Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Studen Examples: Plants and Animals

Students created two Venn Diagrams: One before and one after their lessons on plants and animals. This shows how much they learned about plants and animals!





Students also created video stories about a plant or animal they learned about! Here is a link to one of the stories the students created about a family of bears! Youtube Bear Story 

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Student Content Exploration Tools about Plants and Animals

This page contains links to different tools for students to use to learn more about plants and animals!

By finding the animal page on this website, students are able to read about animals, their functions, and how they are classified. The material may be a little advanced but it gives students information about animals in detail.

Students can read this website and learn about plant groups, parts, life, cycles, food, what they do, and other information about plants. The website high lights important words to remember about plants.

This is an interactive, online game that takes the students on a mission through the forest. They are given a task to do and have to go throughout the forest with other students. Along the way, they learn about different plants and animals common to forests in Africa. This game will help students visualize the differences between the two organisms. They will see the animals moving in the videos and hear the noises they make. They will see the plants staying still and not making any noise. Since the students are rather young, the teacher or a parent will need to be there to assist them through the game. This would be good to use in the media center where all the children can play at once, and the teacher can walk around the classroom assisting whoever needs help.

This is an interactive website for the students to look at to learn about the different habitats in the world. This site has a different section for the six biomes in the world and within each section, the different plants and animals that live there are discussed. Students can use this to look at the differences between plants and animals. It also gives descriptions of what the animals eat so the students can see the relationship between plants and animals. 

This website is good to get kids familiar with all the different types of animals there are. It has the animals split into their different kingdoms. The students can click on each kingdom and read about the different characteristics of those types of animals. The characteristics include what they eat, how they move, etc.

This video is a good way to teach the students about the basics of animals. It's animated but shows the animals as well. It talks about what they are and how there are some that walk, swim, and fly. The video also mentions how animals depend on plants to survives.

The teacher can project pictures of plants and animals on the blackboard. She can ask the students to describe what they see, and the students can also tell what else they know about the plants and animals they see. The students might be able to discuss what kind of food the animals eats or if they have seen one of the plants before.

Growing Plants 

 The website is an interactive game where the students can pretend to grow a plant online. There are different ways for the student to grow the plant and by doing this, they will learn what a plant needs to grow and survive, and they will later be able to see the differences between that and what animals need to survive. 


The students can read about what plants are and what makes a plant. It uses vocabulary words to show main ideas. At the bottom of the ready, students can click to look at a plant slide show, take a quiz on plants, and find more details about plants. Students can read the website then take a quiz to text what they just learned to see what they remember. 

This game allows students to sort plants and animals. It can be used to test their understanding that plants and animals are different. It helps them understand that not all animals fall into the same category. While this game may be a bit difficult for students who have issues with their hand eye coordination, it may be a good idea for students to get into pairs and have them play it together. Then the students who have problems can point out on the screen which one goes where, and their partners can actually do the clicking. 







Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Real Objects to use on Kid Pix

These two images can be used to teach students different shapes. Using Kid Pix, the students can draw the shape that they seen within the objects.

The students can draw the rectangle.

 The students can draw the circle.

Shapes and Patterns Scrapbook Video Podcast

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Content Exploration Tools Involving Patterns

While this is not a specific link, this is a good place for teachers to find videos to show to his.her class. The teacher can search for any videos about shapes and patterns, and if they find one, he/she can show it to the class. Fund videos are an exciting way for students to learn.

 This multiple choice game helps students recognize patterns by asking them to match a pattern with the one given to them. This is to help give them background information on shapes and get them used to recognizing generic patterns before trying to find them in nature.

This game helps students describe patterns by changing the shapes to letters and putting the letters in the same order as the shapes.

 This website has many different links to sites where students can learn about patterns. There is a song for students to listen to, guessing games about patterns, interactive games, and more. This game helps students learn what patterns are and learn how to recognize them. 

 This website has many different images of different quilt patters. The teacher can project these images onto the blackboard or wall and show the students exactly where the patterns and shapes are. This is a good way for the teacher to show what the students need to learn and explain to them what they need to look for.

 This is another website the teacher can use to explain to the students where to look for patterns and shapes in nature. This website contains pictures the teacher can show the class that show obvious patterns. This could also be used by showing the images and asking the students to say what shapes and patterns they see.

Content Exploration Tools Involving Shapes

 Polygon playground is a game where students can click and drag different shapes to build a picture out of them. This can help the students show how different shapes can build one thing. This would be a good way to help the students reinforce what they already know about shapes, and it will help them see that you can build things out of some shape. Then, they will know to look for shapes inside of things.

This shows a video made by a kindergarten classroom. The video shows what shapes the students found in nature, and it would be a good example to show the class so they know what their goal is.

This sheet can be printed out for the students so they can cut out the shapes in it and glue them in the right spot on the picture given to them. This will help the students match up the shapes while completing a picture.

 This website can be used as a resource page since there are a lot of links on it to other shape games the students can play.


 This website has a game for students to play where it shows a picture and asks the students to find all the objects in the picture that are in the form of a certain shape. This is great for having students practice finding shapes in nature.

Projector
The teacher can bring in pictures from nature on slides and project them onto the blackboard. Then, he/she can ask the students to come up and not only point out the shapes, but also use chalk to trace the outline of the shape around the object in the picture. For example, if the teacher projected a picture of a clock and asked a student to find the shape, that student would trace around the clock and realize that he/she is drawing a circle. Then, the student connects the fact that the clock is the same shape as the circle.
(Citation for the image)