Madame Spatz: Les régions de l’hexagone

The Project:

For this project you will research a region of France. You will be divided into small groups or “home” groups of four or five students each. Each “Home” Group will be responsible for geo-tagging at least four specific, unique highlights of the region assigned. Each member of the group will be assigned to find and describe one of the highlights of the region in French. You will also add pictures and or video to your project.

Part 1:

How to Work In Groups

In order to make sharing easy you will be using Google Documents to share the information your group has collected and agreed upon. Watch the video below on Google Documents and then share a Google document with your your “Home” Group.

The Jigsaw Strategyis an efficient way to learn the course material in a cooperative learning style. The jigsaw process encourages listening, engagement, and empathy by giving each member of the group an essential part to play in the academic activity. Group members must work together as a team to accomplish a common goal; each person depends on all the others. No student can succeed completely unless everyone works well together as a team. This “cooperation by design” facilitates interaction among all students in the class, leading them to value each other as contributors to their common task.

The Jigsaw strategy places great emphasis on cooperation and shared responsibility within groups. The success of each group depends on the participation of each individual in completing their task. This means the Jigsaw strategy effectively increases the involvement of each student in the activity.

Watch the video below to get a better understanding of how the Jigsaw Classroom works.

Your Groups have been assigned by region, use the maps below to help you define your region. Now research your Four hightlights. A good place to begin would be Fodors, EyeWitness or Frommers Travel Guides.

Click here to see enlarged map of Les régions projet

OR this one: http://about-france.com/tourism/regional-map-france.html

Part ll:

GeoTagging Your Highlights

Now that you have created your Google document and shared your information, you are ready to share that information on Google Earth with “PushPins” or  tags. For example, as a group, you might decide to tag the area of the Rhine River known as Alsace. Alsace is the Germanic region of France. It is a region lying on the west bank of the river Rhine, between the Rhine and the Vosges mountains. To the north and east, it shares a border with Germany.

Watch the video below to learn how to create “Push Pins” for the four highlights of your region.

 

BEFORE YOU BEGIN YOU MUST Create a folder titled “French Google Earth”. Click “Save As” to save your Placemarks in your “French Google Earth” folder.

You will also want to include photos, videos to support your text. Once you have decided on the hightlights of your tour and all of your research is done you need to create the Google tour from ONE account of your “Home Group”. You should be sharing one Google Earth Tour with all highlights in that ONE tour.

Please visit Ms. Eyer’s Blog to learn how to insert photos and videos into your Google Earth Placemark. 

Learn how insert pictures into your “PushPins” by watching this screencast posted by Madame Spatz.


Exemplar Final Project:

 

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#Swagpeare

The word “Swagger” echoes in the hallways of any middle school and should be an extremely familiar term to anyone who listens to popular hip-hop songs. The simple Google search, [“swag OR swagger” lyrics], brings up thousands of hits by artists like 50 Cent, Jay Z, Lil Wayne, Justin Bieber and Eminem.

The word “Swagger” is not a relatively new concept,it can be traced all the way back to Elizabethan England. Actually, the first writer to use the word “Swagger” was William Shakespeare! The playwright first had the “shrewd and knavish sprite” Puck use it in this monologue in A Midsummer Night’s Dream:

What hempen home-spuns have we swaggering here,
So near the cradle of the fairy queen?

Shakespeare’s usage of that swagger is closely related to braggadocio and pride and is directly related to how it is used in pop culture today!
Ask your students, “What other things do we say today that we owe to Shakespeare?” Use Padlet to gather the “Things we say today that we owe to Shakespeare.”
Below are a few from the journal of girl named Becky! AND here is a link to 135 phrases coined by William Shakespeare!

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Take a closer look at more of Shakespeare’s words, his insults, to understand why he is known as a master playwright whose works transcend time and appeal to audiences all over the world.

Use the Shakespeare Insult Kit to get you rolling with the insults. Once you are comfortable, go to bubbl.us and begin brainstorming and posting and creating #tag insults! Check out a few of my Shakespearian insults on bubbl.us!

