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FEATURES FOR TEACHERS |
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Ideas and
Features For New Teachers |
Volume 3, Issue 5 March 2007 |
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One type of field trip is simply for fun. These are activity trips often used as rewards. Hay rides in the fall, and sledding, skiing, or skating in winter are simple trips just for fun. Other classes leave the building to host picnics, carve pumpkins, play softball, and do activities not really conducive to the academic setting of school. PE classes often use field trips to access facilities schools don't have. Bowling, archery, racquetball, horseback riding, swimming, and downhill skiing are just a few sports and activities that require a change in venue. Another type of trip is for academic work. I've taken upper level writing classes to local and collegiate libraries to research. Before the great mainstreaming of the internet, our small school library couldn't maintain the resources of larger institutions. Of course that has changed dramatically, though the basic tenets of book research are still expected in colleges and universities. Other classes may go to outside academic institutions for hands-on activities, projects, and guest teachers and facilities far too impractical to bring to your school. And still another type of field trip is to explore and learn through observation. These include trips to museums, historical places, landmarks, monuments, zoos, aquariums, businesses, and even governmental institutions. Examples include your state or national capitol, and local points of interest. Ok, so how do you set up a field trip? The first step is to check your school's policies and determine what paperwork is necessary. See who must give permission for your trip. It may be your principal, superintendent, or other designee. If you need transportation, you may need to arrange a bus and driver with the transportation department. Check who is paying the bill - are you required to charge the kids or fundraise to cover expenses. Let everyone know as far in advance as possible. Tell the secretaries, attendance office, cafeteria, and even janitors if they are even remotely involved. Determine if you'll need chaperones, and how many. Our school likes one chaperone to about six kids, so we'll try to break the students up into groups. We will assign students to groups, and many times we make up name tags for everybody. Copies of group lists are given to each chaperone. Spread out your chaperones through the bus, and always have a teacher in the back seat. Always over plan; it's better to have more supervision than you might originally plan. Thus the students and chaperones know all expectations. And you cover yourself well. Contact the various stops on your trip. Check for costs, both for students and chaperones. Sometimes there is no charge (or reduced charge) for adults. Prepare a basic budget sheet of all costs, and how you'll be covering them. Permission slips are very important. Write up a parent letter / cover sheet that explains in detail what you're planning. Include costs, times (leaving and returning), what students should bring, what students should NOT bring, and a rationale for the trip. Think about why the trip is important, what they'll learn, and what important connections the trip will make to curriculum. Trust me, doing this will pay off if any parents question the importance or appropriateness of the trip. Before, during, and after the trip you should always take careful attendance records. There's no worse thought than leaving a kid behind somewhere. Remind your students that in public they represent themselves, their family, you the teacher, the school, and their community. They need to show excellent behavior and make good choices. They must treat places and people with more respect than their counterparts at school. We also have our students leave the places we visit cleaner than when we arrived. We designate particular students to clean up, and we make sure our bus is cleaned up before returning to the building. Taking your kids on field trips can be an exhausting experience. But seldom is it ever a wasted time. It is their chance to escape the confines of the school building. And most kids enjoy being able to impress you with their behaviors. They want to be good, and they want to go again, and they yearn for the chance to prove it.
Quoting from their web
site The primary goal of the ISTE NETS Project
is to enable stakeholders in PreK-12 education to develop national
standards for educational uses of technology that facilitate school
improvement in the United States. The NETS Project will work to define
standards for students, integrating curriculum technology, technology
support, and standards for student assessment and evaluation of
technology use. 1.
Basic operations and concepts 2.
Social, ethical, and human issues 3. Technology productivity tools 4. Technology communications tools 5. Technology research tools 6. Technology problem-solving and decision-making tools Under each category are several standards for students to achieve. All of this is broken down by grade level to make it easier for teachers to develop and use within their classrooms. 1. Creativity and Innovation 2. Communication and Collaboration 3. Research and Information Retrieval 4. Critical Thinking, Problem-Solving, and Decision-Making 5. Digital Citizenship 6. Technology Operations and Concepts These standards certainly answer the call of skills being demanded in the workforce of the 21st century. The final standards will be published in June at the National Convention in Atlanta, Georgia. We, as teachers, need to begin to look at what we are doing and ask ourselves the question Am I preparing my students for the 20th or the 21st century?
Fire drills are probably the most common situations
you will encounter. The best way to handle these is to teach your
students what to do in the event of a drill or an actual evacuation.
Yes, you can teach this to your students. Fire drills are to be
surprises only WHEN they occur, not a surprise in WHAT to do. It is good
practice for your students to know exactly what the procedure to follow
is. The most important part is to be sure YOU fully understand the
school's fire drill procedure and you can confidently teach it to your
students.
MyPyramid For Kids is a great website with excellent information on the new government standards for healthy eating and physical activity. The website includes worksheets and activities for kids, tips for families, classroom materials for teachers to use. There is even a game for kids to play to familiarize themselves with the new food pyramid. There are also links to other tips and resources, dietary guidelines, and a detailed look at the many tenets of the food pyramid.
