Home Web Connections May 2007
Web Connections for May 2007
The Web sites listed below were verified at the time of publication, but please check that they remain valid before using them in an educational setting.
Web Connections for "Books for Family Sharing"
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For books with timeless subjects and great read-aloud qualities, see the editor's "Books for Family Sharing" PDF, a bibliography from her recent presentation at the Texas Library Association conference.
Web Connections for “Best New Books”
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A teacher’s guide for Animal Poems by Valerie Worth is available in PDF format on the Farrar Web site.
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A teacher’s guide for Houdini: The Handcuff King is available from Hyperion Web site.
Web Connections for "More than Meets the Eye: Books about Haiku"
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An elementary-level lesson plan from the Yale–New Haven Teachers Institute, “A Journey to Japan through Poetry” surveys Japanese culture through haiku and tanka poems. Lesson activities include reading Japanese folktales and traditional poems, writing and illustrating haiku poems for each season of the year, creating tanka poems about animals, making Tanabata stars, and learning about Japanese festivals. The site also includes an extensive annotated bibliography.
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Designed for either group or self-study projects, “In the Moonlight a Worm . . . ,” hosted by the Arts Council of England and Waning Moon Press, features a detailed haiku history, a biography of haiku master Basho, many examples of haiku poems, and a wide range of creative haiku projects and activities. Activities include taking a ginko, or haiku-walk, making an illustrated haiku display, or performing haiku to musical accompaniment.
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From the U.S./Japan School Link Project, hosted by the City College of New York Center for School Development, “Lesson Plan: Writing Haiku” centers on poems by Basho and Richard Wright. Sample haiku poems, a writing exercise, discussion questions, and background information are also included.
Web Connections for “Greek Myths and the Hero’s Quest”
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"Bookwink," a booktalk Web site for kids at , features a video podcast about The Lightning Thief.
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A downloadable discussion guide and a reader’s theater script for The Lightning Thief is available from Hyperion. (A discussion guide for the second book, The Sea of Monsters, is also available on Hyperion’s Web site, and the third title in the series, The Titan’s Curse, will have a discussion guide available later in 2007.
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Author Rick Riordan’s Web site features discussions and activities about the books in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, including a reader’s theater script from The Lightning Thief, a tour of Camp Half-Blood, a teacher’s guide, an author interview, and more.
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For explanation and background about the War of the Titans, see Wikipedia’s entry for "Titanomachy".
Web Connections for “Ancient Greece and Rome”
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At the Art Institute of Chicago’s “Cleopatra: A Multimedia Guide to the Ancient World,” visitors can learn about ancient Greece and Rome through museum artifacts. The site features a time line, glossary, maps, and an assortment of creative lesson plans, categorized by grade and subject. For example, children can make foil coins in the style of ancient Greece, create Roman mosaics, design shields, and simulate an archaeological dig.
Greece
Professional Resources
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An award-winning teacher-created site, “Ancient Greece” has a comprehensive list of lesson plans, study units, and activities, categorized under such headings as Gods, Stories and Fables, Geography, Daily Life, Olympics, Theatre, Vases, Government, Big Battles, and more. Sample projects include writing and performing a Greek tragedy, assuming a Greek character and participating in a classroom Olympics, designing a Greek pot, and experimenting online with ancient Greek musical instruments. Also available at the site are printable maps, interactive games, coloring pages, and PowerPoint presentations. The site contains some advertising.
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ProTeacher’s “Ancient Greece” features a list of creative lesson plans and activities for grades K–6. For example, kids create an ancient Greek newspaper, design an urn, and make an annotated map showing the conquests of Alexander the Great. Also included are printable word puzzles and worksheets, Greek theater mask patterns, a Greek alphabet chart, directions for playing the ancient Greek game of hoops, and more. The site contains some advertising.
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From a teacher-created gifted education site, the “Greek Mythology and Ancient Greece Thematic Unit” features a creative list of activities to accompany studies of ancient Greek history, culture, and mythology. Sample projects include making Greek-style pottery and coins from self-hardening clay, rewriting a Greek myth in modern language or presenting a myth as reader’s theater, hosting a Greek food-tasting party, and building a shoebox model of a Greek temple. The site contains some broken links.
