TeachersFirst: Building Comprehension with Graphic Organizers

Building Comprehension with Graphic Organizers :

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Mindomo Grade 1 to 12 - - 8178

TF Edge Tool: for the moderately adventurous technology user. Create collaborative mind maps (graphic organizers) using this online tool. See an example created by our editors. The example gives some ideas for uses of this online graphic organizer tool. The tool requires Flash. Get it from the TeachersFirst Toolbox page..

NOTE: There is an advertising area at the right side of the screen on this free tool. TeachersFirst has been in communication with the Mindomo creators to assure that the ad content will not be alluring or inappropriate in the classroom. They are extremely responsive and interested in making their online tool practical for teachers.

In the Classroom:
The site requires membership (basic level is free). Have students create graphic organizers in cooperative groups as a study guide for unit content, to collect information for a group research project, or show examples of an important concept. Share and compare the organizers on an interactive whiteboard or projector in class and allow classmates to suggest changes. Skills needed: join the site, practice with the tools (don't miss the notes feature!). Save up to 7 "private" maps and an unlimited number of "shared" maps.

Make a map available online by saving and clicking "yes" for sharing, then clicking the Save by URL icon. This will copy the URL onto your computer's clipboard so you can paste it into a word doc or even your teacher web page. Imagine sharing several student made "study guides" in the days before the unit test.

Note that maps that are shared can be seen by the public, but not altered. You specify members who may collaborate and make alterations. For students to collaborate using this tool they must have individual memberships, requiring an email account. These memberships must be activated from their email. So, if students do not have email that is accessible from school, classroom use BY STUDENTS will be severely limited. Editor's note: we asked the Mindomo folks about spell check and student safety issues. They are still developing this tool, so they MIGHT address these issues at a later date.

Graphic Organizer Maker Grade 1 to 12 - Recipes4Success/Tech4Learning- 7688

This handy online tool lets you create customized graphic organizers "on the fly" and print them from the web site. There is a paid version of the site, but this FREE tool lets you choose the type of organizer you want, customize the Title and Directions, and print. Organizer types include Venn diagrams, KWL, scientific method, and many more. Learning support teachers will want to use this for students to create study materials.

In the Classroom:
Use these printed organizers as study support for any content area topic. Many are excellent options for reinforcing reading skills in the content areas, even for senior high students. Include this on your teacher web page so students can create their own organizers to study for tests or prepare presentations.

To make a new organizer, simply click "new," write title and directions, and print the small "print" icon. It may be easiest to take their default directions and change them for your purposes. Note that you LOSE your work when you close the page, so make sure you have printed first!

Gliffy Grade K to 12 - - 7125

TeachersFirst Edge entry: for the moderately curious technology user. Research verifies the power of graphic organizers in promoting strong thinking skills and comprehension for all ages. Gliffy is a FREE online tool for creating graphic organizers without purchasing ANY software. Individuals or groups can create the organizers or the class can create them together, such as in a brainstorming session on a projector. You can assign students to "map" out a chapter or story or assign groups to create study guides using this tool collaboratively. Your students are certain to enjoy this tool and be forced to THINK in the process. You can export the graphic organizers to a blog or "publish" them on the web -- all for free. See an example of a published diagram/organizer made by our editors for more ideas.

In the Classroom:
Skills needed: join the Gliffy site (free), play with the tools and toolbars to create diagrams, access help and FAQ to collaborate, publish, or embed diagrams in your blog or other web page. Easy to medium difficulty. Note: collaborators need individual email accounts to gain access. If your students do NOT have personal email, you may want to create group email accounts on Yahoo or GMail for which only YOU know the password and can log in for groups to work in class in order to avoid the safety and school filtering issues of student email access. This would also be a great tool for group projects in YOUR grad classes!

Reading Strategies: Scaffolding Students' Interactions with Texts Grade 6 to 12 - Greece (NY) Central School District- 6812

Find resources for teaching and modeling MANY reading strategies in your classroom, including handouts for graphic organizers and vocabulary development, all from this school-district site. Each strategy is explained and classified as before, during, or after reading and then linked to further information. This is a one-stop shop for teachers in every content area, as well as those reinforcing study skills for learning support students and helping students prepare for standardized testing. Each strategy includes suggestions for how to differentiate instruction, as well.

