10/10/08 7th grade Carnivale in Italy

The 7th grade continues to learn more about Italy, in order to prepare a presentation and activities for the school. This week, Ms. Boegel found sites and information on Carnevale, the celebration before lent (known as Mardi Gras in the United States). Carnevale in Venice is a huge celebration, and the emblem of their festivities is the Carnevale mask (called maschera). The celebration has had an interesting history, and has gone through some changes over the years. To share the information compiled by Ms. Boegel, I made a short PowerPoint presentation and linked the Youtube videos that she chose. We also chose a couple of sections of Wikipedia's article, including the section on how Carnevale is celebrated in Venice (masquerade), and Ivrea (festival of oranges). The 7th graders seemed to enjoy the presentation, and took notes for their culture of the month presentation to the school. They decided to make Carnevale masks, and talk about the celebration in their presentation.

Resources:
Carnival
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnival#Italy
Carnevale of Ivrea
http://goitaly.about.com/od/carnevale/a/ivrea_fest.htm
Masks of Venice Carnevale
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q98uD1wNbl0&feature=PlayList&p=87C4963588E38E27&playnext=1&index=1

10/9/08 5th Grade: The Great Depression

Today, Ms. Gonzalez brought the 5th grade down to the St. Julie Learning center, to learn about the great depression. We began with a brief overview of the optimism of the 1920s, and the circumstances that led to stock market speculation. We talked about how stock markets work, and how buying on credit led Americans to end up owing much more then what they had. After discussing briefly the stock market crash and its effect on the economy, we began a 1930s webquest created by students in the Indiana University School of Education. We gave each member of the class a role in the 1930s job market, and discussed how one in four of them would realistically be unemployed. After students were given their job, they used links from the great depression webquest site to research the income of such a worker. With income in hand, they saw the average cost of goods such as winter coats, the types of food they would eat, beds, and appliances. The cost of these goods, relative to their income was surprising. We ran a little short on time, but Ms. Gonzalez expressed interest in following up with her class next week.

Resources:
The Great Depression PowerPoint Presentation: http://webzoom.freewebs.com/centralhistory/A%20C%2014%20US%20CHAPTER%2014.ppt
Webquest:The Great Depression: http://education.iupui.edu/webquests/depression/webquest.htm
1932 Consumer Goods Price List: http://www.todaysteacher.com/TheGreatDepressionWebQuest/1932PriceList.htm

10/7/08 6th grade Animal Classification

This morning, in Mrs. Sheffie's Science class, the students reviewed Animal Classification, and explored how it is used by scientists. Mrs. Sheffie taught the students from a website about Feline Classification (the differences between greater cats and lesser cats, what the Latin names (binomial nomenclature) of cats mean, etc.). We watched two short videos about the differences between the types of big cats, and the social behavior of African big cats. Students were quizzed on the information that they learned, and binomial nomenclature was reviewed before the class ended.


Resources:
Classification of Felidae:http://www.tigertouch.org/cats/overview.html
National Geographic Big Cats:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYm_Mn7Hxag
BBC - Social Behavior of Lions, Tigers, and Cheetahs:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT7ZWfXCd7o
Classification of Living Things Quiz: http://www.quia.com/cb/84120.html

10/3/08 7th Grade Culture of the Month: Italy

Ms. Boegel and I scoured the internet, after school, for resources to teach her class about Italy. We presented a PowerPoint presentation on Italy's most famous cities, landmarks, and foods, as well as the country's most important people. From our research on Saint Francis of Assisi, we shared an an abridged biography and discussed his life. Students were asked how they felt about his choices, and what the stages of his life would have been like. They contributed to a discussion about his change from a life of materialism to a Spartan life following God. We talked about Venice, and stopped to look at satellite images of the city on livemaps (http://maps.live.com). We took class polls to find out student opinions on their favorite Italian foods, had them guess which actors from a list are actually Italian, and which James Bond movie had scenes filmed in Venice. The votes from the class polls were quickly tabulated, and put into our presentation in the form of bar graphs (made using Microsoft Excel) to show the class data visually, and demonstrate how to make graphs using Excel.

Class ended with a treat, we watched a three minute behind the scenes segment about the taping of Casino Royale in Venice. Daniel Craig (the latest James Bond), Martin Campbell (the director of Casino Royale), and others talked about the challenges and triumphs of shooting scenes in Venice. (Other James Bond Movies with parts shot on location in Venice include From Russia With Love and Moonraker)

Resources:
Italy Power Point Presentation (from Cornell University website):
www.einaudi.cornell.edu/Europe/outreach/pdf/brosch/Italy.ppt

Saint Francis Of Assisi:http://www.americancatholic.org/features/Francis/who_was.asp

Live Maps: Venicehttp://maps.live.com

Italian Food Images (for poll):
http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/regional_international/article/0,1000011,FOOD_32084_5922602_03,00.html

Casino Royale Backstage:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gK6m0_42CcI

Italian Vocabulary (We weren't able to get to this site, but it looks like a fun addition):
http://www.pocanticohills.org/italy/language.htm

9/30/08 - Roman Life

We started this morning with a bbc.com website about family and child life in ancient Rome. Ms. Sheffie led a discussion about the site, and asked students to read about and then reflect on what life would be like as a child in Rome. Students were surprised to learn that schooling was only offered to males of privilege who lived in major cities, whose parents could pay tuition. We shifted gears to focus on Roman Mythology, by showing a PowerPoint presentation that was created by a Teacher at King George V school in Hong Kong. The school has British roots, and continues to teach class in English. The presentation was very well prepared, and offered a description of all of the major Gods and Goddesses, and their role in Roman Mythology. To reinforce the material, we had students take a quiz online to test their knowledge as a class, and asked questions about the roman family life website.

bbc.com Roman Family Life: http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/romans/families.shtml
Roman Mythology Powerpoint: http://www.kgv.edu.hk/history/Y8/Superstitions_and_Beliefs/ROMAN%20GODS.ppt
Roman Gods and Goddesses Quiz: http://www.quia.com/rr/149909.html

9/25/08 - 5th Grade Cell Structure

Today we spent our 45 minutes looking at the structure of plant and animal cells, using great website and PowerPoint resources found by Ms. Briceño. The PowerPoint (slightly modified) provided a thorough introduction to cells, their parts, and the difference between plant and animal cells. We watched a youtube video of an amoeba, when we got to the point in the presentation about prokaryotes. We ended with a test on quia.com over organelles (the parts of a cell), and passed the wireless mouse around the classroom to give different tables a chance to answer. The game was called rags to riches, and was similar to Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. After two tries, the class nearly made it to the top.

Cell Powerpoint: http://www.science-class.net/PowerPoints/Cell_structure_function.ppt
Cell Structure Rags To Riches Game: http://www.quia.com/rr/354661.html
Another Cell Structure Rags to Riches Gamehttp://www.quia.com/rr/107541.html
Amoeba Video: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=zTFsn9xt7b0&feature=related
Flagella and Cilia video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGAm6hMysTA&feature=related

Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office 2007 Software has been installed on all computers in the library, and both media carts. It is amazing software with great capabilities, and it is ready for student and staff use.