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Are You Smarter Than Your 5th Grade Teacher?

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Are You Smarter Than Your 5th Grade Teacher?

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Interactive Game over The Declaration of Independence

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ARE YOU SMARTER THAN YOUR 5TH GRADE TEACHER

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The use of technology to engage students actively in learning has naturally exploded in recent years. It only makes sense as many children learn best through interactive engagement with technology. This is primarily due to the times in which we live. We are in the prime of the digital age. A time where children are exposed to and bombarded by all forms of technology from birth. Unlike previous generations, where the use of technology was a learned behavior, this generation of students is able to use technology instinctively.

Teachers and students are able to utilize technology to enhance learning and to investigate critical concepts actively. Teachers must be willing to include technology-based components within every lesson to help students bridge gaps. There are many interactive social studies websites available that teachers can introduce to their students allowing them to make those critical social studies connections. Here, we explore five terrific social studies websites that actively engage students across the social studies genre including geography, world history, United States history, map skills, etc.

This downloadable program allows users to travel virtually anywhere in the world via the Internet. It is astounding to think that a person living in New York can travel to Arizona to see the majestic Grand Canyon or to Paris to visit the Eiffel Tower with the simple click of a mouse. The 3D satellite imagery associated with this program is outstanding. Users can visit virtually any place near or far at any time through this program. Want to visit Easter Island? You can be there in seconds. The program offers tutorials for users, but the features are remarkably easy to use and applicable to students from 1st grade and up.

This is a terrific website loaded with fun, interactive games devoted to learning about civics-related topics. Those topics include citizenship & participation, separation of power, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the Judicial Branch, the Executive Branch, the Legislative Branch, and budgeting. Each game has a specific learning objective in which it is built around, but users will love the interactive storylines within each game. Games such as "Win the White House" allows users a simulated opportunity to manage their campaign strategically to become the next president by raising funds, campaigning, polling voters, etc. The site is probably best suited for middle school-aged students and up.

A comprehensive collection of historical data on United States history. This site has it all and includes online textbook, interactive learning modules, timelines, flash movies, virtual exhibits, etc. This site is dedicated to using technology to enhance learning and is the perfect compliment to extend learning for students. This site would be beneficial for students in 3rd grade and up. There is so much information on this website that users could spend hours upon hours and never read the same piece or do the same activity twice.

This is a fun and engaging website designed for students in grades 3 through 6. However, older students would also benefit from the activities. This site has over 50 interactive social studies activities and games over topics such as geography, current events, ancient civilizations, the environment, U.S. history, and U.S. government. This terrific collection will have users actively engaged in learning key social studies concepts while having fun too.

Run by the Smithsonian, this website offers a huge library of resources for all grade levels. Students can view videos, artifacts, and other interactive and static resources covering a range of historical and social events. The site has a particulary strong set of filters, allowing users to narrow down their searches by subfield, era, grade level, type of media, and more.

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5 Terrific Social Studies Websites You Should Be Using

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Teachers must use technology, such as these five interactive social studies websites, to actively engage students in learning and build connections.

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ClassTools.net is a good tool for high school. One of the resources on the site is Fakebook, a made up version of Facebook that allows students to change the profile picture, name, info and post as the character they've developed. "Very quickly you can take this fake Facebook page and turn it into something that seems as if it was created by a historic figure," Langenhorst said. It requires research to prepare a page like that and has the added benefit of allowing different students acting as historical characters to post on one another's walls. "It's a great way for kids to show they understand different interactions that may have happened in history," Langenhorst said.

In a space race, students are randomly assigned a color, and as they answer the questions in the quiz, rockets in those colors advance. Kids are working as a team, but they don't know who else is on their team. "It is such an easy, phenomenal way to get kids excited about their learning," Langenhorst said. "I've got 12th graders who are still excited about space race." Student responses with Socrative can go directly into a gradebook, or just offer some insight into whether students are picking up on the key ideas.

Educreations is another presentation tool that can aid in flipping the classroom or letting kids explain their thinking. "Educreations allows students to record their voice, draw and import pictures," Langenhorst said. She often uses this tool to spot-check understanding. The free version limits how many Educreations can be made on one account, but teachers in Rock Valley just change old ones. They don't pay for the premium version and still get a lot of use out of what's accessible free of charge.

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Favorite Tech Tools For Social Studies Classes

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ClassTools.net is a good tool for high school. One of the resources on the site is Fakebook, a made up version of Facebook that allows students to change the profile picture, name, info and post as the character they've developed.

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Come check out the awesome things happening in Ms. Nash's 5th grade class!!

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Acceptable Use Policy

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Creative Educator lesson plans can help you provide your middle-school students with an engaging and creative approach to content learning.

Students in middle school need to be challenged with creative approaches that get them thinking and moving beyond rote responses. Creative technology projects done for a real purpose can engage them in the work necessary high-level content learning at this age.

Depending on your student's abilities, you may also want to explore sixth-grade lesson plans.

More sites to help you find success in your classroom

Rubric Maker

Create custom rubrics for your classroom.

Graphic Organizer Maker

Create custom graphic organizers for your classroom.

Pics4Learning

A curated, copyright-friendly image library that is safe and free for education.

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Technology Lesson Plans for Middle School

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Students in middle school need to be challenged with creative approaches that get them thinking and moving beyond rote responses. Creative technology projects done for a real purpose can engage them in the work necessary high-level content learning at this age. Depending on your student's abilities, you may also want to explore sixth-grade lesson plans.