In the Classroom:
Give students links from your teacher web page directly to the graphic organizer they must complete for homework. Then there is no excuse such as having the dog eat it! Files are all Acrobat files, and Acrobat Reader is a free download.

Graphic Organizers Grade 2 to 8 - Houghton Mifflin Company- 5802

This time-saving collection of dozens of graphic organizers includes timelines, Venn diagrams, sequence charts, persuasion maps, and much more. Each is available as a ready-to-print PDF file. (You need Acrobat Reader- Get it from the TeachersFirst Toolbox page). Available in Spanish.

Inspiration and Graphic Organizers Grade 1 to 12 - SCORE- 1186

This SCORE page offers teachers a comparison of several different graphic organizer strategies and software applications that are appropriate for different teaching situations. This page can be helpful in showing the variety of options available for concept mapping.

Tools and Templates Grade K to 12 - Education World- 8681

This website is full of templates that are ready to use, just download and print. Many templates can be customized. Topics are too numerous to list. Sample topics include ice breakers, back to school, graphic organizers and parent-teacher communication.

In the Classroom:
Check out the icebreakers for the first day of school and back to school sections for many ideas and ready to use templates. Remember that if you want to SAVE a file from a download, you should RIGHT-click the link and choose "Save Target As" to save it to your computer.

Room 108 Grade K to 4 - John Rickey- 9058

It’s worth your time to explore some of the over 400 pages of educational activities for primary children linked from this site, created by a first grade teacher, John Rickey. No fees or passwords are required. Activities, games, and stories engage the young viewer with hours of learning fun. Make sure you open the activities into a new window tab, as many of them do not automatically do this for you (RIGHT-click on each link and choose “Open in new window”). This makes finding “Home” much easier. There are interactive stories and other L.A. activities, music, science, math, social studies, puzzles, art, and more. There are items “for sale,” but you need not even look there. This site has something for everyone. This site requires Flash and Java. Get them from the TeachersFirst Toolbox page..

In the Classroom:
Check out the “Free Stuff for Teachers” section for free downloads of graphic organizers and other printables. Math teachers, don’t miss all the electronic flash cards available. Don’t miss the oodles of science experiments and social studies projects to go along with your standards. Many of these activities are perfect companions for your interactive whiteboard or projector. Activities would also well on individual computers or as learning centers for cooperative learning groups.

Be sure to include a link to this website in your class newsletter and teacher webpage for students and parents to find at-home practice help. Have students write a "game review" of portions they find and like; then post the reviews on your teacher web page, as well.

Tiny URL Grade K to 12 - Gilby Productions- 8713

This very simple little tool allows you to copy a LONG URL (web address), paste it into this web page, and get back a very short URL that fits far more easily on your teacher web page, in your handouts, or on your blackboard for students to enter.

In the Classroom:
If you make a map in Google Maps, an online graphic organizer, a set of online flash cards, to anything else that allows you to share my emailing or copying a URL, this tools will save you from endless errors or emails full of ten-line URLs. Be sure to show your middle and high school students how to use it, as well. This will solve the problem of URLs that get split and no longer work when the text wraps around to another line.

A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods Grade 8 to 12 - Ralph Lengler and Martin J. Eppler- 8578

Who says the chemistry department can monopolize the periodic table? This site highlights various charts, graphic organizers, tables, and other ways to express information visually. The presentation makes the sell (or better grade). Teachers, especially secondary school, will appreciate this page to show the various ways to make their students' presentations more meaningful. Those who teach advanced reading skills and how to interpret visual data will love all the examples, as well. Hold your mouse over each square of the periodic table to view each type of visual.

In the Classroom:
Viewing this with the entire class will be more effective with the interactive whiteboard or projector. Teachers in any subject will find this site invaluable in teaching how to make strong visuals for oral or written presentations. What powerful evidence for multiple intelligences! Your visual/spatial students will LOVE this one, and others will learn to build that intelligence. Try these same strategies in YOUR PowerPoint presentations to communicate ideas visually, without being "powerpointless" at back to school night!