Ask students to create a comic strip of the major parts of a Shakespeare play, such as Act 2, scene 1, using Storyboard That.

Rebecca Ray shares her ideas for analyzing Shakespeare with the Slide Share presentation below.

In the video below Akala demonstrates and explores the connections between Shakespeare and Hip-Hop, and the wider cultural debate around language and it’s power.

Challenge students to craft a musical playlist, using Soundcloud, Pandora or Grooveshark or an online music player of your choice, for the characters in a specific scene based on what they are going through at that point in the play. Share the playlist. Most streaming music can be shared with friends who are not registered users. Investigate the sharing restrictions of the online player of your choice. For example, you can share directly from the Pandora Tuner from your Profile Page. When you send a link from your Profile Page, friends can  choose from any of your stations.

World Wide Maze

Want to motivate and engage your students? Try using the World Wide Maze! Google’s latest experiment turns your favorite web page into a marble maze! The idea is to link your smartphone to a desktop but my keen eyed  students spotted the tiny blue link that allows you to play with PC only and use the arrow keys to maneuver the silver “pinball” around the maze! This morning I had everyone turn CNN into a World Wide Maze! They were able to navigate their “pinball” through the top news stories of the day! After 10 minutes of engaging play, we did a close reading of a featured article. The results were amazing! Try this!

Here is how to get a started:

  • Log into the Chrome browser
  • Access World Wide Maze: http://chrome.com/maze/
  • Click the Start button
  • Skip intro
  • This is the most difficult part….. in tiny blue letter under all the possible ways you can log in you will see : No smartphone? Play with PC only
  • Click on No smartphone? Play with PC only
  • A search box will appear
  • Add the URL you would like the students to visit.. in my case it was CNN.com
  • Select from the populated results
  • Play the game!

Beyond the Spine:Pairing Books and Technology

QR Codes & Summer Reading

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How can you include QR Codes in your classroom? I am looking for teachers to collaborate with me on the project outlined below:  

I would like to use QR Codes in the library to showcase the reading students did this summer and will continue to do throughout the 2013-2014 school year. 

Read More HERE….

World Wide Maze

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Try using the World Wide Maze to introduce OPALS! Google’s latest experiment turns your favorite web page into a marble maze! The idea is to link your smartphone to a desktop but my keen eyed  students spotted the tiny blue link that allows you to play with PC only and use the arrow keys to maneuver the silver “pinball” around the maze! This morning I had everyone turn the SOMS Media Center’s OPALS into a World Wide Maze! They were able to navigate their “pinball” through the site in order to become familiar with the site. ! After 10 minutes of engaging play, I then introduced them to the features of OPALS! The results were amazing! Try this! Read More HERE….

Book Spine Poetry

Book Spine Poems 119

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My daughter found this great blog spot, 2011 Book Spine Poetry Gallery.  The blog, 100 Scope Notes is written by Travis Jonker, an elementary school librarian.  He was inspired by Nina Katchadourian and her work with book spines. He tried creating his own book spine cento and has inspired others, including me, to do the same. 
Book Spine Poetry is simply what the title suggests. You take the spines of books and stack them in a creative way to communicate your thoughts.
The students create their own book spine poem, snap a picture with their cell phone, and using Flickr, the emails post the poem to the teachers blog.

Read More HERE….

Using Google books is a research tool that is often overlooked. Google Books provide an opportunity to read free books online in any ereader. What excites me about GOogle books is that it provides excerpts of text that can be used for “close reading”. Many teachers forget that Google Books can provide them with the nonfiction text they need to pair with their traditional ELA classroom read! Here is a slideshow by Richard Byrne of Free Technology for Teachers  on how to navigate Google Books

Pairing Fiction and Nonfiction: Timetoast

ChainsChains by Laurie Halse Anderson

slave girlIncidents of a Slave Girl

Create a timeline using TimetoastTimetoast is a place to create and share timelines on the web. You can create historical timelines of important events.

