Blog Posts

Start your Summer with the Smithsonian!

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History seeks energetic teachers from Washington, DC, Maryland, and Virginia schools with a passion for teaching social studies and facilitating adult learning to join us for the Teach-it-Forward Institute!

Forty elementary and forty secondary teachers will be selected to participate in this free two day teacher training program. Funded through the A. James Clark Excellence in History Teaching Program, the Institute will feature hands-on skill building, content knowledge development, and behind-the-scenes experiences that teachers can immediately apply to their instruction and share with colleagues. Session 1 will include conversations with museum curators, instruction in using drama in the classroom from the Museum’s theater department, opportunities for research at the Museum (for secondary educators), suggestions for science integration, and more. Session 2 will include time to discuss how participants have implemented the resources introduced in session 1 and instruction on methods for sharing this content with fellow educators.  After Session 2, participants can continue to receive support and guidance as they conduct professional development workshops in their home districts through an online community.  

PROGRAM DATES

• Elementary: Wednesday, June 27, 2012 and Saturday, January 12, 2013
• Secondary: Friday, June 29, 2012 and Saturday, January 26, 2013

HOW TO APPLY

Send a resume, sample lesson plan, and letter of interest stating:

• How  this program will further your teaching and professional goals
• How you intend to share the resources and strategies from the Institute with colleagues

to historyteachers@si.edu no later than 5 pm on Sunday, April 1, 2012.  Selected applicants will be notified no later than May 1, 2012.

CRITERIA FOR SELECTION

• Passion for and quality of social studies instruction
• Demonstration of leadership at the school, district, state, or national level, particularly in support of high-quality social studies instruction
• Currently teaching in Maryland, Virginia, or Washington, DC and able to attend both sessions

BASIC REQUIREMENTS

• Bring a laptop computer to all sessions
• Bring a lesson in development or in need of revision that could be enhanced by the Museum’s collections
• Within three months of session 1, share a lesson plan inspired by your work at the Museum in our online community
• At least one month before session 2, upload a video of that lesson in action to the online community
• Share content and/or strategies with colleagues in participant’s home district after the program

YOU RECEIVE

• Intensive training in social studies methods from the educators and scholars at the Museum

  Personal camcorder to document object-based learning in your classroom 

• Smithsonian membership
• Membership in the Teach-it-Forward alumni list and online community group
• Certificate of completion

Use this online game to build your child's understanding of numbers!

http://illuminations.nctm.org/ActivityDetail.aspx?ID=75

(Cross-posted at A Year of Reading.)

I promised in my "What's On My Wonderopolis iPad" post that I would tell about the little project I did with my students to show them the power of QR (Quick Response) codes.

What is a QR code? It's a little like a bar code, only it's square, and it contains a maze-like design of black and white cubes that are an information code. (more details here, on Wikipedia)

There are lots of QR code generators out there. I picked QRStuff.com.

Students love grabbing one of the iPods or iPads and scanning the code (before or after reading the book for themselves) to see what their friend wrote for the summary and what they thought the theme could be.

- work with classroom teachers to use more technology with their classes

- find fun/educational activities to use in my technology classes

- become more familiar with different grade level materials

- see what new things are out there to get students attention (thinkgs that interest them)

- make a pre and post quiz of what they know how to do and what they don't know what to do

Reading some of the posts kind of makes me feel "ancient" because technology is not part of my plan! I am 54, but still have a lot of energy. I'm lagging in all of this new technology. I'll probably never catch up with some of you! It is impressive though! I met with two ladies last week that volunteered to help us with our quilt and I was so impressed with "Sarah". She is 86 years old, never married, and she helped build the atomic bomb!  She was very alert, inspiring, and very interesting! I know Wonderopolis partners want to know how they have made a positive impact and I am guessing this will be one of them for both her and our school. I have already been to her house and we visited for almost two hours. She showed me several of her quilts, gave me a little lesson, and she is very excited about coming to school next week and working with students. Through conversation I thought she may have been a retired teacher, but she is a retired secretary with strong values. I look forward to knowing her better.

We received our badge making machine, but my plan is not working like it should.  I was going to let them illustrate the wonder for the badges, but there wasn't enough room and they looked pretty bad. The badges are just 2" round. However, we came up with another way of using them. When students explore a Wonder we take a picture of them with some type of  evidence and they get to make a badge. So far, this has been pretty successful. One of the students brought in a stuffed Sloth of Syd from Ice Age to prove he had explored the Sloth Wonder, which was so cute! I attached a photo of a badge that was

made by the special needs students I had spoke of in the last posting. It's not a good photo, because the badge was so shiny.Today several of the classrooms are exploring the Groundhog Day Wonder. I attached a photo of an art project from a class and they will make badges today. Kids seem pretty excited about having their faces on badges! The links on the Wonders are coming in mighty handy too for teachers. The students are not only learning content, but the arts are already tied into it. This evidence is required by the fine arts reviews we have to do now and that is a time saver!