Images of Life on Earth Grade 6 to 12 - ARKive- 8482

ARKive provides a well-organized opportunity for students to research various species of animals. The site is broken into two components: the Globally Endangered Chapter and the British Chapter. The site offers an alphabetized listing of animals along with detailed information, beautiful photographs, and vivid videos for each animal. Be sure to point out the Glossary located at the end of each animal section. This will help students with some of the more difficult vocabulary. Also make sure to note that the British Chapter is focused on animals found in Britain. TeachersFirst review team members found that the site servers are SLOW to open and reload pages, even on a fast connection. Be patient. It is worth it.

In the Classroom:
Use this site as the starting point for individual or group projects. The site grants permission for educational download and use of the images (NOT on a web page), provided you include the copyright information with each image. Have students create sets of images to illustrate a report or make graphic organizers illustrating families of animals from your area and their classifications into kingdom, phylum, etc. Be letting students choose their own animals and examples, the task will have more meaning to them. Individuals can set up memberships (click My ARKive) to make "scrapbooks" of images and information. Membership requires a valid email address (info on your registration is sent there), so a whole-class or teacher account may be the easiest way to use it.

What Makes a Hero? Grade 9 to 12 - ARTSEDGE and DoDDS- 8290

This lesson plan enables students to identify characteristics that are common to heroes, recognize heroes from many diverse cultures, and discuss how heroes can be any type of person who has accomplished an inspiring action. It offers this in nine 45-minute class lessons. The instructional objectives make it easy to pick and choose which lessons you want to do in the order in which you want to do them. It offers a great, classic base of Aristotelian hero qualities while also enabling you to bring the idea of hero forward into modern times.

In the Classroom:
The links on the site itself offer ways to let students investigate on the web themselves at safe sites. Share the links as part of a web treasure hunt asking students to collect characteristics of heroes on their own and put them in a collaborative graphic organizer. What a great start to a heroes unit---one that you can revisit and add to throughout the unit. At the end of the unit, let them use the class organizer as the basis for their own "design a hero" challenge instead of a test.

Story Writing Tips for Kids Grade 3 to 8 - Corey Green- 8223

By breaking down the process of story writing into six accessible steps, this site provides a good outline for a lesson on writing an original story. Getting ideas, organizing, filling in, writing, and revising are all covered here in upbeat but concrete sections with plenty of tips and alternative approaches. The patterns follow the story mapping you study in reading class, so you will be reinforcing story patterns as students write. The writer is a published author of books for middle school kids. Links provide fun breaks for kids and they include jokes, animal info, and word games. A more important link leads readers to steps for writing a book report.

In the Classroom:
Use this site and its organized approach to teaching story writing to your upper elementary and middle school students. Include the link on your teacher web page for them to use as a reference outsid eof class, as well. Consider having studnets use a graphic organizer of a story map to plan their stories (make one for them or have them use one of the many tools you can find on TeachersFirst by searching graphic organizer on our keyword search.

Visuwords Grade 6 to 12 - Paul R. Dunn - 8159

This graphical online dictionary will make looking up words and figures of speech addictive, and visual learners will start to understand meanings as never before. The dictionary pulls it information from Princeton's WordNet, an opensource database built by University students and language researchers. A WORD OF WARNING: because the source of the words is a university, where speech is completely open, there are word included in this "dictionary" that are NOT classroom appropriate. Use it only under teacher monitoring.

The color-coded word "entries" display like a mind-map or graphic organizer, showing parts of speech in different colors and showing related words and phrases, as well. Be sure to look at the color key at the bottom to understand all the information presented. This site requires FLASH. Get it from the TeachersFirst Toolbox page..

In the Classroom:
Introduce new vocabulary before reading or starting a new unit, using this site on an interactive whiteboard or projector. The distinctions, examples, and relationships the site features for new words will help students build better connections and understanding as they read and study the words in classroom context. English teachers will love this as a learning tool for teaching distinctions between similar words. Just remember to use it in a monitored situation (see above).

Language Arts Presentations Grade K to 12 - Jefferson County Schools- 8130

Wow - this website provides ready-to-use PowerPoint presentations on over 100 topics. The presentations were created by teachers - for teachers to use in their classrooms. This website organizes topics by general grade levels (K-5 and 6-12). Just to give you a taste of the uniqueness of these presentations, topics include such diverse topics as Shakespeare, "grammar goofs," active reading strategies, haunted house graphic organizer, phonics millionaire game, pronouns, and numerous others. Any language arts teacher is guaranteed to find something useful at this website. Do yourself a favor and check it out! You may need PowerPoint software to be able to view these files, depending on how the site creators save them. Note: while files are downloading, it may appear that nothing is happening and that the links are dead. Look for a tiny "downloading" icon in the lower left corner of your screen, and please be patient!