Pairing Fiction and Nonfiction: Padlet

wonderWonder by R.J. Palacio

mrrogersThe World According To Mr. Rogers by Fred Rogers

Wonderopolis is a great place to find quick ties to topics. I searched [important things] and the results yielded a plethora of ideas! But how can you have a positive attitude when life is hard? It’s more than just turning life’s lemons into lemonade. Having a positive attitude can take some hard work. But it’s worth it. What are some ways you can develop and maintain a positive attitude even in the midst of life’s troubles? Post your answer on the class padlet wall

Pairing Fiction and Nonfiction: My Reading Mapped

calpurniaThe Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly

TheTreeOfLifeThe Tree of Life by Peter Sis

Digitally experience history by zooming in on the details in over 100 Google Map formatted documentaries on history and science.

My Reading Mapped has a select group of over 40 Google Maps, that are based on wide a selection of linked 100-year old, copyright-free, explorer eBooks and other reading material, that allow you to zoom in on the details of famous explorer expeditions. In addition, the explorer maps also come with a Google Earth KML file that enables you to digitally walk these maps from location marker to location marker in 3D.

 Pairing Fiction and Nonfiction: Storybird  

9781594744761_custom-1b380501ae74b319d70c5758422a59bb340741ff-s6-c30Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

9780545316545_p0_v1_s260x420Ripley’s Believe It or Not Curioddities

Hard to believe but I  read about Storybird in School Library Journal in 2010! Storybirds are short, art-inspired stories that are intriguingly fun to make, share, and read. Storybird has tremendous potential for collaborative formal as well as informal learning …producing, prose and poetry writing, new media literacy and digital citizenship, etc

Read more HERE….

 Pairing Fiction and Nonfiction:Blogging

hidden letters book coverHidden Letters by Deborah Slier and Ian Shine

numberthestarsNumber the Stars by Lois Lowry

Collaboration is essential and is one of the most difficult tasks for Library Media Specialists to achieve. Integrating information literacy into the curriculum at times seems like an overwhelming task. However, this does not make it impossible to achieve. When collaboration is successful the students will let you know!

Read more HERE…..

Teach & Learn Social Studies

The following list was brought to you by Classroom Aid.

PlayingHistory – This site aggregates info. on history games, interactives and simulations resources in a simple, searchable database making it easy to find, rate, and review historical games. There are currently 126 shared games.

The Jamestown Online Adventure Game – In this alternative history game students chose different strategies for the Jamestown pioneers. The students become the Captain of the Jamestown Colony, they will find if they can do better than the real colony? The Jamestown Online Adventure Game does a nice job helping students develop a sense of both what happened and why it happened. From the same site “History Globe”, there are Oregon Trail Virtual Tour and Anglo-Apache Conflicts with interactive maps and related documnets.

Ben’s Guide to U.S. Governments is a cute website that use Benjamin Franklin’s avatar to introduce U.S. government, it is divided into K-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9-12 grade levels and teacher & parent resources.

The Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands has civics videos and online books, and Sunnylands Civics Games. The interactive games are about learning the Constitution. They are for for middle school or lower high school levels.

Budget Hero is a “serious” game that would help the public better understand the complicated federal budget process while also increasing awareness of the social and fiscal impact of the government policies currently under discussion during the election year. It is a database-driven online game that allows users to explore the pros, cons and social impact of over 100 policies.

Flags of the World asks students to match flags to their respective countries. After matching each flag to its country students can click the “learn more” link to find more information about that country.

iCivics Game – learning about citizenship, laws and democracy, with resources for teachers, highly recommended!

Planet Oranges – learning about managing money, with resources for teachers

Mission US – Two very sweet educational video games that doesn’t feel educational. Designed for middle school US history but it can be used in grades 5-12.

MSNBC offers a gallery of online games related to the news called the NewsWare Arcade, for you to stay informed just by having fun.

