HomeWeb Connections November 2006

Web Connections for November 2006

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 "A Trip around the Solar System"

• In August 2006 the astronomy community enjoyed a flurry of media attention when the International Astronomical Union ratified an official definition of the term planet that revoked Pluto’s planetary status. For a brief explanation of the definition and Pluto's demotion, visit http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14489259/. 
• The Family ASTRO Project, an education program from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, provides would-be astronomers with a sampling of fun hands-on activities, a list of Web resources and activities, and an interactive online game at http://www.astrosociety.org/education/surf.html.
• NASA’s Web site at http://www.nasa.gov/home/index.html?skipIntro=1 has extensive sections for students and educators that are helpfully grouped by grade level. The kids section provides a host of online activities, games, and science and art projects.
• Kennesaw State University’s Educational Technology Center Web site hosts a list of space-related links to educational Web sites, games, and photographs at http://edtech.kennesaw.edu/web/space.html.

Web Connections for "Penguins on Parade"

Student Resources

• Antarctic Connection’s "Penguins and Wildlife" at  http://www.antarcticconnection.com/antarctic/wildlife/index.shtml provides information on and photographs of the 17 types of penguins, as well other Antarctic animals, such as birds, whales, and seals. Users can also listen to the sounds that penguins make in the wild.
• Explore the virtual bottom of the world with a camera that has been attached to a leopard seal at National Geographic’s Antarctic Crittercam (http://www.nationalgeographic.com/crittercam/antarctica). Other features on the Web site allow students to "build" their own crittercam to learn how scientists make decisions about their equipment, print out coloring pages, and learn about penguins and other creatures.
• The Splash Zone Exhibit’s "Penguin Cam" at http://www.mbayaq.org/efc/efc_splash/splash_cam.asp provides a live view of the penguin exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey, California, as well as facts about penguins and teacher activities.

Professional Resources

• A well-done elementary-school faculty Web site, "Penguins around the World" at  http://www.siec.k12.in.us/~west/proj/penguins/main.html features a penguin slide show, a clickable habitat map, interactive quizzes, a penguin fun-fact treasure hunt, hands-on science activities, lesson plans, and resource lists.
• "Penguin Capers" at http://www.marcias-lesson-links.com/penguincapers.html, compiled by an elementary-school teacher, is an integrated unit on penguins for grades K–3. The guides include math and language-arts projects, discussion questions, a penguin book list, and many activity suggestions, such as designing an Antarctic travel brochure, making a penguin finger puppet, and assembling a penguin mobile.
• From the Gulf of Maine Aquarium, "Antartica" at http://www.gma.org/surfing/antarctica/index.html has an excellent collection of hands-on penguin-related science experiments and activities, among them Blubber Glove, Penguin Adaptation, Chick Die-Off, and Coping with Cold.
• "Penguins, Penguins, Penguins" at http://kinderart.com/sculpture/penguins.shtml has instructions for making a penguin sculpture using juice bottles and papier-mache. The KinderArt Web site, a large collection of free art lessons, has some pop-ups and advertising.
• Located at http://www.education-world.com/a_tsi/archives/99-1/lesson0040.shtml, "Reader’s Theatre Tacky the Penguin" is a complete reader’s theater script for actors in grades K–5 of Helen Lester’s picture book Tacky the Penguin.
• Developed by specialists at SeaWorld, Busch Garden’s penguin teacher guides, available for free download at http://www.buschgardens.org/just-for-teachers/guides, separate guides for lower- and upper-elementary grades focus on several curricular areas.

Web Connections for "Tell Me Why: Pourquoi Animal Tales"

• (Gr. 2–6) A unit plan for writing "why" stories developed by Martha Hamilton and Mitch Weiss can be found at Beauty and the Beast Storytellers at http://www.beautyandthebeaststorytellers.com/howAndWhyUnit.pdf.
• (Gr. 6–8) Associated with the National Teacher Training Institute, Oregon Public Broadcasting at http://www.opb.org/education/ntti/2004/pourquoi/  features "Why in the World? Pourquoi Stories," a language arts lesson plan with cross-curricular activities and many links to other great sites.
• (Gr. 3–5) "Pourquoi Stories: Creating Tales to Tell Why" at http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=324 is sponsored by ReadWriteThink, a partnership between the International Reading Association (IRA), the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), and the Verizon Foundation. In five hour-long sessions, "students are introduced to pourquoi stories and work in cooperative groups to write their own stories."

