Always lesson planning

Lest anyone think that my summer time table has made me a useless bum of a layabout, I would like to, in my defense, offer up some small proof that educating our nation's youth IS still a top priority on my mind.

Here are a few cases in point, wherein I am mentally planning lessons already for next year.

Capacity -- As I float casually in my condo's swimming pool, I ponder how the pool itself is a container, holding gallons (or, if you prefer, Liters) of water. How can I get the kids to remember that a swimming pool would not best be measured in cups or pints?

Elapsed Time -- This is a simple morning bell ringer. Mister Teacher goes to bed at 1:30 and gets up at 12:15. How long did he sleep? Bonus: How long will Mister Teacher be out of bed until his nap at 2:20?

Multiplication -- Going to Happy Hour with friends and enjoying a few adult beverages is not ALL about having a good time. There is preparation going on there as well. Especially if each new drink that I order has the same number of ice cubes in it or costs the same amount of money. Upper grade teachers, you can use this example to have your kids calculate a tip for the server.

Making predictions -- A great example is "What time will the mailman come today?" And "How many bills vs magazines do I think will be in today's mail?"


So you see, it's not ALL play over summer vacation. We're keeping our minds fresh and the ideas flowing. Just like those adult beverages.

20 Places to find Lesson Plans and Resources

Karen Schweitzer, guest poster extraordinairre, is back again, and this time she brings us a list of websites that can be very helpful to teachers with a little bit of bloodhound in them.

Karen is the About.com guide to business school, and she writes for onlinecolleges.net.

Here is her post:


20 Places to Find Open Source Lesson Plans and Teaching Resources

Are you looking for new lesson plans to engage your students in the classroom? Why not check out the Internet. There are many different websites that offer open source lesson plans and teaching resources to fit almost any need. Here are 20 great websites worth trying:

Massachusetts Institute of Technology - MIT offers a range of tools and resources through the school's OpenCourseWare site to assist teachers. Resources include introductory video courses, labs, demonstrations, and lesson plans for biology, chemistry, and physics.

Education World - Education World is a resource site designed specifically for teachers. The site contains lesson plans, teacher development tools, tips on technology integration, and much more.

NYT Daily Lesson Plan - The New York Times offers hundreds of free lesson plans teachers can use to connect the classroom with real world events.

Teachers.Net - With more than 4,000 lesson plans, Teachers.Net is a great place to find quality lesson plans for any subject. Along with lesson plans, the site also features chatboards, projects, mailrings, and articles.

ThinkFinity - ThinkFinity, courtesy of the Verizon Foundation, has a wide range of free educational resources for teachers, including lesson plans, interactive activities, training, and book lists.

TeAchnology - TeAchnology has a variety of resources to help teachers integrate technology into the classroom. The site also offers lesson plans, worksheets, and rubrics.

Teachable Moment - Teachable Moment features lesson plans and activities for elementary to high school teachers. The site focuses on lesson plans that encourage critical thinking and positive attitudes.

Federal Resources for Education Excellence - The federal government provides an assortment of interesting lesson plans and resources for teachers, including educational animations, primary documents, photos, and videos.

Smithsonian Educators - The Smithsonian Center for Educators and Museum Studies provides free lesson plans, resources, and information on professional development. Lesson plans range from art and design to language arts.

LessonPlansPage.com - LessonPlansPage.com features over 3,500 lesson plans to assist K-12 educators. This site also has discussion forums, math worksheets, and science experiments.

The Teachers Corner - The Teachers Corner is a great site with tons of free lesson plans. Other resources include bulletin boards, printable worksheets, and teaching jobs.

LessonPlanZ.com - LessonPlanZ.com is an online directory of lesson plans for all subjects and grades. The site is updated regularly and features a weekly newsletter.

Microsoft Educators - This Microsoft site gives teachers access to lesson plans, templates, teachers network, and more.

National Geographic - An entire section of the National Geographic site is dedicated to educational resources for teachers. Resources include lesson plans, interactive activities, and printer-friendly maps.

Awesome Library - The Awesome Library is an online library of resources for educators, students, and librarians. The site provides lesson plans for a wide selection of subjects and grades.

GEM - The Gateway to Educational Resources offers over 50,000 educational resources for teachers. A simple click of the mouse is all that is needed to find information on lesson plans, activities, worksheets, and more.

PBS - PBS provides many online resources for teachers, including lesson plans, interactive activities, teacher discussions, and career development materials.

Primary Resources - Primary Resources offers free online lesson plans, activities, and teaching resources. The site also hosts curriculum ideas for all ranges of subjects--from English to P.E.--and even includes sources for classroom management.

LearningPage - The Learning Page provides a large selection of professionally designed learning materials. Teachers can download and print the free lesson plans, worksheets, and books.

A to Z Teacher Stuff - This teacher-created site is designed to assist teachers in accessing resources more effectively. A to Z Teacher Stuff has lesson plans, discussion forums, tips, thematic units, worksheets, and e-books.

Revamped lesson plans?

