"StumbleUpon" Reading Resources

Check out these three StumpleUpon resources that may be useful for reading/literacy activities:

• Free Audio Books featuring classics like Huckleberry Finn, Treasure Island and Alice in Wonderland.  Just click the files and you can play these stories while students listen or read along in their own books.
• Tons of Books are available on this site, including short stories and poems.
• Short Stories can be found on this site, both contemporary and classic.

I found these resources on StumbleUpon, which you can use to find sites of interest.

Game: Proofreading Online

Students can put their proofreading skills to the test with Spelling Connections' Online game, which provides short paragraphs for students to edit.  Players can choose their grade level, read the passages and edit mistakes using proofreading marks.  Spelling errors have to be corrected.  Students are told how many mistakes are in each paragraph, and they have a limited number of tries for each round.  There are about 30 passages per grade level, so students can get plenty of practice.


This would be ideal for a computer station; it is a good way to have students practice editing and using proofreading marks.   Try it!

image: microsoft

Tons of Classroom Decoration Ideas

Go over to the The Virtual Vine's collection of bulletin boards and door decoration ideas.  They have a ton of posted pictures that may be just the inspiration you need for your classroom decorations.  Several pictures would be very fitting for back-to-school themes.  


My favorite is the fall bulletin board with the owls sitting on the tree.  Great for autumn, which is just around the corner.   Check it out!

image: microsoft

Math Activities: "Measure Yourself!"

Here is a simple math activity provided by LHS kids.  It combines practice with measuring, technology, and animal facts!


Students need to use a ruler or meter stick to measure parts of their body (ear, foot and entire height) in centimeters.  Next, they enter their measurements into the website.  The website compares their measurements to that of some animals.  You can use that information to ask them math problems about their data (How many centimeters smaller are your feet than an elephant's?  How much taller than a bobcat are you?).


Also, the final step on the site features some other cool, printable math activities:

• Print out a nanometer ruler and measure tiny material, recording their data on the provided chart.
• Get out your stopwatches and have students record how many times they blink, breathe and do other things in one minute.
• Students can measure the classroom with their own feet.  As a partner activity, this could be a good math center.  You can also make a trace of your own foot and have them compare their measurements with your foot, and go home and measure their bedroom with their feet.
• Students can practice measuring and estimation with this activity as they examine a baby elephant's footprint.  They will need string and some coins to record their data

Great resources!  Have fun measuring!

image:  microsoft

Math Center: Division Dash!

• Grade Level:  3-5, or any students needing to practice dividing two-digit numbers by a one digit number
• Operations:  division, and addition to determine points
• Materials:  cards numbered 1-9, score sheet, paper and a pencil
• Steps:
• The rules of the game are outlined in detail here.
• The basic idea of the game is for students to flip over three of the cards, which will be their two-digit dividend and their one-digit divisor.  (Let's say they flip over 5, 6 and 2.  They can divide 56 by 2.)  Students will find their quotient (ignoring remainders) and that will be their score.  After each turn, they add their quotients up for their new score.  The first person to reach 100 wins the game.  This is a two-person activity.
• Possible Extension:  
• Increase the number of numbered cards in the stack, and have students flip over more cards for two-digit by two-digit division, or larger problems.
• Add a timer.  Students have to reach 100 within a time limit, and each problem has to be accurate to win.

image:  microsoft

Time Filler: License Plate Puzzles

Got a few minutes of class time to fill?


Substitute teachers in particular have questions about how to fill a few minutes of class time.  As I always say, a classroom with nothing to do can quickly erupt into chaos.  You'd be surprised how rowdy a class can get just 10 minutes before dismissal, especially.


What I like to do is have a few brainteasers, short stories or puzzles on hand just to occupy students' minds for those few minutes until we transition to something else.  Kids usually like things like that because they can be done orally as a class, and they're fun!


I found these License Plate Puzzles from Brain Candy, and all you have to do is print them out and save them for work in case you ever have the opportunity to use them in class.  You can display your print out on those neat document cameras I love or, if the class doesn't have one, you can just copy the license plates on the board for all to see.


Essentially, these are just rebus puzzles in the form of vanity plates.  See if students can figure out what the message is saying for each one.


If you have a few more minutes to fill, challenge students to create their own vanity plates on paper.  You can even introduce it with a whole story about how they've just gotten their first car and they really want to make a statement with their vanity plates.  Tell them they can only use letters and numbers, and no more than 6-7 spaces to create a message.


Cool way to exercise the brain!


Here is another list of vanity plate messages.  Make sure they're school-appropriate.  ;-)

"Santa Claus, Indiana": Geography Activity

Ever heard of Santa Claus, Indiana?  Would your students believe that it's a real place?


Use interesting town names as the basis for a geography classroom activity.  This idea comes from Education World's "Boring" Geography Lesson, named after the town of Boring, Maryland.  


Give students a list of interesting town names, like this one.  Choose some of your favorites (I like Ding Dong, Texas) and make a simple map/atlas assignment asking students to find the latitude and longitude of these places, or use any other maps skills you would like them to practice.  Education World makes other suggestions for this activity, such as having students make creative newspaper headlines using the strange town names.  Have students use a map to create a list of unique town names they've discovered.  The class could also use the internet in lieu of paper maps for information about these towns.

• How miles away is Whynot, MS from Jackson, MS?
• In which state would one find Loyalsockville?
• Is Unalaska, Alaska east or west of Juneau, Alaska?