Web Connections for "From Seed to Harvest: Books about Growing Food"

• Founded at a Berkeley, California, middle school by chef Alice Waters, The Edible Schoolyard is one of the most innovative and well-organized school gardening programs in the country. The program’s Web site at http://www.edibleschoolyard.org/homepage.html includes extensive resource lists, a treasure trove of curriculum links, and inspiring stories and essays about the importance and benefits of school gardens and healthy-food curriculums.
• The Center for Ecoliteracy’s Rethinking School Lunch program Web site at http://www.ecoliteracy.org/programs/rsl-guide.html offers a uniquely holistic, creative approach to teaching healthy food and sustainable growing concepts across the curriculum.
• The California Integrated Waste Management Board’s comprehensive list of educator-aimed Web sites that promote school gardens, "School Garden Web Sites" at http://www.ciwmb.ca.gov/schools/Links/Garden.htm, also links to curriculum designed to encourage students to respect and conserve natural resources.
• "Teachers’ Room" is part of the National Gardening Association’s excellent Kids Gardening Web site at http://www.kidsgardening.com/. Contests, grants, project ideas, and curriculum links are just a few of the extensive resources on this excellent site, which is perhaps the best starting point for teachers who would like to create a garden at their school.
• Viva! Gardens for Schools, a program sponsored by Home Depot that gives annual awards for school gardens, offers curriculum ideas, practical tips for getting a school garden started, and a photo gallery on its Web site at http://www.vivagarden.com/schools/index.html.

Web Connections for "Making Connections with Bridges"

Student Resources

• A companion Web site to the PBS series "Building Big: Bridges" at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/buildingbig/bridge/index.html features clearly presented basic information on bridge structure, an illustrated databank of famous bridges, interviews with bridge builders, online interactive activities for students, and an educator’s guide.
• PBS’s "Super Bridge" Web site at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/bridge/build.html gives visitors the chance to investigate bridge structure and play the online Build a Bridge game. The online teacher’s guide includes downloadable student handouts, detailed instructions for a bridge-building project using uncooked spaghetti noodles, and a resource list.
• Although the HowStuffWorks Web site has some advertising, its "How Bridges Work" at http://science.howstuffworks.com/bridge.htm provides illustrated explanations of the basic types of bridges, their structural components, and the forces that act upon them.

Professional Resources

• "Bridge Construction" at http://www.swe.org/iac/LP/bridge_01b.html, hosted by the Society of Women Engineers, is a detailed bridge-building project using drinking straws for grades 5 and up. The site includes a wealth of background information on types and structure of bridges, illustrated with color photos and diagrams.
• The San Francisco Exploratorium’s "Structures around the World" at http://www.exploratorium.edu/structures/ is a collection of excellent activities demonstrating the principles of bridge building. Kids are challenged to build bridges using clay, paper, or newspaper. See also "File Card Bridges" at http://www.exploratorium.edu/science_explorer/card_bridge.html, which offers a simple explanation of bridge concepts and a project to build and test a bridge using file cards and pennies.
• From the American Society of Civil Engineers, "Hands-On Activities: Bridges" at http://www.asce.org/public/handson.cfm has instructions for simple activities in which kids build and test a human arch and a paper-and-paperclip bridge. Discussion questions and suggestions for follow-up activities are also included.
• From the PBS children’s science television show Newton’s Apple, "Bridges: How Do Different Bridge Designs Work?" at http://www.ktca.org/newtons/12/bridges.html features background information on bridges, a detailed project in which kids make blueprints and then build model bridges from poster board, a list of extension activities, and a resource list.
• From the Washington State Department of Transportation, "Tacoma Narrows Bridge Lesson Plans" at http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/TNBhistory/Lessons/entry.htm provides a series of lesson plans with hands-on activities, largely centered on "Galloping Gertie," the Tacoma Narrows Bridge that famously tore itself apart in 1940. The site also includes pages on the history, art, and structure of bridges.

Web Connections for "Who Has Seen the Wind?"

