STEM Resources for the Elementary Classroom

Today, I want to share with you guys some resources that are freebies for STEM in your classroom.

CalAcademy's Science Video Vault - I know some of you are looking for additional video resources to use with your students. Take a moment to check out CalAcademy's Science Video Vault for hundreds of short videos. The site provides a search feature as well as the opportunity to drill down for grade level appropriate resources. While there, check out their Ideas for Using Video in the Classroom. 


NASA Knows! Elementary students are curious about the world around them, including space. If you are looking for informational texts and if your students have questions about airplanes, astronauts, rockets, planets, technology, and more, check out NASA Knows. You will find sections for  Grades K-4, 5-8, 9-12, and Higher Ed.




Water Cycle Resources:
For the past week or so, I've been in 5th-grade classrooms in our districts helping students with a water cycle project. The Story of Water in Dryville: The story takes students to the desert to start a new town and shows them how water plays a part every step of the way, from finding an initial water source to getting water to homes, creating a system for wastewater, and meeting additional needs as the town grows up. This would be a great PBL intro to rebuild an area devastated by a natural disaster. Also available as a downloadable script for a class play, students could recreate the story with a miniature green screen and Doink Green Screen App.

Legos:
Last year I was fortunate to visit a Lego School in South Carolina. Who doesn't love Legos? (Ok, maybe parents that moment they step on them with bare feet.) You don't have to be a Lego School to tap into the learning possibilities. Check out Lessons with Legos to find lesson plans for using Lego bricks and other Lego educational materials. Maybe the lessons will spark an idea that you could use to write a proposal for funding through Donor's Choose.

Paper Slide Videos - Oh My!

This year I have had the privilege of meeting with teachers during planning and offering ideas for technology integration. It has been fun and it has been a challenge. Each school is different (just like each classroom is different). When suggesting ideas you have to start with curriculum content (which is the same across all my schools). Then look at the instructional strategy that the teacher wants to use (differences begin here). Then you have to look at what technology the classroom or school has available (wide differences here!). You also have to take into consideration time constraints, teacher's comfort level and ability with using technology, as well as the students' age.

There have been some successes and some failures, but I want to share an option that several teachers have tried recently and for the most part had success. It is low tech but high engagement and can be used in all subject areas. The technique was developed by a North Carolinian by the name of Lodge McCammon. Yes I am  talking about paper slide videos.

The concept is so easy. Students create a story (commercial, math explanation, etc) and then plan it out using a storyboard. Taking the plan, students draw the images needed to convey the information. Students rehearse, rehearse, and rehearse some more. Students then video their story by narrating and then sliding the paper to continue the story. It is a one shot deal, the camera starts rolling and it doesn't stop until they are finished. There is no editing (I hear a collective sigh about not worrying about animations and transitions.) Simply publish the finished product. To learn more about Paper Slide Videos, please check out the wiki here. 

The third graders at this particular school created travel infomericals for various planets. Then worked together as a group to video the finished projects.

The kindergarten classes at the same school used Paper Slide Videos to publish one of their writers' workshop pieces. So every student has their own video.

Give Paper Slide Videos a try and tell me what you think.

WatchKnowLearn Site

I love free! As educators, I know you do too. With the economy as it is and school budgets getting smaller, what's a teacher to do other than use as many free resources as we can. Right?

I am sure that you have been using YouTube and loving that GCS has unblocked that site. I hope you are using Discovery Education since that is still being provided for you from the district. But sometimes, those sites don't have the video you need for the particular content you are teaching. I just learned about a free site, yes free, that provides thousands of video content with many especially for elementary students! The site is called WatchKnowLearn. According to their website, they have indexed over 20,000 educational videos in 3,000 categories. You can search their database by category (subject areas) and you can drill down in those categories as well.

A feature that I found useful is being able to search by student age level as well. You simply use the slider to narrow down the age category. The screen shot shows that I narrowed my search to 8-12 year olds.


Finally, another feature for this site that is truly worth checking out is the ability to create your own online classroom. Creating your online classroom allows you to save videos into your categories for your students to access easily. You even get your own sub-domain which becomes the URL address for your online classroom. You can create student accounts and even add attachments to those videos.

I love the possibilities for this site. Check it out and let me know what you think!

YouTube

As you know, GCS has unblocked YouTube for teacher log ins. No longer do you have to search for the video from home, download it, and bring it to school to use with your content. The one concern you may have is all the content that shows up when you are in YouTube. Now there is an easy way to clean up that interface.

Hopefully, since you have been trained to use our Google domain, you are also using Google Chrome as your browser. I just love Chrome and I love all the extensions provided for free. Clea.nr Videos for YouTube removes the clutter (comments, related videos, and ads) that you usually see when you view videos in YouTube. The extension is actually available for other browsers as well.

So when I search for "animal adaptations" my search looks like this:

Once I choose a video to view, check out how "clean" it looks.