Posts Tagged ‘high school’

Comprehensive World History & Geography Resource

July 14th, 2022

It’s Thursday, July 14, 2022, and time for Social Sciences at ClickSchooling!

Student’s Friend: A Guide to Teaching World History & Geography

(www.studentsfriend.com/)

Grades 6 and up, with parental supervision

This website was developed by a history teacher named Mike Maxwell whose mission is to make history and geography more meaningful to students by identifying important developments in world history and tying them to geography in a way that is memorable.

It offers a free, downloadable, comprehensive guide called the Student’s Friend that may be used in place of a history textbook, along with lesson plans, study guides, and other resources to enhance learning. The site has been recognized as one of the top ten history sites for teachers by the Stanford University School of Education.

When you get to the site you’ll see a menu that includes:

  • Purpose – Learn more about the author and educational philosophy.
  • Teaching and Learning – Get the fundamentals of teaching and learning world history and geography.
  • Teacher Tools – Get free lessons plans and activities. Students can explore important themes and issues and enjoy in-depth learning activities such as projects, investigations and simulations. While designed for high school classroom use, the materials have been used by middle school teachers, college professors, and homeschool teachers worldwide.
  • Student’s Friend – A Concise World History – Access a free, concise narrative of world history and geography to use in place of a textbook. The Student’s Friend can be used online or download it for use offline. It’s divided into two parts:

Part I – Prehistory through 1500 including:

  • Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt
  • Ancient India and China
  • Ancient Greece and Rome
  • The Early Middle Ages, 500 to 1000 AD
  • The Late Middle Ages, 1000 to 1500

Part II – 1500 to the Present including:

  • 1500s and 1600s, Early Modern World
  • 1700s, Enlightenment & Revolution
  • 1800s, Industrial Revolution & Imperialism
  • 1900 to 1950, World at War
  • 1950 to the Present, Cold War & Space Age
  • Current Issues, A Changing World Order

This is a remarkable resource, so bookmark the site to return again.

Science Experiment Resources for K-12

June 21st, 2022

It’s Tuesday, June 21, 2022, and time for Science at ClickSchooling!

Home Science Tools

(learning-center.homesciencetools.com/science-projects/)

Grades K-12, with parental supervision

Today’s website is a bit of a diversion in that the site is a commercial enterprise called “Home Science Tools” that sells all kinds of science kits and curriculum that help students (in Pre-K through high school) explore life science, space, biology, chemistry, physics and more. HOWEVER, they also provide FREE hands-on science ideas that you can try at home.

Some of the categories of science projects include:

  • Life Science
  • Chemistry
  • General Science
  • Earth and Space
  • Physics & Engineering
  • And more!

Some of the experiments include:

  • Make a Super Bubble Solution
  • Test a plant for starch
  • How to make a rubber band car
  • and lots more!

Each experiment comes with a materials list and instructions. It also offers suggestions for science kits and products (available from the site’s store) to further learning. This is clever marketing. Again, you don’t have to buy a thing to explore the free resources.

Join the Word Wizard Club!

June 15th, 2022

It’s Wednesday, June 15, 2022, and time for Language Arts at ClickSchooling!

Lexiteria LLC: Dr. Goodword’s Word Wizard Club

(www.alphadictionary.com/ww/)

Grades 1-8, approximately, with parental supervision

This archived website is a language lover’s paradise! The host, Dr. Goodword, has amassed an incredible array of helpful tips and activities to improve grammar, spelling, and vocabulary, along with fun interactive games and quizzes, and links to many other related resources.

Some of the fun language arts activities at the website include:

  • Game Closet — Try your hand at the Goodword Junior crossword puzzle. A few years’ worth of puzzles are archived here. All the words for each puzzle are available for you to review before you play. These crosswords can be played online (complete with hints and answers) or printed from the Teacher Resources page and completed offline. *Note: Due to the discontinuation of Flash, you will need to print the puzzles. Also in the Game Closet is a huge collection of language jokes and stories about where English and other languages come from. Can you guess how old English is? You can find out here!

  • Miss Spelling’s Spelling Center — Find a fun poem to challenge your pronunciation skills (“Spelling Chaos”), six tips for better writing, lists of commonly mispronounced and misspelled words, and more!

  • Reference Shelf — This menu item takes you away from the “kids” section, back to the “mother” page for this website called AlphaDictionary.com, where you’ll find articles about the nature of language, correct usage, and other fascinating linguistic tidbits along with word games and activities for teens and adults.

Use the menu to find an array of items from exploration of English word origins and roots, to fun with puns, to text messaging shorthand and more. You’ll also find:

  • Slingin Slang: From the Flappers to the Rappers — Did you know that the slang you use/used in high school and college reveals your true age! Or does it? Try this quiz and see!

  • Are you a Yankee or a Rebel? — Take the quiz and find out.

  • And more!

Computer Programming Teaching Tool!

June 4th, 2022

It’s Saturday, June 4, 2022, and time for Other Electives at ClickSchooling!

Computer Science – Free Alice Computer Programming Software

(www.alice.org/)

This website offers “Alice” – free educational software from Carnegie Mellon University that teaches students computer programming in a visual, 3-D environment. It makes it easy to create animation for interactive games and videos and much more.

