Archive for Teaching Resources
Today in class we will be starting a new project in which we will take a look at the stock market and actually hold our own mock stock market in our classroom…in order to accomplish this task we will need to use the CNN Money website to research stock. You will be using the suggested stocks that I give you in class, also listed below, and research the stocks and find 3-5 companies that you are interested in investing in.
- AAPL Apple Inc
- AMZN Amazon.com Inc
- ATVI Activision Blizzard Inc
- C Citigroup Inc
- CMCSA Comcast Corp
- CSCO Cisco Systems Inc
- DDS DillardS Inc
- DELL Dell Inc
- DIS Walt Disney Co
- EBAY eBay Inc
- FFBHD First Federal Bancshares of Ar
- FOSL Fossil Inc
- GOOG Google Inc
- GPS Gap Inc
- INTC Intel Corp
- JBHT J B Hunt Transport Services In
- JNJ Johnson & Johnson
- MCD McDonalds Corp
- MSFT Microsoft Corp
- NFLX Netflix Inc
- ORCL Oracle Corp
- PCLN Priceline.com Inc
- SIRI Sirius XM Radio Inc
- TSN Tyson Foods Inc
- WMT Wal-Mart Stores Inc
- YHOO Yahoo! Inc
- SNE Sony Corp
Once we have selected 3-5 companies you will be given $1,000 to invest in these companies how every you wish…you may also save some money and choose not to invest all your money with the opportunity to buy or sell in later days to come. So go ahead and start your greed…the Wall Street will be the name of the game for the next 10 days.
Note – students, you can also use the NASDAQ website to view trends of companies as well.
Mr. McClung
Today in class we will be using an interactive map that is produced by PBS that discusses the banishment of African Americans starting in the post-civil war era and the effect that it has had on our current population today. To visit the website click here.
Mr. McClung
Today in AVID we will be using a website put on the College Board called Big Future. This website helps students find information about a college’s admission standards and basic information. We will be using this website as we conduct research on perspective colleges.
Mr. McClung
In class today my students took the 1965 Alabama literacy test for voting. At the time of taking the test my students were not aware that what they were taking was a literacy test for voting but after they found out they were very surprised to find out that people were subjected to such a test to simply vote. The slide show is the 10 question sample test that my students took today…how smart are you?
Mr. McClung
Your boy, Jim Crow.
It’s that time of year again when we begin our conversations in my Arkansas History classes about Jim Crow Laws and their relevance to Arkansas. Jim Crow Laws were laws that were created in the post slavery era as a way to bypass giving African Americans their civil rights granted by amendments 13-15. What we will be doing in class on Monday is taking a look at some specific Jim Crow Laws that were passed in Arkansas and around the US. We will be discussing their purpose and what affects they had race relations in Arkansas.
Mr. McClung
In my Arkansas History class on Wednesday we decided to change-up our normal style of note taking in class. Usually we use a jigsaw/pair share method to take notes…the rational behind my use of this style is because it helps alleviate the boredom that is associated with PowerPoint presentations and if done correct it engages the students really well. For today though I decided to go with a good ole’ stand-by, Cornell Notes.
First we reviewed the process for taking Cornell Notes and why it is important. One common misconception is that Cornell Notes is used because it is better for organization purposes. The real secret to Cornell Notes is in the review process. If done properly Cornell Notes requires the student to review their notes at least twice after the lecture is over…this is meant to help with retention.
Students then compared notes with one another by doing a gallery activity. Students hung their notes all over the room while everyone went around the room reviewing everyone’s notes looking for structure and content. They would then leave notes and critiques on the board.
At the end of the day I decided to use my sophisticated data collecting method by having everyone leave feedback for me as they left the room. One axis represents how much fun they had doing this entire activity and the other axis represents how much they learned by using this Cornell method. What we found out was that while students did not enjoy it as much, they felt like they learned the material better by taking Cornell notes. Which I found really interesting and now the new challenge that is before me is to figure out how to modify the activity so that we can bridge the gap between fun and learning.
Mr. McClung
Today in class we discussed population growth by looking at the most recent US Census data. We looked at our own state and discussed the factors that lead to population booms and dying communities in our state. The link to the website with an interactive map can be found by clicking here.
Mr. McClung
Yesterday in class we took some time to discuss the New Madrid Fault Line that is located in northeast Arkansas and southeast Missouri. This fault line is still active and it is thought that back in the early 1800′s the line produced an earthquake of an 8.0 magnitude. In order to show my students the seismic activity in this region I introduced them to the USGS site that measures such activity all over the world. The site is a great tool for anyone that is teaching science, but it also adequately fits the need for this lesson.
Mr. McClung
For the past few days we have been using an excellent website in class as a resource for our Arkansas City Project. We have been using a site called Encyclopedia of Arkansas, this site offers up a wide variety of information and resources that are useful to any Arkansas history teacher. You can visit the site by clicking here.
Mr. McClung
On Monday we started our week by reviewing our notes from last week about the Isms. This term refers to the different political ideas and theories that exist in the world. Students were given 7 different pictures that were hung all over the classroom and they were asked to identify the what term the picture was referring to.