In the Classroom:
Try these ready-to-go PowerPoint presentations on an interactive whiteboard or projector in your classroom. Some may also be well-suited for individual students to run on a single classroom computer for remediation or review. There are games, resources and a lot of information. The site includes a disclaimer asking to be notified if users find any copyrighted material. TeachersFirst recommends that you NOT download copies but instead use them online, just in case.

Inspiration Quickstart Tutorial Grade K to 12 - Inspiration- 7648

Learn to use Inspiration, the software that makes graphic organizers (and outlines)that make sense to your visual learners, using this printable pdf tutorial. You need Acrobat Reader to open and print it. The page provides a link to get Acrobat Reader, if you do not have it.This tutorial is supplied by the software manufacturer.

Death and Taxes: A Visual Guide to Where Your Federal Tax Dollars Go Grade 8 to 12 - Jesse Bachman- 6946

See a graphical representation of the United States Federal Budget, clickable down to the little details. Although you can order this graphic organizer as a poster, the online version allows you and your class to click and burrow down through the bureaucracy to see where the taxes go. Important note: Patience is worth it in waiting for this site to open (don't even bother on a dial-up). Requires the most current version of FLASH.Get it from the TeachersFirst Toolbox page.

In the Classroom:
Definitely place this link on your teacher web site for students to view with their parents at home. In class, consider assigning students to use the site to collect evidence for a debate on the size of government or simply open it and navigate as a class on an interactive whiteboard as you discuss the branches of government. You will be amazed what you find using this medium so "native" to your students.

Be A Historian - Industrialization Grade 5 to 10 - Silos and Smokestacks National Heritage Area- 6833

This teacher friendly site has it all - thinking questions, facts, research activities and more! This site is designed for grades 6-8, but could be useful in grades 5-10. The students are taken back to the late 1800s by authentic pictures and creative learning activities. Topics include working women, railroads and other forms of transportation and mass production.

In the Classroom:
Use the interactive graphic organizers for students to complete individual or guided learning experiences. These would also work well on an interactive whiteboard.

Calendars through the Ages Grade 6 to 12 - Institute for Dynamic Educational Advancement- 6823

This information-packed site focuses on calendars through the ages. It includes sections on the astronomy of calendars (e.g. moon cycles), the history of calendars, differences among various international calendars, derivation of the names of the months, and loads of other trivia about calendars.

In the Classroom:
Lots of great stuff for "did you know?" discussions or as an extension of a study of timelines and other graphic organizers of information. A few interesting visuals, but the strength of this site is in its information. Might be a good source for monthly bulletin boards or an enrichment area for gifted students.

Identifying Theme in a Story Grade 6 to 8 - ProQuest Information and Learning Center- 6013

This lesson plan, downloadable and viewable as a Word document, introduces middle school students to the literary element of theme and provides practice in recognizing themes in a variety of texts (provided). Assessment suggestions, graphic organizers, and links to supporting materials are included. Aligned to National Standards. You MUST have Microsoft Word to open this lesson plan. Unfortunately, TeachersFirst cannot give you the program for free. Turn off your pop-up and/or download blocker to actually open this file.(Look for the thin yellow bar across the screen, just below the address bar to enable the download, depending on your security settings.

Zoom into Maps Grade 5 to 12 - Library of Congress- 5699

Browse through this extensive collection of maps from 1500 AD to modern times and discover some incredible gems to supplement everything from a history lesson to a study of Shakespeare's plays. Start with the site's downloadable graphic organizer that guides students through map analysis. A series of questions and tips for interpretation accompany each type of map and help with understanding of orientation, legend, and scale.

A Tale to be Told Grade 4 to 7 - Martha Sullivan/Missouri Schoolweb- 5614

This Webquest challenges students, working in small groups, to read, share, and compare/contrast folk tales from different parts of the world. A printable chart is provided to guide the analysis, and a graphic organizer can be downloaded to help students organize their thoughts for the final activity - the creation of an original folk tale. Links to online fairytales are provided.