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Middle school is a fun age for students, but it can also be a time where it is more difficult to hold their interest. As students get older, stacking cups and other simple tasks may bore them. They want to be challenged in new ways that meet their intellectual and emotional maturity. Challenging your middle schooler in the maths and sciences can take some creativity, but it's very important to their development and their education.

When kids are able to get hands-on with topics that interest and challenge them, it makes learning so much more fun and the things they learn really stick with them. This is where STEM comes in. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math and it's really useful to include this in your student's curriculum, but it might seem easier to find STEM activities for younger students. Pinterest is FULL of activities geared toward preschool and elementary, for example, but as the student gets older, finding challenging activities is harder.

So, what can you do?

Here are some STEM activities for middle school:

Build things from cardboard - This can be a lot of fun and very creative. It's also a great way to flex scientific brain muscles. You can build structures, mimic landmarks, or other recognizable things.

Learn to code at CodeAcademy - Most kids of this age love to code. There are so many fun ways to enjoy coding and this site makes it easier for students to learn.

Build an inventor's kit - Here's an example but you can do yours any way you want. Let your budding scientist or inventor build a kit of their own with the items in it they really want to build with. They can even personalize it and
decorate it, if they want.

Practice engineering - Here are some engineering project examples to get you started, but don't stop there. You can find many more examples online, or research your own. It can be a lot of fun to do these with a group of students so they can also practice their team building skills while working on engineering.

Do stop motion animation - Stop motion animation is very popular with kids of this age who usually love making videos and sharing them online. There are even tools and toys you can buy to make this easier.

There are also some resources from Teaching Channel that are geared toward STEM for middle schoolers:

Graphing Linear Equations-Full Body Style: A hands-on activity to get students engaged in math. Students graph a line given slope-intercept on a giant coordinate plane.

Turning social activities like playing board games and darts into math lessons: Shows how middle school math teachers are making math fun. Turning social activities at a residential school into math lessons.

STEM in Action: Teaching Channel Presents provides an hour of inspiration for middle school teachers. Students collaborate to complete engineering challenges requiring design, collaboration, calculations, and predictions.
These are definitely worth adding to your list, but they are not the only places online to get more ideas for STEM activities.

Here are some STEM resources that you can find online that might help your middle schooler as well:

These STEM activities should give you some great ideas for your middle schoolers, but you don't have to stop here. We hope that this list will give you a springboard for even more ideas. In fact, it can be great to let your students get creative and come up with some of their own ideas.

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STEM Activities for Middle School - Ben and Me

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Middle school is a fun age for students, but it can also be a time where it is more difficult to hold their interest. As students get older, stacking cups and other simple tasks may bore them. They want to be challenged in new ways that meet their intellectual and emotional maturity.

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5 Reasons to Integrate Technology into Your Classroom

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5 Reasons to Integrate Technology into Your Classroom

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Think that integrating technology into the classroom will only distract students and marginalize educators?

Think again. Since students are already interested and engaged in technology, teachers can harness that attention for educational purposes. Incorporating the internet, laptops, tablets and even smartphones into the curriculum has many benefits for teachers and students alike.

1. Engages students and creates active learners.

Using a computer, tablet, or other device encourages self-directed learning and creates an active participant in the learning process, rather than the passive learners found in a lecture environment. Interactive lesson plans can help turn "boring" conceptual subjects like math and science into fun, engaging, and educational activities for students.

2. Encourages individual learning and growth.

No one learns in the same way or at the same pace, but technology can level-set the classroom. For example, technology can provide accommodations for struggling or disabled students, and virtual lesson plans provide individualized instruction for all. Students can learn at their own speed, reviewing difficult concepts or skipping ahead as needed. Additionally, access to the internet gives students access to a broad range of resources to conduct research.
Ready to get started? Four steps to take to help you prepare a 1:1 classroom.
3. Facilitates peer collaboration.

In a research project conducted by the U.S. Department of Education, many educators reported that technology facilitated peer collaboration. They noted that when students were assigned to small groups for technology-based projects, those students who already had certain computer and technology skills routinely assisted less skilled students. Peer tutoring, mentoring, and collaboration were the unexpected results of the technology integration.

4. Prepares students for the real world.

Technology is an integral part of how we work and live, every day. Teaching students how to use technology to learn, research, collaborate, and solve problems from an early age will better prepare them for their careers. It can also help reduce the fear of new technology in the future by familiarizing them with the discovery process for each new tool.

5. Creates more engaged and successful teachers.

Using technologies like virtual lesson plans and internet resources can help free up time - both in developing and delivering the curriculum. This allows teachers to spend more time with the students who are struggling, ensuring the whole class is better prepared for tests and advancement.

As an educator, integrating technology into the curriculum is key. In other words, don't just add a piece of technology to a lesson plan just because you can. Make sure you understand:

How to use the technology

How to train students on using the technology

How the technology supports your curriculum

What benefits the technology brings to your lesson

An easy way to introduce technology is to start small. Try using a document camera to project textbook images on a screen, or introduce a website a week that corresponds with your lesson plan.

The point is not to let technology take over your classroom, but to integrate it. Traditional teaching processes like lectures, writing papers, and analog testing should not be abandoned. When combined effectively with the methods you're used to, technology can help you and help your students.
Capella University offers over 20 free professional development courses focused on educational technology, with options in three proficiency levels: limited technology experience, moderate experience, or teacher leaders/PD professionals.

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5 Reasons to Incorporate Technology into Your Classroom

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Think that integrating technology into the classroom will only distract students and marginalize educators? Think again. Since students are already interested and engaged in technology, teachers can harness that attention for educational purposes. Incorporating the internet, laptops, tablets and even smartphones into the curriculum has many benefits for teachers and students alike.