The description from the website best explains it:

“Alice is a freely available teaching tool designed to be a student’s first exposure to object-oriented programming. It allows students to learn fundamental programming concepts in the context of creating animated movies and simple video games. In Alice, 3-D objects (e.g., people, animals, and vehicles) populate a virtual world and students create a program to animate the objects.

In Alice’s interactive interface, students drag and drop graphic tiles to create a program, where the instructions correspond to standard statements in a production-oriented programming language, such as Java, C++, and C#. Alice allows students to immediately see how their animation programs run, enabling them to easily understand the relationship between the programming statements and the behavior of objects in their animation. By manipulating the objects in their virtual world, students gain experience with all the programming constructs typically taught in an introductory programming course.”

When you get to the site you can read the latest news and media coverage about Alice software and then click on the menu items that include:

  • Downloads – Get Free downloads of the software designed specifically for middle school students and/or high school and college students that will allow you to get started learning computer programming in a fun and engaging way.
  • All About Alice – Click on this item and a new page opens that explains how Alice works – and provides promotional videos you can watch to better understand how to get started.
  • Teaching Materials – Alice provides instructional materials to support teachers and students in classrooms. Resources include textbooks, lessons, tests, and more that you can download and print out.

NOTE: Some of you may have heard about “Alice” in the context of media coverage about one of the developers, Randy Pausch. Pausch, a Carnegie Mellon University professor, died of pancreatic cancer on July 25th, 2008 at the age of 47, leaving behind his wife and three young children. He gained worldwide attention through an inspirational “Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams” in which he recounted how he achieved his childhood dreams of becoming a football player, experiencing zero gravity, and developing Disneyland attractions. There are lessons in his last lecture for all of us. You can view it here: ClickSchooling

Ocean-Themed Math for K-12

May 23rd, 2022

It’s Monday, May 23, 2022, and time for Math at ClickSchooling!

Bureau of Ocean Energy Management: Tidepool Math

(www.boem.gov/environment/tidepool-math)

Grades K-12, with parental supervision

This website has FREE math lessons and activities that are themed around ocean tidepools.

When you get to the website you can choose between a Tidepool Math Curriculum for Grades K-8 or High School.

  • K-8 – This curriculum provides lessons and exercises to help students become familiar with tidepool habitats. Students use math skills such as counting, estimation, and determining the mean, to learn how the intertidal environment constantly changes both physically and biologically.

  • High School – This curriculum is divided into three parts with lessons and exercises that use science and math to provide the student with increased awareness of the diversity of animals and plants in intertidal habitats. It helps students understand the differences between random, systematic and targeted sampling approaches as well as comparing estimates, counts, and means. Through the activities, students gain an understanding of how to use simple statistical concepts and tools to analyze and study environmental data.

Both of the curriculums are offered through downloadable PDFs. The exercises refer to photos of tidepools and marine animals and plants that are provided for free on the website as well.

You can also download and print out colorful flashcards of marine animals and plants. Each card has a terrific illustration on the front, with scientific information and cool facts on the back – similar to what you’d find in a field guide.

While this curriculum is interesting and engaging all on its own – a trip to the beach or an aquarium with a tidepool exhibit would be a great way to enhance the learning.

French Fluency & Culture for High School

April 30th, 2022

It’s Saturday, April 30, 2022, and time for Foreign Language at ClickSchooling!

Annenberg Learner: French in Action

(www.learner.org/series/french-in-action/)

Grades 9-Adult, with parental supervision

This portion of the larger Annenberg Learner website provides 52 half-hour video lessons that use the immersion method of teaching to increase French fluency and introduce French culture.

The videos present a humorous continuing story of an American student and a Frenchwoman’s adventures in France. Additional native speakers of all ages and backgrounds not only add to the storyline but enhance the learning process.

Each lesson begins with an episode of the continuing story. The next portion of the lesson clarifies and illustrates the dialog of the story with focus on a specific term. Each lesson also provides opportunities to “participate” in the video by repeating lines. A sampling of lesson topics include:

  • Planning and Anticipating – greetings, health, surprise, decisiveness, subject pronouns, articles
  • Names and Origins – numbers, commands, necessity
  • Physical Characteristics – appearance, sports, questions, describing yourself
  • Kinship – family relationships and more
  • Describing Others – also games, agreement, time, weather
  • Encounters – conversations, seasons, reflexive verbs, adjective
  • Occupations – work, buying and spending, days and months of the year
  • Education – talking about occupations, manners
  • Getting Around – telephone, courtesy
  • Food and Drink – food, drink, ordering from a restaurant
  • Transportation and Travel – modes of transportation, expressing fear, admiration
  • Habitat – asking for directions, talking about homes
  • Entertainment – talking about entertainment, expressing restriction, reservation, doubt, enthusiasm
  • Getting and Spending – money, buying and selling
  • Geography and Tourism – countries and regions, exaggeration, confirmation, insistence
  • Getting Away – destination, levels of speech, negative infinitive, imperatives, pronouns

Add this website to your French foreign language studies to increase your students’ proficiency in the language.

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