Tools and Templates Grade 1 to 12 - Education World- 5511

Browse through this collection of time-saving templates for everything from award certificates to calendars and graphic organizers. Edit the templates to fit your needs, then save and print as desired.

Travel Back to Colonial Times Grade 4 to 6 - - 4975

If you have never used a WebQuest before, take the plunge and try this one! Faced with the task of discovering what information a time traveler to colonial America would need, students are asked to think creatively, work cooperatively, analyze information, and create a graphic organizer to represent their findings. Access to Hyperstudio or Inspiration would be helpful. Teacher notes, resources, and an assessment tool are provided. Created by Lori Abrahams.

Seeing Reason: Mindful Mapping of Cause and Effect Grade 2 to 12 - Intel Education- 9227

Develop your students’ thinking skills with Intel’s free “Seeing Reason” tool to analyze cause-and-effect relationships in complex systems. Students can use the Seeing Reason Tool to develop visual maps of the factors and relationships in cause-and-effect investigations. Student-created causal maps make thinking visible and promote collaboration as they work together to refine their understanding. Teachers can use Seeing Reason as a monitoring and observation tool, since the maps are visual representations of student understanding.

This web-based tool is accompanied by detailed lesson plans for different grade levels and subject areas. It provides a complete project, ready to adapt for the classroom or implement as-is. Explore the project ideas, instructional strategies, assessment tips, and research to help you plan a project of your own. Registration is free and creates a teacher workspace in which to build the class project. The password-protected workspace is accessed through the internet where students log on with the teacher-created ID, team ID, and password.

Be sure to disable your popup blocker, as the site needs to show popup windows during the project. This site requires Flash and Adobe Acrobat Reader. Get these tools from the TeachersFirst Toolbox page..

In the Classroom:
Help students analyze why a science experiment failed, why an animal became extinct, why a literary character acts as he does, or the factors leading to an economic or historical event. Teachers can use the comprehensive tutorial to learn the features of the tool and use the workspace to practice with the tool. Take advantage of the experiences of other teachers in eight detailed unit plans that provide usable handouts and student work samples. Or just browse through several shorter project descriptions for project ideas that suit your classroom.

Make a shortcut to this site on your desktop and student computer desktops for easy access or simply add it to the Favorites on your teacher web page for access from there.

Use the Seeing Reason tool to explore themes such as habitat conflict, neighborhood diversity, and decision-making with your students. Have student teams show and explain their maps to the whole class using an interactive whiteboard or projector. Students can access the project workspace from home or through other Internet access points such as the public library.

Visual Ranking: Analyzing and Evaluating Information Grade 3 to 12 - Intel Education- 9221

Engage your students in higher-order thinking skills with a collaborative activity using Intel Education’s free Visual Ranking Tool. Visual ranking leads students though focusing, identifying, and refining criteria as they assign order or ranking to a list presented as a visual diagram. Students use a simple click and drag to organize ideas, explain their reasoning, debate differences, and reach consensus with each other. This web-based tool is accompanied by project ideas, instructional strategies, assessment tips, and research. There are also detailed lesson plans for grades 3-5, 6-8, or 9-12. Registration is free and creates a teacher workspace in which to build the class project. The password-protected workspace is accessed through the Internet where students log on with the teacher-created ID, team ID, and password.

Teachers can use the comprehensive tutorial to learn the features of the tool. The Try the Tool section has a demonstration workspace for teachers to practice with ranking a sample list and then comparing it to other lists. Take advantage of the experiences of other teachers in six detailed unit plans that provide usable handouts and student work samples.

Be sure to disable your popup blocker as the site needs to show popup windows during the project. This site requires Flash and Adobe Acrobat Reader. Get these tools from the TeachersFirst Toolbox page..

In the Classroom:
Make a shortcut to this site on your desktop and student computers for easy access or simply add it to the Favorites on your teacher web page for access from there

. Use the Visual Ranking tool to explore themes such as the role of friends, human migration, the impact of inventions, what’s fair, and career choices with your students. Have student teams show and explain their diagrams to the whole class using an interactive whiteboard or projector.

