Counting History by Tens

As adults our class learned a lot from this project. Imagine what could be in the classroom! Growing up we often remembered reading from textbook with the majority of our history lessons. The idea behind the decades project allows students to co-construct knowledge. Less background knowledge would be brought into this process, but instead as students research they share their understanding with each other.
Our class really enjoyed the project, even dressing the part was fun.

50's

60's

70's

80's

90's






Even if we didn't live in one of these decades we were still able to relive them. It was great talking to family and friends about their memories from back in the day and make connections with important event of the time with important people in our lives today.

More ideas, but they are worth it!

WHERE TEACHERS BUY, SELL AND SHARE ORIGINAL TEACHING RESOURCES    

Okay this looks like a site worth joining to find ideas. It is free to join, but yes you pay to purchase the teachers ideas. What a great way to get credit and help other teachers find lessons that have worked. It's a way to give teachers who have original working ideas credit for their work as opposed to big corporations who haven't taught a day in their life....

This is a great Blog!

Mrs. Cooley is a first grade teacher with some really great ideas.  An these aliens are only a small part of it!

Literature: More than just a opportunity to ehance students comprehension.

Books that light fires for reading in students and they are just the beginning of a series, so you have the opportunity to open a door to their interests in written form. These books give students options for hours of entertainment other than television and video games. And for the students who are really interested in films can get a taste of both of these stories on the big screen.

The Borrowers

This book really opens our eyes to opportunities to use our imagination. I remember building little homes for my beanie babies when I was in 3rd grade for fun. Had this been an assignment I would have been so engaged in the details of a book like The Borrowers with a classroom assignment that required us to construct a scene from the story.

The Lightning Thief

I could see my future students making connections early on with the story's young characters and the Greek mythology open's doors for engaging history lessons. The main character, Percy, might also give students with home lives that are less than ideal someone to relate to without having to ask those students to talk about difficult topics.

Resources

What teacher isn't looking for that next great idea? Here are some places to start when building up a collection of a variety of directions to take your lessons in.

• Who doesn't love a good set of examples for Anchor Charts?

• One challege in all grade levels is finding exciting ways for ELL students to learn language that is engaging. I feel like I could use some of these suggestion daily for ten minutes (with the whole class) and it would make a difference.

• You can never go wrong with the reasources on PBS teachers. Check it out! They tons of lesson plan ideas, and it's a great place to start.