Think About History is a fun trivia game on History.com. The object of the game is to cross the playing board by correctly answering a sequence of history trivia questions. The questions on “Think About History” are a mix of simulation-based and text-based questions. The game can be played as an individual game or a two player game.

BBC History Game – BBC offers several interactive activities that can be used with interactive whiteboards. This Famous People history game is a great way to teach elementary children about historical figures.

Kids Past offers an easy-to-read World History “textbook” for kids and five history games to which students can apply the knowledge they gather from the textbook.

Fling the Teacher is a website containing 68 history quiz games. All of the quizzes have at least fifteen questions and a few of the games have more than 100 questions. The average is 30-45 questions per quiz.

SimCEO is an entirely online simulation where participants create companies, research each other’s companies online, buy/sell other company’s shares and reacting to daily news posting that can affect the market.

Founders Online

I have been following the History Tech Blog now for about two years and I have to say that Glen is a passionate teacher! And he is a passionate teacher who loves to weave technology into his content! Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about…..

He recently shared Founders Online: CORRESPONDENCE AND OTHER WRITINGS OF SIX MAJOR SHAPERS OF THE UNITED STATES: George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams (and family), Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison.

Through this website, you will be able to read and search through thousands of records from George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison and see firsthand the growth of democracy and the birth of the Republic.

For the first time, users can freely access the written record of the original thoughts, ideas, debates, and principles of our democracy. You will be able to search across the records of all six Founders and read first drafts of the Declaration of Independence, the spirited debate over the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and the very beginnings of American law, government, and our national story. You will be able to compare and contrast the thoughts and ideas of these six individuals and their correspondents as they discussed and debated through their letters and documents.

Since one of the towns our district includes is Tappan and  the “76 House”  with it’s long history of use as a meeting place for patriots, a safe ground for Americans in the midst of the revolution and the “prison” of the Revolution’s most notorious spy, Major John André…I did a quick search of “John Andre”.  My search results included a document from Alexander Hamilton to George Washington stating, “packet of papers that had been on Major John André when he was captured and which made clear Arnold’s treasonable activities.”  I’m I a library geek or will reading primary sources from Founders Online  make history come alive for students?! 

Create a Custom Google Search Engine

IDEAS TO INTEGRATE in YOUR CLASSES:

Create a your own web index using Google’s custom search engine. Embed your completed engine in your class blog, web site (or both).

    1. On the Google Custom Search home page, click New search engine.

    2. In the Sites to search section, add the pages you want to include in your search engine. You can include any sites you want, not just sites you own. You can include site URLs or page URLs, and you can also get fancy and use URL patterns.

    3. The name of your search engine will be automatically generated based on the URLs you select. You can change this name at any time.

    4. Select the language of your search engine. This defines the language of the buttons and other design elements of your search engine, but doesn’t affect the actual search results.

    5. Click Create.

    6. To add your search engine to your site, click Get Code on the next page. Copy the code and paste it into your site wherever you want your Custom Search Engine to appear.

Typing Skills

Flash required – more info and games here 
Bubbles Copyright TypingMaster 2013. More typing games available here.

I was working with a teacher this weekend and realized that many of our students are already great texters, but in order to be successful, they also need keyboarding skills.

 

Perfecting their typing skills will allow them to easily communicate information through emails, blogs and various other communication forms. Here are several links to assist them with perfecting their typing skills. If you know any other free typing sites, please let me know about them and I will add them to our list.

 

PopCorn Maker

Mozilla offers a few free tools for editing, creating and remixing the web. There are many resources available to help teach digital literacy,online storytelling, webmaking and more. All of the available tools can be found here at Mozilla’s “Teaching Guides” page.  Although there are 15 + teaching tools and skills we can share with our students, I found “Popcorn Maker” the most applicable to all content areas. “Popcorn Maker” is free tool for crafting videos that incorporate images, clips, links and social feeds. There is also the option to insert “pop-ups” during your video. Watch the how to video below and offer “PopCorn Maker” as an option for a class project.