Teachers First - Thinking Teachers Teaching Thinkers

Learn to write music, play instruments, and sing with Jamzone. To start, choose from links to learn a song, take a lesson, or practice. Choose from the song list of popular music and artists to learn to play a song using options for different instruments. Narrow your choices by a level of difficulty, title, or artist. Use the Take a Lesson link to learn to play several different instruments. Short videos start at beginner levels and move up in difficulty. Practice skills using games and song jams.

tag(s): makerspace (41), music theory (45), musical instruments (46), musical notation (35)

Learn about the top 5 ways humans are negatively impacting the environment in this 10 minute YouTube video. The speaker also outlines the importance of healthy ecosystems and how they work. If your district blocks YouTube, the video may not be viewable.
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tag(s): conservation (83), ecology (100), environment (240), plants (144)

Discover a database of charities that include a rating system done by financial analysts to help you make an informed decision about which charities to support. Top ten lists select charities based on most followed, celebrity related, relying on public contributions, top notch, low rated, a charity worth watching, as well as many more categories. Learn about charities formed to help recent events (Hot Topics) such as Earthquake & Hurricane victims, California Wildfires, Support Veterans and Active Duty Servicemembers, Immigration and Refugees, and many others. The Hot Topics change with the times, of course, so check back regularly. Learn tips for donating such as the Tax Benefits of Giving, a Guide to Volunteering, and the 5 Steps to Informed Giving includes giving in the workplace and questions to ask before donating.
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tag(s): communities (36), problem solving (226), service projects (17)

Plimoth Plantation (that's the original spelling) is a reconstruction of the Pilgrim settlement at Plymouth. Take a field trip to the Plimoth Plantation just in time for Thanksgiving. From Learn at the top menu, find and slide down to Bring Plimoth Patuxet to Your School and take a virtual field trip to an English village and Wampanoag home site from 1627. Go inside a Wetu, or home, and look. Become a historian and uncover what really happened on the first Thanksgiving. Primary sources give accounts from the Wampanoag traditions to the English home of Pilgrim Mary Allerton. Each student will finish with a printed exhibition panel. Dig into your ancestry to find out if you are a pilgrim. Find actual genealogical profiles. Explore the museum collections of artifacts. Find these resources under the Learn tab at the top menu; slide down to Teachers Tools, and scroll down the page until your find the resources menu on the left. Besure to check out the Digital Resources!
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tag(s): colonial america (95), pilgrims (12), thanksgiving (24)

Write your own original books, add images and artwork as illustrations, and read your published books in interactive, online form. There is no fee for the online publication and sharing. This is the ultimate in "digital storytelling." Take advantage of the free apps that make Bookemon even easier to use with any device! Use Bookemon Reader to READ books you created in Bookemon or Bookemon edCenter (available for both iOS and Android). BookPress for iOS devices only allows you to CREATE books from scratch, including using photos from your iPad/iPhone. InstaPress (for iOS only) offers options to make books from documents, pdfs, etc. to be shared on mobile devices as eBooks. Here is an example of a book created by the TeachersFirst Edge editors. Once you set up free membership on this site, students (or teachers) can select to create from a blank start or to use the templates provided. You can also create a book starter of your own as an example so students can follow the prompts you have created. The book creator allows you to upload your own images and to create books from a Word document or PowerPoint file you have already made. EdCenter users can collaborate on books.

After you save and publish the work, share the URL so people can read the entire book online, either among an audience of "just my friends" or publicly. They also offer the embed code to place your books on a class or school web page, wiki, or blog. The easiest option is to copy the address of the new window displaying the interactive book. There is an option to have the book printed for a fee, but this is not required. You can also read books created by others (if they make them public). Use the fully-public option to create learning materials for classes to access year to year for at-home review or reading practice.

This site requires a simple registration. Teachers can set up an edCenter for their school or class in accordance with school policies. See more detailed suggestions "In the Classroom" below and in our sample book! Newer mobile device options include players to view your books on iPads and more.
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tag(s): creative writing (122), digital storytelling (141), writing (315)

The title says it all: "Inspired Picture Writing!" Use this free drag and drop literacy tool to create great sentences inspired by beautiful pictures. Alternatively, add inspirational or humorous captions to pictures. "Lesson Plans" provides learning opportunities and examples for creating captions, compound sentences, or paragraphs. Video tutorials can be found under the FAQs tab. "Explore the Gallery" to see already-created PicLits as well as comments and ratings. After selecting a picture (or using the one they provide) and dragging a word onto the screen, choose different forms of the word by using the drop-down menu next to the word. Move your words anywhere on the screen for creative writing. You can also click "freestyle" instead to type in your own words instead of choosing from their list. Word lists change, depending on the image selected. If your district blocks YouTube, the videos may not be viewable.

Registering for a PicLits account requires the use of an email address. PicLits can be used without an account but you are unable to save or blog about their creation without an account. A class account can be created instead of individual student accounts. However, it does not show which work is attributable to which student. You may want to require that students initial their contributions in order to get credit. All work on the site can be seen without a login. All projects are public. NOTE: Our editors regret that PicLits occasionally allows advertising on their home page to include images that are not classroom-friendly. Teachers should preview to determine whether or not your students can ignore the ads.
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tag(s): creative writing (122), digital storytelling (141), images (269), sentences (22)