The Visual Ranking Tool can be used at any stage of a learning project. As a pre-activity or pre-assessment, it can help students discuss their prior knowledge and identify the things that they need to research or study further. As a mid-unit activity, it can help put new learning in a context that will be more useful in the next activity. At the end of a unit, Visual Ranking may be used to assess or reflect on learning. Students can access the project workspace from home or through other Internet access points such as the public library.

Time For Kids - India Grade 3 to 7 - TIME for Kids- 9150

Come take a virtual tour of India - the home of 16% of the entire population of the world! This website features an interactive map with a sightseeing guide, historical timeline, native lingo, an online quiz, numerous pictures, and more. The website also features lesson plans, worksheets, maps, and graphic organizers. Certain activities at this website require Adobe Acrobat and/or QuickTime Player. You can get both from the TeachersFirst Toolbox page..

In the Classroom:
Pack up your suitcase, and take your students on this interactive tour using your projector or interactive whiteboard. Share the native lingo and have your students try to pronounce the various words. Challenge your class to learn more words from the language. Do a class research project by dividing the class into cooperative learning groups to research various elements of the country. Have a group of "politicians" examine the government of India. Have a group of "tour guides" learn about famous tourist attractions in India. Assign other groups to "be" architects, religious officials, and whatever other role you want your students to learn about. Have the groups create multimedia presentations or wiki pages to share their discoveries with the class.

Putting the Pieces Together Grade K to 12 - Gloucester Public Schools- 9119

This fabulous resource answers the question of how technology can be implemented with Marzano strategies to improve student learning. The site is divided into nine "chapters" that correspond to the research-based Marzano strategies. The chapters include Identifying Similarities and Differences , Summarizing and Note-Taking , Reinforcing Effort and Providing Recognition , Increasing Value in Homework and Practice , Using Non-Linguistic Representations , Incorporating Cooperative Learning Effectively , Setting Objectives and Providing Feedback , Generating and Testing Hypotheses , and Utilizing Question, Cues, and Advance Organizers . Each chapter includes a brief summary and then offers targeted and ready to use templates, graphic organizers, and online activities for implementation. The ideas and examples use tools already in the classroom: PowerPoint, Inspiration/Kidspiration, Word, Excel, Internet, etc. Clicking examples gives you information on using the technology or provides an interactive application to create your own for class use. Online Interactive games are also provided.

In the Classroom:
Trying to figure out how technology fits into your well-established teaching methods? Use this site as a great review of the Marzano strategies and implement the ideas into your classroom. Use the activities to not just provide the information to students for students to uncover information and make connections through use of technology already available. Use the tools and examples to bring the strategies into your classroom!

Time For Kids - Around the World Grade 3 to 7 - TIME for Kids- 9104

This informative website offers students "faraway places at their fingertips." There are countries included from Africa, Asia, Central America, Europe, North America, South America, and Oceania. Some of the specific countries include Nigeria, Tanzania, Pakistan, Thailand, Costa Rica, Norway, Turkey, Alaska, Chile, Peru, Australia, New Zealand, and more. Each country's information varies a bit. Most include some "native lingo," a sightseeing guide, a history timeline, current news, and other educational bits of information. The website also features lesson plans, worksheets, maps, and graphic organizers. Certain activities at this website require Adobe Acrobat and/or QuickTime Player. You can get both from the TeachersFirst Toolbox page..

In the Classroom:
What a fabulous resource for independent research projects or country comparisons. Put the names of all of the countries into a hat or jar. Have individual students or small groups pick a country. Challenge the students to learn the native lingo, the geography and climate of the area, the history of the country, and more. Have the students create multimedia presentations to share with the class or have a World Cultures day.

If you don't have time to complete a large research project, use your interactive whiteboard (or projector) and take your students "virtually" to a different country every week. Spend 10-15 minutes navigating the website. Challenge your class to learn some of the native "lingo" and practice native phrases throughout the week. Use this site for background when reading folktales and stories set in far-off lands. If you have a chance to do a collaborative project with students across the world, start with basic background knowledge from this site.

Timeless Ideas for Teaching Grade 6 to 12 - Concord Monitor Publishing- 8875

Posted by the New Hampshire Concord Monitor Newspaper in the Classroom program, this website offers many interactive ideas that students can use either with a physical newspaper in front of them, with an online news service such as CNN, or with online editions of newspapers that you find here. The examples used all refer to the New Hampshire newspaper, but are easily adaptable to whatever topic you want the students to deal with. This site includes such varied activities as creating a database and writing recipes. It covers every section of a newspaper. Students could create their own classroom newspaper using some of these activities or simply create journalistic articles based on whatever topic you are currently teaching. This is adaptable to almost any grade level and subject area.