I got an email recently from Frank, who writes Intellteacher's Blog, about a project he is working on with Dr. Win Wenger. A quick Google search on the good doctor brings up pages about Project Renaissance, Brain Boosters, and Creative Thinking. The guy is seen as a pioneer in the field.

So anyway, as part of this project, Frank is offering to help teachers apply an Accelerated Learning aspect to their existing lesson plans. He asks, "What are you having difficulty with in the classroom?" Is it grouping? Is it presenting to the class, is it reaching kids of various abilities?

If you are interested in participating, send Frank a copy of your lesson plan (intellteacher@yahoo.com), and he will -- under Dr. Wenger's supervision -- add on the Accelerated Learning - Creative Problem Solving (AL-CPS) aspects. He also says that he may choose some of the revamped lesson plans to use in the case study part of a new book, and the contributing teacher will get a shout-out.

To see a small sampling of Frank's work, visit his blog, or check out his guest post right here on Learn Me Good.


In completely unrelated news, today is my 36th birthday, so I am headed off to have some of my mom's world famous lasagna!!

And don't forget to take part in the Learn Me Good February Sweepstakes! Get entries by leaving a comment, signing the guest book, becoming a FoLMeG, or best of all, posting a link to www.learnmegood.com somewhere on the web!!

When you plan to fail, you fail to plan

You know, as a brand new English language arts teacher, I'm looking for all of the tips and guidance I can get on how to put my lessons together and what to do for my kids. So it sure would be nice if the vaunted Curriculum Planning Guides (CPGs) that the district tells us to follow were actually UP TO DATE!!!

It's Tuesday of the 9th week of school, and the plans for the 10th week aren't even online yet!!!

As Cliff Claven would say, "What's up with that??"

I'm thinking the people in charge of writing these things, DEFINTELY need to buy this shirt...

You mean I have to schedule?

This week's Mr. Teacher column over on education.com is all about lesson plans. You know what I'm talking about. If you work in my district, you can relate to the excess paperwork that we're dealing with here. If you work in another district, you might have very similar stories.

And of course, they keep telling us that next year, even MORE detail will be required...

Stop by, leave a comment, etc.

Take me out to the classroom

A few nights ago, as I was trying to fall asleep, I was also trying to think of some ways to get my kids involved in this year in learning basic concepts. I had just read a small article about exercise in the classroom, so I thought maybe incorporating the two might yield some good results.

What my fevered brain conjured up was a new game called Place Ball. Now I use the term "new game" very loosely, as it may very well have been thought of before by greater minds than mine. But it's new to me at the very least.

This is just an idea -- I've never actually put it into play, but I think it might be fun to try this year. We usually cover place value early -- like in the second or third week of school. Place value is something that they should have learned in second, or even first grade, but for some reason, the kids at my school tend to reformat their brains every summer (sometimes they do this over Christmas break, spring break, and weekends as well). So while the concept may remain vaguely familiar, it's still something that many of them struggle with.

So I have two iterations of Place Ball. The first, which could be played indoors or outdoors, is to aid with rote memorization of the place value names and the order they come in. It basically amounts to "running the bases," OR in this new game -- "running the places."

I have my students' desks arranged into five "tables," with each table consisting of four or five individual desks. My overhead machine sits in the center of these tables. I will move this overhead machine over to a position of safety like against the wall or back in a corner, but leave a single desk in the center of the room. Then the five tables and this additional desk will be the six places/bases.

In Texas, third-graders are responsible for learning their numbers up through 999,999 -- so the bases would represent Ones, Tens, Hundreds, Thousands, Ten Thousands, Hundred Thousands. The kids will stand in a line along the side of the room and take turns running the places, calling out the name of each as they tap it with their hand.

I would expect this to be a pretty fun and exciting activity for them, so every time someone has successfully rounded the places, there will be lots of cheering, and any time someone makes a mistake (ie, Ones, Tens, Thousands, Hundreds), I don't think they'll get too down on themselves since they'll be getting plenty of opportunities.

The second iteration is more application. This could be played on a very small scale indoors, but would work much better outdoors. Six kids spread out in a line facing the teacher. Each of these kids represents a place value. The teacher will throw a ball to one of the kids and call out a number. This could be tossing a tennis ball from 5 feet away or throwing a football from 20 feet away. If the teacher calls out THREE and throws the ball to the person in the Hundreds Place, that child is then responsible for remembering that 300 is part of the overall number. The teacher would then throw the ball to another place value and call out another number. At some point, the teacher calls out, "What is your number?" At which point, the kids group together and fit the pieces of their puzzle together to form an overall numeral.

In a large outdoor space, the teacher could be the central point, throwing to multiple lines of children, so it would not be limited to only six kids at a time.

Anyway, that's my idea, and I think it will be very interesting to see how it actually works in practice. I would love to hear feedback on this idea, from anyone who has done something similar, or just from anyone who has thoughts about Place Ball.

At the very least, I expect it to be fun, enlightening, and free of steroid accusations...