Teachers First - Thinking Teachers Teaching Thinkers

What do you do in a day? Join a worldwide classroom sharing project for students to learn about life in other schools and cultures. This teacher-driven project, begun as a collaboration between schools in Tai Pei and California, collects "unique student-generated global dayta" about students' daily life using a simple, online Google Form. Day + data = DAYTA. The dayta is available for your classroom to use in loads of different math, social studies, and writing activities. Click to add your class using the Contact button. The project encourages you to form collaborations with another school. Click the link to the Idea Guide to find curriculum connections and lesson ideas. The project is adding new classes, so why not join in? Be sure to check out the community area where you can share your successes and questions with other teachers.

tag(s): data (250), cross cultural understanding (214),

Plan and build interactive presentations directly from your Google Drive! Share your presentation on a projector or interactive whiteboard. Your participants can contribute to your presentation using their own device! You and your students will find Pear Deck to take the stress out of presenting and following a presentation, reinforcing SEL (social-emotional learning). Simply install Pear Deck and go to your Google Drive. Next, click Create and choose the Pear Deck icon (in your Google Drive). An untitled Pear Deck file can be found in your drive. Click on "Untitled Pear Deck" and rename this file. To create slides, choose "Normal slide" for standard text slides that are not interactive. Add images and text blocks, and a title. Choose a "Draggable slide" to enter a question for input. Add a line or dot for participants to answer the question. Use the "Multiple Choice" slide to enter a question and answer choices. To present, click "Start Presenting." You can use the option to "Open Session Dashboard" and see all of the participants who joined the presentation. You can also choose "Open Projector View." While presenting, use the "Add a Question" tool to enter a last minute question. That can be as simple as a thumbs up or thumbs down choice to check on understanding. Make sure you "End Session" to save the results from the questions. The free account provides basic interactive questions and is especially good for formative and summative assessments and automatic graded answere. Help can be found by clicking on Menu and then Support. Find more information about Google Drive here.
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tag(s): gamification (122), differentiation (129), assessment (239), emotions (82), slides (103), social and emotional learning (106),

Enjoy science explained musically through clever songs. Discover weekly additions of cleverly written and illustrated songs on topics such as the Periodic Table, How Your Brain Works, 8 Sick Remedies That Actually Work, and more. Each video explains the science behind a surprising fact or the scientific answer to a question like "Can you really be scared to death?" The New Periodic Table song is a must-see. Find it by browsing through the Popular section. Note that this channel is intended for the general, adult public, so some topics (such as sex) are for mature audiences! If your district blocks YouTube, videos may not be viewable.

tag(s): video (457), periodic table (71),

Learn money management skills with this thirteen-step tutorial covering topics such as money management, banking, and retirement planning. Choose any lesson to begin. It isn't necessary to go in order, but it may be easier to follow as basic concepts build upon each other throughout lessons. Lessons include quizzes, worksheets, and interactive calculators in addition to informative articles.

tag(s): financial literacy (129), banks (12),

Discover what influences myths from ancient cultures have on contemporary cultures. Add pizazz to your unit on mythology. Learn about famous writers. Explore the detailed lessons and plans. Visit Myths From Around the World, a writing activity that teaches about myths from fifteen regions of the world. Read the myths of ancient Greece. Find directions to write your own myth with Jane Yolen's help. Lessons instruct the learning of the characteristics of a myth through reading, comparisons, and making inferences. Peruse the unit on Heroes and Legends, which includes lesson plans for examining heroes and their common characteristics. Furthermore, there is an Inuit unit that dives into the myths, legends, and stories from the Inuit culture. Learn about the Hero Twins from the Mayan culture. There is much here to explore for all ages!
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tag(s): myths and legends (34), enrichment (19), digital storytelling (300),

Big Brown Bear interactives are for whole class teaching in support of the National Literacy Strategy. Activities include several keyboarding and literacy resources. Literacy resources begin with virtual magnetic letters and numbers; continue to phoneme frames, counting, and blends. There are also activities to support learning nouns, verbs, adjectives, and bingo. This site was created in the UK. American English speakers may notice some slight spelling differences.
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tag(s): maps (415), keyboarding (48), literacy (184), preK (423), numbers (259), verbs (52), prefixes (22), suffixes (21),

Learn about the world with these simple geography interactives. Choose from many different activities about continents, oceans, landforms, capitals, lakes, volcanoes, metropolitan areas, and much more. Choose any activity and click to start. To use the activities are simple. Simply click on the answer to each question. If your answer is incorrect, try again. If it is correct, move on to the next question. Your correct score and number of attempts displays throughout the game. If you choose to give up, all correct responses will display.
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tag(s): atmosphere (38), capitals (30), earth (344), flags (30), countries (116), states (202), rivers (32), mountains (23), deserts (20), volcanoes (100), landforms (56), oceans (243), continents (66), game based learning (255),

Canva presents a simple way to design almost anything with drag and drop technology. Create custom timelines, posters, business cards, infographics, presentations, badges, flyers, charts and graphs, and more using a custom layout or a blank page. Begin by choosing the type of design you want to create. Choose pre-made templates or design your own. Upload images from your computer or your Facebook account. Change your background, add text, and personalize as desired. When complete, choose link and publish to save and download your creation as an image or PDF file or copy the link to share via URL. For creating charts and graphs go to the Features tab. There are iOS & Android apps (free) available for this tool. Canva has recently made the desktop application available for Windows as well as Mac OS. Note: you must register (with email and password) before you can access this site.
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tag(s): DAT device agnostic tool (248), graphic design (81), posters (71), slides (103), images (487),

Where have you been? Create a color-coded map of the United States or Canada that highlights states that you have visited. Go through the list of states and choose a color for each state. There are four colors to choose from indicating your amount of time spent in that state. Just click on the state and then find your color. Or use the list of states found under the map. Choose an image width and pick the "Create" button to make your personalized image map. Save the map to your computer in png format. Please note: this is part of an individual's travel blog, and posts are not moderated for school use. Be sure to check out content links before sharing or student use. Or better yet, advise students NOT to click on any external links.

tag(s): north america (25), maps (415), states (202),

Use this tool to design a comic with dialogue between two characters. Use the pre-drawn backgrounds and characters. Add a title for each scene/page and add dialogue between the two characters. These are quick and easy three page comics. You can create without an account. However, if you want to SAVE, you must register for a free account (email required).

tag(s): comics and cartoons (113), communication (166), summarizing (28),

Hungry for English currently features over 35 YouTube videos. Topics range from basic greetings, colors, and numbers to families, countries, the verb "to be," and more. These videos allow you to see, hear, and practice all the lessons in live format. You can also participate in making more videos by sending in your own pictures. If your disctrict blocks YouTube, the videos may not be viewable.
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tag(s): multilingual (72), video (457), grammar (310), verbs (52), pronunciation (49),