us. Thanks!