Student Resources
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A beautifully presented personal site, “Mythweb” features delightfully illustrated versions of classic stories from Greek mythology; biographies of gods, goddesses, and heroes; a searchable encyclopedia of mythology; a page on “Mythology in the News”; and a teacher’s section.
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From Britain’s Snaith Primary School, “Ancient Greece” is a clever, interactive, and informative overview of the Peloponnesian War. Kids choose a character from an Athenian or Spartan family, follow that character’s experiences through the four “acts” of the war, and then write the character’s life story. The site also includes a virtual tour of Olympia and a series of online sliding-block Greek pot puzzles.
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Visit the BBC’s “Ancient Greece” site for a cartoon-illustrated online exploration of ancient Greek history, life, and culture for ages 4–11. Click on “Resources” for supplementary printouts, images, English translations of Greek texts, and sound clips.
Rome
Professional Resources
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From an award-winning teacher-created site, “Ancient Rome” has a wide-ranging collection of lesson plans, study units, and activities, categorized under such headings as Maps and Geography, Romulus and Remus, Gods and Goddesses, Emperors, Daily Life, Baths, Gladiators, Roads, Punic Wars and Hannibal, Julius Caesar, and more. Sample projects include writing a Roman newspaper, building a model of the Pantheon, and creating a Roman mosaic. Also available at the site are printable maps, Web quests, interactive games, and a Roman numeral converter. The site contains some advertising.
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ProTeacher’s “Ancient Rome” is a series of lesson plans and activities targeted at grades K–6. For example, kids learn Roman numerals, spend a day at the Roman Forum while recording their experiences in a journal, and reproduce some of Archimedes’s famous experiments. Printable word puzzles, worksheets, and coloring pages are also included on the site.
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From Teachnology, an organization dedicated to promoting teaching with technology, the “Ancient Rome Teaching Theme” page has lesson plans, bulletin-board pictures, Web quests, interactive games, hands-on activities, and customizable worksheets.
Student Resource
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From the University of California at Santa Barbara, “I Got a Lava Livin’ to Do in Pompeii” is a Web quest targeted at grade 6. Kids take on the role of a Roman baker, housewife, soldier, slave, farmer, weaver, child, or physician, and keep a journal documenting that character’s life and experiences at the time of the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.
Hands-On Learning Activities for “Illustration as Art—Line”
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Feel free to adapt this Hands-On Learning Activities PDF to the age of the children you work with and the art materials available to you. Markers, crayons, pencils, and pens are popular materials. More traditional media include pen and ink, charcoal, and paint and brush. Don’t forget to experiment with sticks and fingers too. All of these tools and media have the ability to create unique lines.
Web Connections for “Powerful Books, Inspired Writers”
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Visit Candlewick Press’ Web site to download a teacher’s guide for Megan McDonald’s Stink: The Incredible Shrinking Kid, along with an activity kit designed to help students create their own comic strips.
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See Winslow Press’ Web site "Read&Click" for a number of student activities for Steven Kroll’s book Patches Lost and Found, including a template for children to write their own illustrated story and a game to play.
Web Connections for “Amazing Automatons”
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“How Robots Work”, a subset of the popular HowStuffWorks site founded by North Carolina State University professor Marshall Brain, is an excellent hyperlinked overview of all aspects of robots, with explanations of what they are, how they work, and their present and future uses. This site contains some advertising.
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Visit the Science Museum of Minnesota’s “Low Life Labs” for a terrific interactive robot experience with a wide range of robots, variously categorized under moving, sensing, thinking, and being. Clickable Web animations include games and puzzles, projects, and visits with real-life robot scientists.
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Visit NASA’s “Space Place Projects” for a downloadable robot puzzle project and instructions for making your own balloon-powered model asteroid nanorover. Also included on the site are photographs and information about state-of-the-art NASA robots.
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Click on “Robots Alive!” from the archives of PBS’ Scientific American Frontiers program at for a detailed classroom guide crammed with illustrated background information, activities, instructions, challenges, and contest listings for young robotics engineers. At the same site, also visit “Natural Born Robots” for instructions on building a whimsical model of a robotic zoo animal using everyday materials, along with extension activities and information about insect robots.
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