In the Classroom:
Whether you use hard-copy papers or electronic editions, many of these ideas will work even better using technology: word processing, wikis, blogs (for editorials), graphic organizer tools, digital cameras, etc. Use today's tools to study this powerful medium as it goes through transition into an electronic world. Consider asking students to compare electronic vs. hard-copy newspapers and their pros/cons, as well.

United States National Slavery Museum Grade 6 to 12 - United States National Slavery Museum- 8106

The U.S. National Slavery Museum is a "work in progress" still in the planning stages, but this site already has some valuable resources available to teachers. The link to "Center for Learning" takes you to some extremely complete downloadable lesson plans on slavery in the U.S. If you use the download, you can get the plans for free. The site would be worth checking back on as the museum itself gets closer to construction. This site requires Flash and Acrobat Reader. Get them from the TeachersFirst Toolbox page..

In the Classroom:
The lesson plans include graphic organizers, transparencies, and vocabulary lists and are linked to standards. These lesson plans could easily be incorporated into units on the U.S. Colonial or Civil War eras or could stand alone as a special focus.

Biscayne National Park Grade 4 to 8 - eFieldTrips- 8004

This virtual fieldtrip takes students on an underwater adventure to the Biscayne National Park. The field trip has three distinct parts. The first part is the journal, which is presented to the students first (and requires Adobe). The journal provides numerous questions for students to search for the answers while they visit their destinations, plus a web to fill in missing terms. Part two is the virtual journey itself (which requires FLASH). There are many interactive activities within the "journey". Part three is "ask the experts" which provides past questions and answers. This is a very well done website and extremely useful if your class is studying the ocean, coral reefs or other marine biology topics.

In the Classroom:
Use an interactive whiteboard or projector to take your students on a virtual journey to Biscayne National Park. Be sure to print out the journal questions first to help your students focus on the content. The graphic organizer in the journal would work well as an interactive whiteboard summary activity.

The Online NewsHour: Vote 2006 Grade 6 to 12 - PBS- 6840

Part of a larger site affiliated with the PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, this is a lesson plan overview focused on the upcoming midterm elections. It includes links to interactive maps detailing key races for the House, Senate, and Governor's Office across the US, along with an overview of the political context of midterm elections in general. Another link takes you to an overview of the larger issuses affecting the November midterm elections (e.g. immigration, Iraq, energy) with the promise that these issue summaries will continue to be updated. There are PDF versions of graphic organizers that might be helpful for students in processing information about specific issues or planning projects related to the midterm elections. The linked sites are regularly updated.

In the Classroom:
A superb overview for a Civics course, or modern US History course. The site would also be useful for any teacher who incorporates current events and wants a quick and dirty visual presentation explaining the importance of midterm elections. Finally, the separate "issues" sites provide a nice summary and would be helpful to teachers planning debates on any of these issues.

Inside the Brain: An Interactive Tour Grade 8 to 12 - Alzheimer's Association- 6610

This highly visual site gives visitors an unforgettable tour of the brain and explains the functions of its three main parts. Formatted as a self-paced slideshow, the site also provides an intense explanation of the effect of Alzheimer's disease on brain tissue. Roll your mouse over the colored text on each slide to view the specific region described.

In the Classroom:
Create a basic Web hunt or graphic organizer to guide students through the slideshow and encourage them to focus on the vocabulary and descriptions. The visual component of this resource helps students understand the logistical as well as functional aspects of each major region of the brain.

Virtual Jungle Grade 4 to 6 - BBC- 6515

Explore a virtual rainforest to get an up close and personal view of its composition and inhabitants. Students can choose the method of discovery they would like to use to investigate the jungle – structure, cycles, or survival. Each path is filled with multimedia surprises that introduce visitors to the sights, sounds, and smells of this mysterious and uncharted territory.

In the Classroom:
This site lends itself to independent exploration, but you'll need to provide some direction – in the form of a Web hunt or graphic organizer. Use to introduce a student research project or to provide data for the creation of a "rainforest" in your classroom.