Excellent Science Videos & Lesson Plans for Teachers

Alan Alda's Scientific American Frontiers Program has been on air for over 15 years now and over that time they have put together hundreds of amazing documentaries for students of all ages.  PBS have now compiled all that video into a teacher resource site that teachers and students can not only watch but there are now also attached lesson plans for primary and secondary students.  If you love science then this is definitely worth a look.  Take a look at it here.

Great Bullying Analogy for Students

A teacher in New York was teaching her class about bullying and gave them the following exercise to perform. She had the children take a piece of paper and told them to crumple it up, stomp on it and really mess it up but do not rip it. Then she had them unfold the paper, smooth it out and look at how scarred and dirty is was. She then told them to tell it they’re sorry. Now even though they said …they were sorry and tried to fix the paper, she pointed out all the scars they left behind. And that those scars will never go away no matter how hard they tried to fix it. That is what happens when a child bullies another child, they may say they’re sorry but the scars are there forever. The looks on the faces of the children in the classroom told her the message hit home.

The Ultimte lesson Plan Search Engine

Don't forget to use our lesson plan search engine to find your next teaching resource.  None of it is commercial and we have actually visited and verified the sites that the results come from.  If you would like to recommend some great teaching resource sites for us to include in the search engine we'd love to hear from you.  Access the lesson plan search engine here.

E-Learning Scope and Sequence Chart - What to teach and When

I put together this really handy chart to advise teachers what they should be teaching in ICT / E-Learning and when.  It is linked to VELS but really applies to any curriculum and you should feel confident in delivering these activities to the year level recommended.  Download the PDF File here.

Digital Literacy lesson - Create your own movie Trailers

This lesson examines how Hollywood film studios use a range of persuasive strategies when creating a movie trailer to try and entice the audience to cinemas to see their latest blockbuster or in some cases raspberry.  Students will explore these elements in detail and then create a film trailer of their own that includes them.  You can either download the lesson as a PowerPoint here or simply use the slideshare below.  Enjoy.

Digital literacy – persuasive movie trailers.

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Digital Literacies Lesson - Persuasive Text

Here is this week digital literacy lesson on persuasive texts.  It is suitable for students from grade 3 up and would take around 90 minutes to complete.  You can download it here or simply use the slideshare below.

Digital literacies – persuasive writing

View more presentations from Kevin Cummins.

Digital Literacies Task - Unpacking a Seed

Thanks to Mark Muldoon and Cindy Armstrong for their assistance in putting this together this is a great 90 minute lesson about unpacking a seed.  Unpacking a seed essentially means using an image or an object to inspire your students to delve really deep into the concepts related to that as a group and produce a great piece of writing based on the ideas which come from that.  You can  directly download the full PowerPoint lesson plan here or simply use the slideshare below.  Enjoy

Digital Literacies unpacking a seed

View more presentations from Kevin Cummins.

Learn Something New Every Day

It doesn't get much simpler than this.  Every day a new fact is posted up for you to use on your IWB.  You might use it for a starting point in literacy.  As a research point to follow up on Depending upon the fact the options are aplenty. 

Essentially this offers a visual discussion starter based on some quirky facts from our quirky planet.  The site is here.  Example included below.

Personally I think it would make a great widget to be added to a  class blog, but that is just one mans opinion.