Student Resources

• The Danish Wind Industry Association’s "Wind with Miller" at http://www.windpower.org/en/kids features an interactive crash course on the structure and operation of wind turbines; a wind turbine simulator; instructions for building a wind turbine, a wind sock, and a kite; and an informational teacher’s guide.
• "Weather Wiz Kids"at http://www.weatherwizkids.com is designed for kids by a meteorologist. Click on "Wind" for nicely presented explanations of wind causes, wind storms, global wind patterns, and wind power, a list of wind names, and a Beaufort Wind Scale chart. "Weather Experiments" includes a number of hands-on wind-related activities, among them making a pinwheel wind collector and a tornado in a bottle. The Web site has some advertising.
• From the Science Museum of Minnesota, "From Windmills to Whirligigs" at http://www.smm.org/sln/vollis/ features an online tour of the fabulous whirligigs of North Carolina artist Vollis Simpson, a list of related resources, and instructions for hands-on wind-related activities, such as constructing a parachuting pinwheel and inventing air-powered machines.
• From the personal Web site of an artist and member of the French Kite Association, "Plastorgan" at http://w1.neuronnexion.com/~dferment/ukplasto.htm provides simple instructions for making a creative wind instrument from a plastic bottle. Audio clips of plastorgans in action are also included.

Professional Resources

• The American Wind Association provides a downloadable "Wind Energy Teachers Guide" with background information, discussion questions, and projects and activities at  http://www.awea.org/pubs/documents/TeachersGuide.pdf.
• The Drachen Foundation at http://www.drachen.org, a nonprofit organization promoting kite-based education, is an excellent source of information about kites, including descriptions of the many different types of kites, flying instructions, kite history, kite time lines, multicultural kites, and famous kite fliers. The site also features kite-related lesson plans categorized by grade level and academic discipline.
• A page on the commercial Web site of the Big Wind Kite Factory in Hawaii, "20 Kids, 20 Kites, 20 Minutes" at http://www.molokai.com/kites/20kidskites.html offers clear, illustrated instructions for making the "easiest classroom kites ever."

Web Connections for "Combining Poetry and Science"

• Poet Joan Bransfield Graham offers downloadable one-page teaching guides for use with her science-focused poetry books Flicker Flash and Splish Splash at http://www.joangraham.com/idea_sheets.htm.
• Poet and children’s book author Joyce Sidman’s personal Web site provides teaching guides that include language arts, science, and art activities for several of her books at http://www.joycesidman.com/teachers.html. The Writers section provides tips and encouragement for would-be poets and a link to other helpful poetry sites.
• Author Kristine O’Connell George has gathered several teacher’s guides and numerous related Web links for her books at http://www.kristinegeorge.com/for_teachers.html. George’s impressive and extensive Web site, which has been named an American Library Association Great Web Site for Kids, also hosts a For Kids section that invites users to explore, read, listen to, and write poetry.
• The author’s personal Web site, "The Book on Jane Yolen" at http://www.janeyolen.com/, provides a For Teachers section with links to the numerous Web resources available for teaching Yolen’s works, as well as interviews with the author and a listing of her more than 200 children’s works, grouped by age and theme.

Web Connections for "Moon Journeys"

Student Resources

• From the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, "Windows to the Universe" at  http://www.windows.ucar.edu is a multifaceted and user-friendly site with a wealth of information, accessible at three levels (beginner, intermediate, and advanced). The "Our Planet" section of the Web site houses are a selection of pages on multicultural moon myths and poems, a table of all the moons in our solar system (137 as of April 2005), basic information about Earth’s moon and lunar eclipses, a list of the many names for the year’s full moons, and a moon image archive.
• Kevin Clarke’s award-winning "Inconstant Moon" at http://www.inconstantmoon.com allows visitors to click on a date and take a tour of the moon, with maps, photos, explanations, animations, and moon-related music. Also included is an impressive collection of maps and images, among them a series of folklore maps with which visitors can learn how to find the man, woman, rabbit, and turtle in the moon.
• Designed as a companion Web site to the NOVA special, "To the Moon" at  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tothemoon/ gives visitors a glimpse of what its really like to walk on the moon through a series of amazing 360-degree panoramas. Also included on the Web site are Gene Cernan’s account of his experience as the last man on the moon, audio clips of such space pioneers as Buzz Aldrin, Jim Lovell, and Pete Conrad, a discussion of moon origin theories, some great images of the moon’s never-revealed-to-Earth backside, and a resource list.

