Teacher resources and professional development across the curriculum

Teacher professional development and classroom resources across the curriculum

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Learner Log

A place to explore teaching and learning

You Don’t Have to Be an Adult to Write a Novel

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notebook stack with coffeeWho says writing novels is just for the adults? November is National Novel Writing Month, when the nonprofit NaNoWriMo challenges adults and children around the world to channel their inner novelist to write that first draft by the end of the month. Students and educators may sign up through NaNoWriMo’s Young Writers Program. Online resources allow students to keep track of their word count and provide prompts and tips to keep creative juices flowing.

Add the following Annenberg Learner programs to your list of novel-writing resources:

Where do novels come from? After watching workshop 4 of In Search of the Novel, you will be equipped to create a lesson plan that helps students develop their own stories by connecting imagination, experience, and reflection.

It’s easy to think that professional writers just sit down and write a perfect piece on their first attempt. So why does it feel so hard when we (and our students) try to get something, anything, down on paper? One writing strategy is imitation. In workshop 7 of Developing Writers, students read works by different professional writers and then write by imitating the voices of those authors. This imitation helps students develop their own voice by building their confidence.

Younger students learn about the crucial elements that make up a story using the fairytale Cinderella in an online interactive. Students explore the function of characters, conflict, and resolution as they break apart this well-known childhood story.

Image: bluelela / 123RF Stock Photo

 

Arts & Humanities Month: A Resource for Every Day

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Celebrate National Arts & Humanities Month every day of October. Learner has a resource to inspire students to examine, find, and create art for each theme. Don’t forget to share pictures on Instagram and tag them #ShowYourArt2018. Look to the Americans for the Arts website for additional resources and ideas for your students and classrooms.

There are, of course, multiple ways to interpret a theme. The suggestions below will span all of the major subject areas and are meant to inspire various forms of art as a representation of the theme or possible solution to a problem. The options are limitless: kinetic statues, photographs, drawings, dances, songs, sculptures, poems, spoken word, and more.

