A message to and for Substitute Teachers: What should I show students? (A request to "traditional teachers": What do you want us substitute teachers to show to your students?)

Robert Ballard
and Noah's flood

What should I show my students?

Ballard and Noah's Flood

 Genesis tells how “God saw that the wickedness of man was great” and decided to destroy all of creation. Only Noah, “who found grace in the eyes of the Lord,” his family, and the animals aboard the ark survived to repopulate the planet.

• Older than Genesis is the Babylonian epic of Gilgamesh, a king who embarked on a journey to find the secret of immortality. Along the way, he met Utnapishtim, survivor of a great flood sent by the gods. Warned by Enki, the water god, Utnapishtim built a boat and saved his family and friends, along with artisans, animals, and precious metals.

Columbia University geologists William Ryan and Walter Pitman wondered what could explain the preponderance of flood legends. Their theory: As the Ice Age ended and glaciers melted, a wall of seawater surged from the Mediterranean into the Black Sea.

• During the Ice Age, Ryan and Pitman argue, the Black Sea was an isolated freshwater lakesurrounded by farmland.

Should I do pushups in front of the students?   Should I challenge some of them to show their strength?  Should I get them into an attitude of "comfortable with being uncomfortable"?  ELSLeaders.com

These thoughts come from "how do we treat polar bears in zoos?"
 Their meals include mackerel, chicken, beef, horsemeat, and what the keepers refer to as “bear chow”. Every day the keepers encourage Gus and Ida to hunt for their food by hiding fish in frozen blocks, inside toys or in the rock crevices of their habitat. This stimulation keeps Gus and Ida active and healthy.
  
Do we put the "fish" (information) in an interesting box that is fun (and a challenge or frustrating) for the students to find?

Here is a short list
 http://www.travelpod.com/traveler-iq/europe 

Traveler IQ Challenge -- a clever way of showing information about geography, culture and some elements of history.   GO ahead, try it

QUIA  Put The Odyssey in Order
Middle School Hub

Quiz Hub

Quiz Hub: Educational Quiz Games (iPad Compatible)

quizhub.com/

Quiz Hub

Quiz Hub ... Game Multiplication Facts: Practice Elementary: U.S. Map Game Geography: States & Capitals Middle School Math: Algebra English:

National Geographic Explorer 
These quizzes are challenging.. study Tang and Ming dynasties to prepare for this test
Today's GeoBee Quiz - National Geographic

www.nationalgeographic.com/geobee/quiz/today/

National Geographic

Play the GeoBee Challenge game and test your geography IQ with daily trivia questions from the National Geographic Bee. Plus: See how you stack up against ...

Animal Quizzes - National Geographic

animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/quiz/

National Geographic

Test your animal knowledge with quizzes from National Geographic.

Travel Quizzes -- National Geographic

travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/travel-quizzes/

National Geographic

Quizzes on countries, cities, and parks from National Geographic.

National Parks Quiz -- National Geographic

travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/national.../quiz...

National Geographic

See how much you know about the U.S. National Park System with this trivia quiz fromNational Geographic.

Puzzles & Quizzes -- National Geographic Kids

www.nationalgeographic.com/kids/.../puzzlesquizze...

National Geographic

Bend your brain with these fun puzzles and quizzes from National Geographic Kids magazine.

Robert Ballard and "Noah's flood" and the Black sea   national geographic (put those search terms and see what comes out)

National Geographic: Noah's Flood/Black Sea Expedition

www.nationalgeographic.com/blacksea/ax/frame.html

National Geographic

Marine explorer Robert (Bob) Ballard discovers proof of a flood of biblical proportions and finds ancient Roman shipwrecks in the Black Sea.

Black Sea Mysteries @ nationalgeographic.com

ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0105/feature3/

National Geographic

Explore the depths of the Black Sea for evidence of Noah's flood with this downloadable map and find out what Bob Ballard discovered.

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Here are other videos.

Now that you have seen these topics, what should I show your students?   


Here are some videos related to Dan Heath
(I composed a blog post about screenshots from Dan Heath's work)

Dan Heath (here)

tinyURL.com/HeathEveryStudent

http://tinyurl.com/HeathEveryStudent

Multiplication.com  for fun to practice basic multiplication

Tokyo Subway Rush Hour

A proposal for an after-school learning center: any comments?

What parts of our current curriculum are like "hunting saber-toothed tigers"?

See this insightful PDF

Here's an extract

TheSaberToothCurriculum

======

I'm pitching the following idea to a private school:   Create an after-school academy of skills.

Making videos
Building personal learning plans
Learning from books that are not required reading in school
Typing (touch typing, 10-finger typing)
map reading



====

These ideas could also be included.  This is a letter that I wrote to a 96-year-old mentor who guided me in learning about mythology, language, music and art:

Hello Jack

I’m moving ahead with making an after-school program at a local private academy.  I meet with the principal on June 6.   I’m going to tell him about how you raised your kids with music and books around them, plus art, and I’m going to propose that the after school center could have lots of posters on the wall.

