Featured Resources: The Science of Movement and Importance of Exercise

Springtime offers the perfect backdrop for promoting physical activity and engaging students in immersive learning experiences. Use these resources from PBS LearningMedia to explore the science of movement and to highlight the importance of exercise in their daily lives:

Mixie’s Boogie Buffet  (Grades 1-4) What better way to kick off a lesson on exercise than to get students up on their feet with this “Fizzy’s Lunch Lab” interactive?

Power Your Body with Exercise  (Grades 5-8) Invite students to examine the changes that occur in the body in response to physical activity.

Increasing Physical Activity in Schools (Grades 13+)  High levels of physical activity  support learning on-task behavior and the development of life-long wellness.  Learn how to increase the activity level at your school using this self-paced lesson.

Titanium Chairs & Cheetah Legs  (Grades 6-12) Introduce students to the specialized wheelchairs, prosthetics and other high-tech tools that allow Paralympic athletes to compete.

The Truth About Exercise (Grades 6-13+) An obesity expert proposes that the best way to lose weight and improve health is to increase your “NEAT” level.  Ask students to investigate his theory.

PBS LearningMedia is honored to be counted among this year’s recipients of the 2013 SIIA CODiE Award for both “Best Education Reference Solution” and “Best K12 Solution” in the Education Technology category!

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Hispanic History, Culture & Spanish Speaking Skills

Expand  students’ understanding of Hispanic history and culture while helping to develop their Spanish language skills with resources from PBS Learning Media.   These  featured interactive games, video clips, and lesson plans  are designed to engage learners and enhance curriculum.  If you’ve  yet to do so, you can  create a free account on PBS LearningMedia to search, save, and share your favorite resources.

The Storm that Swept Mexico: Revolutionary Art
Grades 9-12 | Video | Visual Art and History
Explore the Mexican Muralist Movement and consider the role of art as social commentary using this video resource from Latino Public Broadcasting.

Rough Riders
Grads 6-12 | Video | Spanish American War
Use this resource to enhance lessons on the Spanish American War, Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, and New Mexico’s path toward statehood.

Baseball and Social Change: The Story of Roberto Clemente
Grades: 5-8 | Blended Lesson | Literacy Skill Development
Invite students to examine the relationship between culture and identity through the story of baseball legend Roberto Clemente.

Hispanic Exploration in America
Grades: 4-12 | Media Gallery | Teaching with Primary Resources
Gain insight into the Hispanic exploration, colonization, and conquests in North America by examining a collection of primary sources from the Library of Congress.
*If you like this resource – you might like this online course.

The Red Balloon
Grades K-2 | Lesson Plan, Games | Spanish Vocabulary
¡Pruébalo! Develop your students’ Spanish language skills using this collection of videos and interactive games from “Oh Noah!”

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Arthur Stands Up To Bullying

ARTHUR, television’s longest-running children’s animated series, kicks off its spring season with a week of all-new episodes, including two devoted to the issue of bullying. The week begins with “The Last Tough Customer” on Monday, May 6. In this episode, the Tough Customers realize it’s time to quit bullying and set out to find a new hobby – but can Molly ever truly change her ways? Watch a sneak preview!

Then on Friday, May 10, in “So Funny I Forgot to Laugh,” Arthur thinks his jokes about Sue Ellen’s new sweater are all in good fun, but Sue Ellen’s feelings are hurt. Has Arthur become…a bully?

Visit ARTHUR’S parents and teachers’ site for more resources, including lesson plans like Arthur’s World Neighborhood with activities, resources, and tips to help kids explore cultural diversity within their own community and around the world. The curriculum was developed especially for students in grades 2-3 but activities can easily be adapted for younger or older audiences.

To also help raise students’ awareness on bullying and tolerance, you’ll find preK-3 resources on bullying as well as those for older grades at PBS LearningMedia.

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Lesson Plan Feature: Mathematics x 2

Here are two mathematics lessons from PBS LearningMedia for grades 5 – 8.  The first, Multiplying Fractions of the Form a/b of c is from Cyberchase, the PBS Kids program that shows kids that math is everywhere and everyone can be good at it!  Students study fractions and practice writing arithmetic sentences using multiplication and specific proportions.  In the Cyberchase activity, Harry gets a job in a candy store. Customers request boxes containing different types of truffles in differing proportions. This activity extends the problem into the case where there are a variety of numbers of candies in each box and students learn to multiply the fractional part times the number of candies per box to produce the number of candies of each type.

The second lesson, Percentage of Population with Diabetics, is from TV411, the Emmy Award-winning program that focuses on parenting, money matters and health, employing subjects like practical mathematics.  Students learn about percentages in relation to the study of diabetes and look at a nutrition label and apply various skills to answering questions about the label. The video clip in this activity explores how to tally the amount of carbohydrates one consumes each day. Students then learn to calculate the percentages of people who have diabetes.

Both lessons provide Quick Time videos, handouts, assessments and support materials.

 

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Lesson Plan Feature: Letters to Poets

PBS NewsHour Extra offers this wonderful lesson for grades 7-10 from The Academy of American Poets, which presents a series of activities for the classroom that allow students to explore and interact with poetry by writing letters to poets.  Aligned with the Common Core Standards, activities address the three literacy areas of Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening. You can use the series of activities one right after the other, or separate them as you integrate poetry with other areas of your curriculum. The activities are designed to reach diverse learners, but if you need to adapt them further, you can feel free to do so.