Professional Resources

• From the "Educator’s Reference Desk," a large collection of lesson plans and educational resources assembled under auspices of the Information Institute of Syracuse, "Once in a Blue Moon" at http://www.eduref.org/cgi-bin/printlessons.cgi/Virtual/Lessons/Science/Space_Sciences/SPA0016.html is an art-writing project for grades 1–2 in which kids learn about blue moons, make a moon painting, and discover scientific facts about moon.
• The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s superb 158-page Exploring the Moon, a downloadable illustrated teacher’s guide for grades 4 and up at http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/topnav/materials/listbytype/Exploring.the.Moon.html, offers many excellent worksheets and student activities, including projects to help kids calculate the distance to the moon, map the Apollo landing sites, make a moon surface model, or build a model lunar biosphere.
• "The Moon" at http://www.nineplanets.org/luna.html, from the award-winning Nine Planets Web site maintained by software engineer Bill Arnett, is a superb illustrated overview of the moon. Also included are a teacher’s guide to lunar geology, an explanation of the "moon illusion," theories of the moon’s origin, and a list of the names of the year’s full moons.
• The U.S. Naval Observatory’s "Virtual Reality Moon Phase" at http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/vphase.html allows users to click on any date between 1800 and 2199 C.E. to see the corresponding phase of the moon.

Web Connections for "Telling a True Story with and without Words"

• Readers can continue to follow Owen and Mzee’s story by visiting the Haller Park Web site at  http://www.lafargeecosystems.com, where park employees continue to post new photographs and reports on how and what Owen and Mzee are doing.
• At http://www.scholastic.com/discussionguides, parents and teachers can find a discussion guide for Owen & Mzee called "Cultivating Resiliency: A Guide for Parents and School Personnel," prepared by staff at the New York University Child Study Center for Scholastic.

Web Connections for "Collecting Butterfly Stories"

Student Resources

• The Science Museum of Minnesota’s "Monarchs and Migration" at  http://www.smm.org/sln/monarchs/top.html features general information about the study of butterflies, a butterfly photo gallery, a book list, and a range of creative activities, among them making a symmetrical balancing butterfly and a butterfly-caterpillar optical illusion toy.
• Hosted by the Howard Hughes Medical Center, "Where Do Butterflies Come From?" at  http://www.hhmi.org/coolscience/butterfly/index.html has instructions for making a paper butterfly that hatches out of a toilet-paper-tube chrysalis and provides a brief explanation of the butterfly life cycle.

Professional Resources

• Annenberg Media’s "Monarch Butterfly: Journey North" at  http://www.learner.org/jnorth/monarch/index.html offers a wealth of information about monarch butterflies and butterfly migration, along with lesson plans, multifaceted activities, maps, video and audio clips, quizzes, challenges, and slide shows. Click on "Kids Journey North" for an array of resources for elementary-level students and downloadable student booklets and teacher’s guides.
• "Butterfly School" at http://www.butterflyschool.org, hosted by the Missouri Botanical Garden, has detailed information on raising butterflies, building a butterfly house, and creating a butterfly garden, along with a wide range of butterfly-related crafts and activities, such as making a pasta metamorphosis project, a metamorphosis greeting card, tissue-paper or "stained-glass" butterflies, and a fact-or-fiction butterfly book.
• See "Monarch Watch" at http://www.monarchwatch.org from the University of Kansas for general information about butterflies and how to raise them, detailed instructions for creating a school butterfly garden, student-scientist butterfly research projects, and more.
• The "Earth’s Birthday Project" at http://www.earthsbirthday.org, sponsored by the Nature Conservancy and the World Wildlife Fund, was founded in 1989 for the purpose of engaging children in inquiry- and observation-based environmental projects. Click on the "Butterfly Activity Kit" for a complete curriculum on raising and releasing Painted Lady butterflies or for individual butterfly-based educational activities. The kit includes activities with printable worksheets, a butterfly reading list, and instructions for planting a butterfly garden and throwing a butterfly party.
• The PBS Web site "Backyard Butterflies" at http://www.klru.org/butterflies/butterfly_lesson.htm includes a downloadable six-part study unit on butterflies.