This is a user-friendly website with quick links to the various parts of the site. It is a great resource for elementary teachers. Check this site out, you'll be glad you did. Simply click the link below: http://www.mypyramid.gov/kids/index.html
Imagine being a privileged young Briton of the early fifth century, whose father was a Roman civil servant and whose grandfather was a priest - and then, in your early or middle teenaged years, being kidnapped by plundering invaders and taken to an alien land, where the people were pagan and you were suddenly a slave, put to work on a hillside herding and tending someone else's sheep. These are the events of the early life of St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. It was Ireland to which he was taken after his village in Scotland was overrun by the raiding party. It was Ireland in which he lived for the next six years - during which he became so fluent in the language that later, when he returned as a missionary, he was able to communicate faultlessly with both high- and low-born, and to be incredibly successful as an evangelist, teacher, and establisher of churches. Somehow, with God's hand on him, Patrick's formative years produced neither a resentful, embittered antagonist nor a despondent, despairing pessimist, but rather a humble, pious, gentle, mature individual who loved and trusted God absolutely and devoted the rest of his life - until his death on March 17 in or about the year 461 - to serving God in the place where he had been a slave of men. During those half-dozen years in the land of pagans and Druids, he learned to communicate with the Almighty in a way he had not at home, even in a Christian household headed by a priest. He wrote, "The love of God. . .grew in me more and more. . .my soul was roused. . .I prayed in the woods and on the mountain, even before dawn. . .felt no hurt from the snow or ice or rain." He prayed almost without ceasing - probably remembering prayers he'd been taught and adding to them the rejoicings and petitions of a captive who was free in spirit. When he was about twenty, he had a dream, or a nighttime vision, in which he was instructed to be ready for a brave effort: to travel alone some 200 miles, to a place on the seacoast where he would find a ship which would take him home. Accordingly, he ran away from his master; and he did find the ship. At first, the sailors scoffed at his request for free passage. But then, the stories say, he prayed silently; and the sailors called out to him to come aboard. After a three-day voyage, they reached landfall and trekked for another month through uninhabited land before young Patrick was reunited with his delighted family. Of course they begged him to be careful never to leave again; but they could not know that Patrick was to have another dream. This one was of the people of Ireland, and they were calling out to him: "We beg you, holy youth, to come and walk amongst us once more." He prepared to do just that: was educated, ordained, made priest and then bishop, commissioned to preach the gospel to the Celtic people. He was probably in his early thirties when he arrived again in Ireland; the traditional date is 432 AD, the traditional place is Slane (which, by the way, is the name of the hauntingly beautiful tune to which is set the hymn, "Be Thou My Vision"). What he was returning to was a well-established pagan Celtic society, but one which readily accepted Christianity. This, of course, is where so many legends that are told and retold every St. Patrick's Day were born. Or fabricated. At any rate, they were believed. And all the stories, both real and fanciful, illustrate something of the sort of consecrated servant Patrick was. Even the narrative of how he drove all the snakes out of Ireland by beating his drum - and utilized trickery to get the biggest into a box, which he then hurled into the sea - symbolizes his putting an end to the venomous pagan practices for which serpents were the symbol. Another story has him encountering a pagan chieftain named Dichu just after he reached his mission territory. Dichu attempted to murder Patrick - but then found his arm was paralyzed. He was converted and became a friend, and movement was restored. Sure it is that Patrick preached the Gospel throughout Ireland, and that many thousands of souls were converted upon hearing the message he brought. And surely, his plucking of a shamrock and pointing out how it's possible for something to be three, and yet ever one, stands as a classic object lesson to help people understand the Holy Trinity. A lovely legend is how Patrick lit the Easter bonfire: On a night when it was forbidden to kindle any fire anywhere in Ireland before the high king's own royal blaze was visible at Tara, Patrick caused a flame to be lit in honor of the Resurrection. The punishment for such an action was death - but when the king's men came to douse the Paschal fire and kill those who had kindled it, the flames would not go out; and Patrick, with his companions, baffled and evaded the druids by assuming the shapes of deer, in which they reached Tara, where many were converted. Another has it that one day, while preaching a sermon on the patience and suffering of Christ to King Aengus, Patrick accidentally drove his staff right through the King's foot. The good King, thinking this was the moral of the sermon, made no sound of complaint. When Patrick realized what had happened, he prayed - and the king's foot was miraculously cured. The final legend surrounding this saint is that when he died (at Saul, where he had built the first church), his shrouded was placed on a cart drawn by two white oxen. Unreined, they wandered to a place called Downpatrick, where he was buried under a simple cross on a granite boulder. For twelve days and nights, the sun shone in the sky, refusing to set and make a new day without him. The "Lorica," or "Breastplate," of St. Patrick has been called "part prayer, part anthem, and part incantation." It includes these timeless words: Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, See more of our Freebies as well as Special Reports on our website by clicking the quick link below: http://www.starteaching.com/free.htm Make sure to BOOKMARK our website so you can keep up with more changes and additions through the year. And feel free to share our site by EMAILING it to a friend.
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