  1. Blue – Obviously, water comes to mind, but what about energy? In Essential Lens: Analyzing Photographs Across the Curriculum, view a “Surfer on blue ocean wave in the tube getting barreled” as part of the unit on “Energy: Captures, Storage, and Transformation.”
  2. Transportation – Wildlife species are often subject to habitat fragmentation when humans build roads for their own transportation. Read about how habitat fragmentation can facilitate biodiversity decline in The Habitable Planet and then dream up creative ways to create corridors for wildlife to safely “cross the road.”
  3. The word “art” – Explore the meaning of “art” in The Arts in Every Classroom, “What is Art?“
  4. Rural art – Successful collaborations between classroom teachers and artists in residence enrich the curriculum of a rural school in Idalia, Colorado in program 10 of The Arts in Every Classroom Library, K-5. A visiting actor brings story–telling and vocabulary to life for kindergarten and fourth–grade students and their teachers, while a musician engages first– and third–grade students in writing songs that relate to subjects they are studying.
  5. Education – In the “Change and Resistance” unit of Essential Lens, examine photographs of school integration and demands for equal education.
  6. Animals – Ecosystems are a balancing act and the removal of one species could affect many others. After playing the Ecology Lab interactive in The Habitable Planet, consider creating a game, video game, or piece of art to explore this topic further.
  7. Theatre – In Connecting with the Arts: A Teaching Practices Library, 6-8, a language arts teacher draws on puppetry techniques and help from her school’s theatre teacher to engage her sixth-graders in exploring Greek myths.
  8. Ceramics – Watch a language arts teacher and a visual art teacher ask eighth-graders to demonstrate their understanding of a novel’s characters by creating unusual ceramic place settings in Connecting with the Arts, “Revealing Character.”
  9. Arts & religion – Learn about the role of various forms of art in ceremonial practices around the world in Art Through Time, “Ceremony and Society.”
  10. Typography – Artist Ed Ruscha was fascinated with cartoons like Dick Tracy when he was growing up. His art is inspired by how the words look on the page as well as what they mean. Listen to an expert perspective and view one of his paintings in Art Through Time. Then have students create their own fonts.
  11. Rainbows – As polarized light passes through corn syrup, a rainbow forms, turning physics principles into art forms. See Physics for the 21st Century, unit 9, “Biophysics.”
  12. My community – K-2 students help improve their community by designing and planning a school remodeling project and creating posters to recruit classmates for help in Social Studies in Action, “Caring for the Community.”
  13. Murals – Learn what makes a mural relevant to its audience in Art Through Time.
  14. Found art – Symmetry is one of the most basic forms are art and exists throughout the natural world. Examine symmetrical qualities of butterflies, sea stars, and flowers in “The Beauty of Symmetry” from Mathematics Illuminated, before looking for art that exists naturally in your own environment.
  15. Music – Exploring the World of Music shows how elements such as melody, rhythm, and texture create an infinite variety of sounds and serve as expressions of culture.
  16. Arts & tourism – Robin Neuman’s 8th graders research French architecture and practice how to give and follow directions by building a French city in their classroom. Watch the lesson in Teaching Foreign Languages Library.
  17. Art for all! – American Passages, unit 16, “Search for Identity,” explores the search for identity by three American writers: Maxine Hong Kingston, Sandra Cisneros, and Leslie Feinberg. Students can use these writers as inspiration for writing their own prose.
  18. Black & white – In American Cinema, program 7, “Film Noir,” learn about the genre’s themes and the use of lighting to give the films a particular look.
  19. Veterans – Psychiatrist Daniel Shay connects the experiences of American soldiers returning from war to the return of Odysseus to Ithaca following the Trojan War in Invitation to World Literature, program 3, “The Odyssey.”
  20. Love in art – Learn about the qualities of films in the romantic comedy genre in program 5 of American Cinema.
  21. Urban art – View the reciprocal relationship between urban planners and architects and the artists that depict urban landscapes in unit 11, “The Urban Experience,” in Art Through Time.
  22. Dance – In The Art of Teaching the Arts, workshop 4, watch as dance teachers engage students in critical analysis of a painting, as a way to encourage expression with words as well as movement.
  23. Spoken word – In session 9, “Critical Pedagogy: Abiodun Oyewole and Lawson Fusao Inada,” of The Expanding Canon: Teaching Multicultural Literature, learn how to use spoken word performance to help students publish their work and build a variety of language arts skills.
  24. Art around the world – Art Through Time takes a thematic approach to exploring art created around the world and in different eras.
  25. Artists we love – American artist Kehinde Wiley reinterprets old masters with new images that replace the central figures in these pictures with vivid portraits of young, often disenfranchised African American men who wear their own street clothes. Learn about his work in Art Through Time, “Portraits.”
  26. Advocacy – How can visual media be used for advocacy? Essential Lens, “Forced Displacement,” examines how media is used to portray the experiences and perspectives of displaced people.
  27. Modern art – American artist Sandy Skoglund creates elaborate sets and photographs them, revealing colorful fantasy images. Learn about her work in Art Through Time, “Dreams and Visions.”
  28. Red – Watch artists, experts, and lovers of books discuss the novel My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk in Invitation to World Literature. Students can consider how to use color in their own stories.
  29. Creativity at work – Baking beautiful cakes is art in its most delicious form. Learn about the chemistry of baking from a professional baker in Chemistry: Challenges and Solutions, “Acids and Bases – Voyage of the Protons” and then challenge students to bake a visual (and edible) representation of the concepts.
  30. Art on the page – Students learn about the relationship between form and content of poetry in Reading & Writing in the Disciplines, “Reading, Writing, and Responding to Poetry.” Exercises focus on identity and names.
  31. Artist’s choice – I’m sure you know the phrase “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” but where does the “sense” of beauty come from? What constants are there, and what does algebra or geometry have to do with it? Watch “The Beauty of Symmetry” in Mathematics Illuminated.

Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month Through Literature

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A student reads My Name is Maria Isabel by Alma Flor Ada for a book group.

Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month from September 15 to October 15 with resources to address this year’s theme: “One Endless Voice to Advance our Traditions.” As of July 2016, Hispanics (people with ancestry from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America, and South America), made up 17.8 percent of the population of the United States. Past presidents have recognized the importance of Hispanics in the United States: President Lyndon Johnson dedicated a week to celebrating Hispanic heritage in 1968 and, in 1988, President Ronald Reagan designated the 30-day period in September to observe and reflect on the rich culture, history, and traditions of Hispanic and Latino Americans. Use the following Annenberg Learner resources to explore identity and heritage with your students through the unique perspectives of Hispanic and Latino American writers:

  • Introduce your students to Pat Mora, a writer and activist from Texas and descendent of Mexican grandparents. She works to preserve and celebrate Mexican American literature. “Family, Mexican American culture, and the desert are all important themes in my children’s books as well as in my poetry and nonfiction for adults,” writes Mora. View session 1 of The Expanding Canon: Teaching Multicultural Literature in High School.
  • Approach the topic of dual heritage using literature. For example, author Judith Ortiz Cofer felt caught between her father’s desire to assimilate into mainland U.S. culture and her mother’s desire to hold onto their island heritage and customs of Puerto Rico. She is featured in Teaching Multicultural Literature, workshop 2, “Engagement and Dialogue.”
  • Also in Teaching Multicultural Literature, workshop 1, students can explore themes of “multiple worlds” and “dual identities” through the works of Julia Alvarez. Julia was born in New York City and grew up in the Dominican Republic until the age of 10. Her family permanently moved back to the United States to escape the difficulties of living under then dictator General Rafael Trujillo.
  • Third graders can explore the topic of immigration with Alma Flor Ada’s book My Name is Maria Isabel. View the lesson in Teaching Reading Workshop, Grades 3-5, program 10, “Fostering Book Discussions.”
  • In the video for A Biography of America, program 26, “The Redemptive Imagination,” Esmeralda Santiago explains that she began to write about her experiences as an immigrant in the United States to fill a void she saw in American literature.

Please share additional resources you use to teach about this topic in the comments.

 

We The People: American Citizens, Forever Learners

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In recognition of Constitution Day, celebrated in schools on September 18th this year, use the following resources to explore the theme “Citizenship and the American Dream” with your students. See how this idea emerges from social studies to science to the arts.

History/Social Studies

On Constitution Day, we celebrate the signing of the U.S. Constitution in 1787. The important Bill of Rights, ratified a few years later, comprised the first ten amendments to the Constitution. It guaranteed personal liberties including free speech and the right to trial by jury, while limiting the government’s ability to restrict our rights. Find resources for teaching the Constitution and Bill of Rights in elementary through high school classrooms on our blog.

Literature and Language Arts 

Literature serves as a starting point for discussions about social justice, community, and citizenship, as well as for empowering students to take action for change.

Use poetry to teach about the human condition. Help young people celebrate, value, and advocate for diversity by going beyond the tolerance and appreciation rhetoric. See educator Virginia Loh-Hagan’s blog post for resources and activities.

Maria Ruiz-Blanco discusses the novel, My Name is Maria Isabel with her students.

In Teaching Multicultural Literature: A Workshop for Middle Grades, learn techniques to engage students in critical discussions of race, class, and social justice. Activities center around works by Julia Alvarez, Langston Hughes, Joseph Bruchac, and many more.

See how elementary students blend literature with their own experiences of immigration. Watch Maria Ruiz-Blanco use discussions of the novel “My Name is Maria Isabel” as part of a year-long conversation on immigration with her students in Teaching Reading 3-5, classroom program 10, “Fostering Book Discussions.”