I’m going to propose the following for the “community school after school program”

a) Museums (art, science and history):  Visiting museums virtually, the Louvre, for example, and we’ll walk through the museum via the computer.  I’ll tell them stories about places I saw when I was 17 and 18.

b) Geography:  I’ll tell them about climbing mountains

c) Myths and imagination:  I’ll tell them stories from mythology (these kids are grades 5 to 8, so some of them have myths, but they don’t know about Athens or Lindos.)   So it’s back to the computer to see the donkeys of Lindos and the delightful water of the Mediterranean.

d) History:  I’m going to tell them about Annecy and Talloire.   I’m going to tell them about the summer of 1938 and how you were in a small town south of Munich and watched as two national leaders met.  I’m going to tell the students these stories that you told me.

e)  Biographies:  I hope you will consider putting your life story into an ebook, at least parts of it, so that I can have the students read with me, instead of just hearing me tell the stories.  The images of the newspaper articles and your encounters with FDR and Eleanor are lovely.

f)  Blackboards and Overhead Projectors:  I want to tell them the stories of the early forms of instructional technology and how you introduced me by phone to Paul Wagner, the 30-year-old wunderkind who led Rollins for several years.

g)  Languages:  In short, the after-school program will have a lot of your guidance in the program.  I’m going to insist that kids try to speak some French and some Spanish, so that they get a sense of the beauty of words in English (and so they can see WHY beauty is spelled so crazily)…

====

So, wish me luck when I pitch this "after school academy" to some local schools.

Thoughts about an electronic course...

I read the following at a discussion site for an online course that is centered in California:

Wow.  I admit that I had a similar impression in some face-to-face classes ... and it was when I found out about other articles that the teachers mentioned during the lectures that I really got started...  There is a particular lecture about a year ago that got me started.   The article by Richard E. Clark (search "Clark 2012 American Educator" and you will find a great link)  


That's when I realized that even in my teaching I was not really promoting "learning."


Here's the link to the Clark article:      WORTH A VISIT

An open letter about Charter Schools in the USA

Some people in the United Kingdom are looking closely at charter schools in the USA. I got wind of their interest in importing the charter structure to Britain and I composed the following open letter:

To anyone interested in opening a charter school:

if you go to 1 minute 20 (1:20), you will see the transcription.

The commissioner of education (in Rhode Island) Peter McWalter said to me, "I could have closed this school down the first year, but I had the patience to watch and I've never seen people who had the belief in the maturity of the kid" -- so half of our great work is because the [kids] grew up. In most schools, they don't get to [grow up] -- they get stopped before [they can prove themselves].

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdKw1GOIaGQ

11 July 2011

I have worked at three charter schools (elementary, middle and high schools) and I'm a consultant to a start-up school.

I recommend that you speak with Tom vander Ark edReformer.com

Tom Vander Ark
direct: 206.909.8251
email: tom@VARpartners.net
twitter: @tvanderark

and Dr. Abraham S. Fischler TheStudentIsTheClass.com +1 954 262 5376 fischler@nova.edu

In their blogs they both write about the power of the correct approach in the use of the charter school format.

Too many charter schools simply copy a school structure and teaching methods that "worked" 40 years ago. The charter schools that produce long-lasting results (students who have mastered the seven essential skills that Tony Wagner writes about in the Global Achievement Gap) use relationships and projects in their instruction.

Perhaps the most instructive thirty seconds about "how to create effective charter schools" comes from an interview with Dennis Littky of Providence, Rhode Island. (see the link at the start of this letter)

Note the later part of the interview with Littky:

Critics laughed when they saw we had internships. Then they saw that we had the highest attendance rate in the state. We had the lowest drop-out rate in the state. But they really became believers when they see that every kid got accepted to college. Five years later they're still in college or graduated.

... We keep pushing ahead and trying to show that this is a way to help kids get educated.

We outscored the three largest high schools in mathematics and we don't teach a mathematics course. The kids learn to think like mathematicians, to solve problems and use their minds. The scores are not great, but they are moving up.
Colleges are impressed with how articulate and passionate our kids are.

The point is that the test scores were not the result that Littky looked for ... it was what happened to the students.

1) the highest attendance rate in the state.

2) the lowest drop-out rate in the state.

3) every kid got accepted to college.
4) we don't teach a mathematics course.
5) colleges are impressed with how articulate and passionate our kids are.

Peter McWalter's remark is key: The project-based, student-centered charter school with a focus on relationships needs time and delivers results in ways that a standardized test does not reveal.

I hope this information assists you in identifying the positive aspects of charter schools in the USA. There is much that discourages me in the charter school movement in the USA, but there is good work happening at hightechhigh.org and at Littky's BigPicture.org schools.

Sincerely,

Steve McCrea

VisualandActive.com

GuideOnTheSide.com

Curriculum consultant

Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301

+1 954 646 8246

VisualAndActive@gmail.com