After students identified what the image was meant to represent, they were then asked to provide evidence as to support their choice. This provided for some great conversations in class and gave students some good visual representations to attach to the terms that we have already learned.
Mr. McClung
Yesterday in class we took a look at North Korea’s communist government did so by listening to a podcast from NPR. This is a method that I use in my teaching from time to time, but it was a first for this group of students. After we finished the lesson I decided to gauge how much my students actually enjoyed the lesson.
The graphs above are from my three social studies class and represent their enjoyment and the amount of learning they experienced during class. The vertical axis represents learning and the horizontal axis represents enjoyment. As you can see the charts vary, but this is an awesome way for me as a teacher to gain some quick and easy feedback from my students over the lesson that was just taught.
Mr. McClung
As apart of our remembrance of the attacks on 9/11/01, today in class we will be using an interactive media site from the History Channel that shows amazing home footage from the attacks that day. The name of the website is 102 Minutes that Changed America, it the site does a wonderful job of capturing what it was like to be apart of the events that took place that day.
Mr. McClung
Students, today we will begin our 9/11 research project as apart of our school wide remembrance of the attacks on September 11th, 2001. Students will be given a list of 4-5 names of people that died on that day and will be asked to research basic information about those individuals using the Remember website.
Remember September 11th, 2001 Link
Mr. McClung
In class today we took a look at an interactive map from CNN that displays the US casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq. We used this map as a part of our discussion of the war on terror being the longest US military conflict in history.
Mr. McClung
Today in class we took a closer look at GDP and how it relates to our national debt in the United States. In class we used a debt clock website as an impressive visual of what exactly our debt looks like and where our money is going. You can check out this debt clock by clicking here.
Mr. McClung
Today I will be leading a professional development session at my school over how to use and implement an Edublogs website into your classroom. Listed below are a few of the links that we will be using today to show good examples of blogging and the various ways that it can be used.
- Mr. Lamshed’s Class – South Adelaide, Australia
- Jenny B. Jones – Bentonville, AR
- Free Tech for Teachers – South Paris, ME
Keep in mind there are tons of other great blogs that I would love to show you, but unfortunately our school filter limits our access to those at school. Feel free to check out the blogroll located on the right hand side of the page.
Mr. McClung
Yesterday my students were given a homework assignment to read up on the 36th governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus. Students were asked to read the given article and prepare a index card that has two components…on one they were asked to write any interesting facts that they found in the article and the other side they were asked to write their reaction to the article about Faubus.
Today in class we took those note cards and students were placed into groups of four and participated in a discussion activity called ‘save the last word’…here are the guidelines to this discussion.
- Students take turns reading their interesting facts on their cards to the rest of the group…this serves as a conversation starter.
- After everyone has chimed in with their thoughts on the fact presented to the first student, that student then reads their reaction to the article and therefore gets the last word…this continues to everyone has gone.
This activity did work very well and students were able to use it with success in starting meaningful conversation about who Faubus was as a person and a politician.
Mr. McClung
My example of Q Notes taken from a screen shot of my Interwrite Workspace.
In an effort to try something new in our history class, today I will be introducing Q-notes to my students. Q-notes is a two column note taking system that is very easy to use and helps simplify the note taking process. In the left hand column students are asked to record their cues or questions…basically they will be taking headings or subheadings from their books and forming questions from those headings and placing them in this column. In the right hand column students will record their description or answer that matches their cue.
Today we used the section of our book that deals with McCarthyism and politics of Arkansas post WWII…and of course, as with any new technique I introduce to my students, I wanted to gain some feed back from them as to how useful this note taking style was.
The vertical axis represents how much my students enjoyed this style and the horizontal axis represents how much they learned using this style. Students were asked to mark where they fell on the chart as they left the classroom. As you can see there was mixed results from this experiment that I used today…while many students seemed to enjoy this method of notes, there were those that didn’t care for the style of notes. Tomorrow in class we will take some time to discuss what the positives and negatives were of this style.
Mr. McClung
Today in class we used a graphic organizer strategy called “rock around the clock” to take notes for our new section over reconstruction in Arkansas. This organizer can be seen above and features several boxes in which students record information. They are asked to identify the main idea, key terms, important points, ah-ha moments, and any questions. The idea behind this organizer is for students to move past the decoding of text and actually read the text for meaning.
With today being the first time I have tried to use this organizer in class, I wanted to receive feedback from my students on what they thought of it. The picture above shows four charts that were taken from my history classes. Students were asked to compare the organizer to the notes we normally take in class…and criteria was focused on how much they enjoyed it (vertical axis) and how much they learned (horizontal axis) when compared to the other style of notes.
Mr. McClung
Today in class we will be using a teaching resource from PBS that documents the rise and fall of Jim Crow. We will be using the website to examine the barriers that African Americans faced during this time period of segregation and oppression. The site provides plenty of activities and lesson plans for teachers as well as videos and other resources. Today we will be using the site to take a voters literacy test as well as look at exactly how hard it was to vote if you were African American.
Mr. McClung
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