Mathematics

Elections are an integral part of our rights and responsibilities in the United States, and polls give us insights into where we stand on issues. Learn how polls are created and how the results are used to make inferences about the voting population in Against All Odds: Inside Statistics, unit 17.

Pastry Chef Joanne Chang at Flour Bakery in Boston, MA.

Science

For many, the American Dream is finding a way to turn passions, such as the science of baking and the science of animal welfare, into a career. Learn about the chemistry of baking with pastry chef Joanne Chang and her team at Flour Bakery in Boston, MA in this clip from Chemistry: Challenges and Solutions. See the full program in unit 10, “Acids and Bases- The Voyage of the Proton.”

Dr. Temple Grandin became an advocate for autism and for animal welfare, making changes to meat processing systems in the American cattle industry. In Neuroscience & the Classroom, she shares her success story. Born with autism, Dr. Grandin explains how her brain functions, and how her strengths have led her to a successful career as a professor of animal science at Colorado State University.

Arts and World Languages

The U.S. is often described as a mosaic of languages, cultures, and perspectives, which adds to the richness of American communities.

The Teaching Foreign Languages Workshop, session 8, “Engaging with Communities,” shows foreign language teachers tapping into the Hispanic and other cultures in their classrooms, schools, and communities to expose their students to languages and the great variety of American culture.

To be an American is to be at once part of a larger culture, and at the same time maintain an individual identity. Art Through Time explores the individual’s status in society in the theme “Portraits.” Featured artworks include Andy Warhol’s screen print of designer Diane von Furstenberg, Kehinde Wiley’s powerful portraits of African-American young men, and more.

(Editor’s Note: This post has been updated from the original post on August 14, 2017.)

Bringing the Gold to Class: 2018 Winter Olympics

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The year was 1924. From January 25th through February 5th, 10,004 paying spectators gathered in Chamonix, France to witness the first Winter Olympic Games. Two hundred and fifty eight athletes participated in 16 events, ranging from ice hockey to bobsleigh. Norway walked away as the victors, with 17 overall medals. The host country, France, placed ninth (just ahead of Belgium) with three bronze medals.

Fast forward to 2018, where the 23rd Winter Olympic Games are set to take place in PyeongChang, South Korea from February 9th through the 25th. Athletes from 90 nations, including the United States, will compete in 102 snow-filled events!

To celebrate the upcoming Winter Olympic Games, Annenberg Learner has resources available to get you and your students in an Olympic state of mind. Who knows – a future Olympian could be sitting right in your classroom! Ignite the (Olympic) flame in your students with these resources.

For those who use winter break to hit the slopes, Economics U$A’s Graphing Lab follows four friends who want to plan a ski trip, but haven’t assessed the risks or the cost. The lab uses a demand and market supply curve to figure out if the friends can afford the trip.

Pascal’s Triangle and the “hockey-stick” pattern.

Consider Pascal’s Triangle for the hockey enthusiasts who love a little math with their pucks. In Mathematics Illuminated, learn about a curious occurrence, a “hockey-stick” number pattern, which lives in Pascal’s Triangle.

In order for there to be a Winter Olympics, one crucial thing must be present: snow! In session six of Physical Science, take a closer look at why snowflakes have six sides and walk through the process of how snow forms on the molecular level.

Under the Chinese and German languages programs in Teaching Foreign Languages K-12: A Library of Classroom Practices, students talk sports, with a focus on vocabulary around the Olympics. Denise Tanner, who teaches German I in high school, leads her students in warm-up activities, followed by activities that have students make cultural comparisons between Germany and the U.S. Jie Gao, a middle school teacher of Mandarin Chinese, has her students learn the names and characters of eight sports.

The Olympics began as an ancient Greek tradition; it has since evolved into an international display of sportsmanship, honor and pride. In unit 25 of Bridging World History, see how the Olympics often reflect the social and political struggles of the time.