The Whose Clues? Nathan Levy

Whose Clues? is "The Famous Name Guessing Game" that provides a fun, change-of-pace activity anytime, anywhere! Identify a mystery person or character with the help of clever clues! This 'Famous Name Guessing Game" encourages deductive reasoning and cooperative learning.
http://www.storieswithholes.com/whoseclues2.html

Nathan Levy - Stories With Holes!

The famous logic stories that make kids think! Each book contains new stories for children ages 7-77. Stimulate pupil critical and creative thinking skills.
http://www.storieswithholes.com/natlev100inq.html

Fun With Foldables!

http://www.eemes.ccs.k12.nc.us/Candler/PDF/foldables.pdf

The Homework Debate

http://www.glencoe.com/sec/teachingtoday/educationupclose.phtml/45

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/11/AR2006091100908.html

http://www.time.com/time/question/homework.html

http://blogs.chron.com/schoolzone/2006/09/the_great_homework_debate.html

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/10/08/ING0FLHNM21.DTL

Great Spare Time Reading

http://www.whygendermatters.com/

The Great Math Debate

Info I found.

http://www.edreform.com/index.cfm?fuseAction=siteSearch

http://postgazette.com/neigh_city/20021024math1024P3.asp

http://www.nctm.org/news/ext_articles/2003-10_milwaukee.htm

States Debate

One of our Social Studies' benchmarks is locating/identifying the 50 states. While teaching this over the course of a few years, I have often wondered about the "usefulness" of this skill. What are the thoughts out there? Is it important for kids to know the location of the 50 states given a blank map, or is it more important for them to know where to look to find the answers?

Text Structure Texts

I'm looking for ideas... what texts are you using to teach text structure, e.g. cause/effect, main idea/details, chronological?

Voyageur Field Trip

Field Trip Idea: Last spring our fifth grade classes at Princeton had the opportunity to take a trip down the Fox River in a voyageur canoe. The trip was led by two reenactors that did a nice job of making history come to life! The time period was early American history at the time of the fur trade. The students learned French songs to sing as they traveled down the Fox. They also saw Father Marquette's cross and visited a Native American tepee along the way. If this sounds like something of interest to you let me know and I'll get you some contact information.

handwriting

It seems that cursive handwriting is becoming something that we do not need to spend lots of time teaching.

5th Grade Hotlist

To control the sites my students cruise through, I've developed a hotlist of pre-approved sites. These are sites I use throughout the year and update as needed. I've also linked it to the school's web site so that kids could access it from home or the public library if they want more time on a particular site:

http://www.kn.att.com/wired/fil/pages/list5thgradsa.html

By clicking on the "Filamentality" icon at the bottom, you can get in and make a hotlist of your own.

The Cursive Debate

Here are some interesting discussions.

http://web2.unt.edu/news/story.cfm?story=10067 http://ezraklein.typepad.com/blog/2006/10/cursive.html http://www.kimberlyswygert.com/archives/001469.html

Writers Workshop Ideas

Websites with ideas about writers workshop.

http://www.teachers.net/lessons/posts/681.html

http://www.teachersfirst.com/lessons/writers/writer-4.html

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/cws/wworkshop/writer_resources/writing_tips/writers_block.htm

Persuasive Writing Ideas

Here are some links to websites on the topic of persuasive writing.

http://www.kent.k12.wa.us/curriculum/writing/elem_writing/Bib/Persuasive.htm

http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/writing/index.asp?topic=Persuasive

http://www.ettc.net/writing/PDFfiles/Writing%20Diamond.pdf

A Word a Day

http://www.evan-moor.com/catalog/book.asp?CID=16&SID=1&BID=379

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A Real Time Saver

Here's a little something that I've learned over the course of time. Whenever we start a new trade book, I make up bound workbooks ahead of time. My pages come from the Portals series by Perfection Learning and Literature Units by Teacher Created Resources. This is a lot of up front busy work and preparation, but here's the advantages:
1. I get a chance to review the entire unit and see where I can integrate other subjects
2. I don't have to hand out and collect a bazillion papers.
3. Parents can use it at home with their child.

I am fortunate to have a parent volunteer that does my copying and a Teacher Assistant that binds the books for me so I know this is easier said than done, but let me tell you, I did my first 5th grade trade book this year (Number the Stars-Lois Lowery) without a workbook and I just about went nuts with all the paper. Then I did the second trade book (Bridge to Terabithia-Katherine Paterson) with a workbook and WHAT A DIFFERENCE!

The one thing I forgot to do was cross out the old page numbers and page number the new workbook! Oops, it was a mess!

Now I am working with Walk Two Moons (Sharon Creech) and the pages are numbered it's slicker than ever!