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March 21, 2016

Thinking Teachers Teaching Thinkers®

 

FIRST (For Inspiration & Recognition of Science and Technology) is holding four fabulous challenges for various levels. NOW is the time to get involved. The First Lego League Jr. is for grades K-3, The First Lego League is open to grades 4-8, The First Tech Challenge is open to grades 7-12, and the First Robotics Competition is designed for grades 9-12. Each competition provides details about requirements and deadlines. Check out these unique and engaging activities for your students.

 

Google Science Fair
Does your school have an annual Science Fair? Introduce your students to the Google Science Fair, open to ages 13-18. Submissions will be accepted until May 18th. Learn more about this annual competition in our TeachersFirst review.

 

Swing Batter!
Swing into Spring with the opening of baseball season and TeachersFirst's Baseball Resources. As Spring training and opening day gets closer, catch your students attention and enthusiasm by teaching using what they love—baseball! TeachersFirst offers resources that correlate baseball and music, architecture, math, history, literature, and many other subjects. Use these resources to help your students hit a home run with learning!

 

CurriConnect Booklists
TeachersFirst offers Lexile® leveled lists (CurriConnects) to find books related to curriculum topics or subject areas. Examples of the topics include 100 Leaders, Animals and Habitats, Award Winning Books, Books for Tough Situations, Math in Use, and countless others. Use these books to build student literacy skills, reinforce the place of curriculum concepts in other contexts, and help students build the important reading strategy of connecting what they read to prior knowledge.

 

Read, Tell, Sell: CCSS through book promotion
Discover ways your students can promote books, contributing to a community of readers and writers and, at the same time, work toward Common Core Standards in Speaking and Listening. Find suggestions, step by step strategies, resources, and tips—from tech-savvy to low-tech or no tech—in the CCSS, Read, Tell, and Sell: CCSS through student book promotions. Check out our entire collection in the Help! I lost my library/media specialist! series.

 

Listen and Read
Whether you teach first grade or high school seniors, your students need to read to be successful. Why not try TeachersFirst’s collection of free audio books, including interactive audio books and audio books with text for readers to follow along.

 

Games to Learn
This week’s Teacher Poll asks: In what way do you use game-based learning the most in your classroom? Place your vote on the teacher poll on the TeachersFirst home page.

 

Featured Sites
This week in our Featured Sites you will find:

  • PenPal Schools
  • Blog About
  • ThemeSpark
  • The Wright Brothers
  • Zeetings
  • With Math I Can
  • Sign Generator
  • Big Ideas Video Series
  • And more

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are reading this March 27, or later, the link above will take you to the Featured Sites for the current week. Find the archived March 21st, 2016 Features here, and don’t miss our many other recent additions from the link at the bottom of the Featured Sites page.

 

The TeachersFirst Team