Sections include video, pre-activities, whole class, as well as individual/small group activities, and vocabulary.  Here’s a sample of objectives just for Activity 1:  Selecting Favorite Poems from Historical Poets of Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, Robert Frost, Pablo Neruda and William Carlos Williams

Students will:

Identify poets whose poetic voices speak to them

Select one of these poets and his or her poem to consider more deeply

Provide verbal explanation/evidence about why they have chosen this poem and poet to their peers

As an added bonus, in conjunction with the Academy’s celebration of letter writing and correspondence this National Poetry Month (April 2013), you are invited to submit your students’ letters to the Dear Poet project for a chance to receive handwritten responses from poets.

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Lesson Plan Feature: Women on the Rise in Afghanistan

For International Peace Month here’s a powerful lesson for grades 9-12 using videos from the PBS documentary series Women, War & Peace. Students learn about the life of women in Afghanistan, including progress they have made and obstacles and dangers they face. The lesson highlights Afghan women’s efforts to play an active role in Afghanistan’s peace process and to empower other women in their country.

Objectives

Students will be able to:

• Explain what the Taliban is and how the lives of women were restricted under its rule;
• Describe progress women have made since Taliban rule;
• Describe dangers women currently face in Afghanistan;
• Discuss steps individual Afghan women are taking to empower other women in their country;
• Describe why Afghan women felt it was critical to be involved in Afghanistan’s peace process and steps they took to make sure they would be part of the process;
• Explain ways in which the United States has supported the efforts of the women of Afghanistan;
• Describe efforts by women in other countries to advocate for human rights.

This comprehensive lesson includes media resources and websites for each detailed section of activities as well as related resources.

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Lesson Plan Feature: Cycling Water Through the Environment

With the spring thaw, here’s a lesson  for grades 3-5 from PBS LearningMedia to teach students that water is a crucial ingredient for life on Earth.  They’ll also come to see that the water cycle is Earth’s natural mechanism for transporting, cleansing, and recycling water between the surface and the atmosphere. In this lesson, students recognize the different forms that water takes and learn about where it exists in the environment. Through class discussion and experiments, students model the water cycle and explore how it can be used to create fresh water.

Objectives

• Understand that water exists in the environment in different forms
• Identify the ways that water moves through the environment
• Recognize that most of Earth’s surface is covered by water but that only a small amount is fresh water
• Produce fresh water from salty water by distilling it

Resources include great images of Water Phases (for grades K-5) and an interactive on Global Water Distribution (for grades 3-12) as well as  many short, engaging videos.

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National Robotics Week: Lesson Plans and Other Resources

Celebrate National Robotics Week (April 6-14) by bringing the incredible world of robots, rovers, and bots into your classroom! Let PBS LearningMedia support your efforts with this collection of featured resources:

What is a Robot? (Lesson Plan, Grades 3–5) Customize this 3-part lesson plan to deepen students’ depth of knowledge as it relates to the world of robots.

Wearable Robots  (Video, Grades 5-13+)Although the idea of wearable robots is not new, students will be fascinated to see how far this technology has advanced.

 Newton’s Third Law:  Action-Reaction (Blended Lesson, Grades 7-8)  Astronauts constantly use robots and robotic tools to assist with tasks.  Find out how they use them in this online lesson for blended learning from the Walmart Middle School Literacy Initiative.

 Robot Race (Video, Grades 3-12) Follow 2 teams of engineers as they put their robots to the test in a 132- mile race through the Mohave Desert.

 The Intelligent Robot (Video, Grades 6-12)  Invite students to hear from NASA researchers as they discuss the Mars Rover and demonstrate its ability to learn.

RoboSnail (Video, Grades 6-12)  See how this MIT students used a snail’s movement as inspiration for a new machine.

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Native Americans: Rural Poverty & Cultural Heritage

There’s still time to watch the second of a two-part series, Kind Hearted Woman on WGBY tonight, April 2, at 9:00pm.  This unforgettable portrait follows Robin Charboneau, a 32-year-old divorced single mother and Oglala Sioux woman living on North Dakota’s Spirit Lake Reservation.  Watch a Preview.

Here are other classroom resources on Native Americans from  PBS LearningMedia:

Miss Navajo  (Grades 6-12) This video segment from Independent Lens documents a young woman’s experiences as she competes in the Miss Navajo Nation beauty pageant.  Instead of concentrating on a young woman’s outer beauty, the pageant’s focus is on her knowledge and understanding of Navajo culture and her ability to spread this culture as an ambassador of the Navajo Nation.

La’ona DeWilde:  Environmental Biologist (Grades 5-12) This video profiles an Athabascan and doctoral student who chose her career because of her traditional belief in respecting animals and caring for the environment. Her work involves helping local villagers record observations that can be used collaboratively with Western science to help solve problems that affect Alaska Native peoples.

Native American Culture: Little Deer and Mother Earth Marilou Awiakta, of Cherokee/Appalachian heritage, tells a traditional Cherokee story in which humans are killing too many of their animal relatives, threatening the delicate balance of nature. Little Deer leads the animals in taking action, teaching the lesson that people should take “only what you need with respect and gratitude.”  Support materials include Native American Culture: Cherokee People and Their Stories Lesson Plan (Grades 3-4).

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Lesson Plan Feature: They’re Coming to America: Immigrants Past and Present

March’s celebration of Irish heritage be a good introduction to this lesson  where grades 5-7 explore the history of our nation of immigrants.  In the Introductory Activity, they identify their own and classmates’ countries of heritage.  Then they identify ethnic groups that migrated to the United States during various historic waves of immigration. In the Learning Activities, students watch video segments from Faces of America to develop an understanding of key motivations for immigration and explore online resources to examine specific immigrant experiences from various points in American history. The Culminating Activity asks students to use their historical knowledge and examination of case studies to develop a brief narrative summarizing the experiences, aspirations, and emotions of an hypothetical immigrant from the past or present.

In three 45-minute periods, students:

• Articulate that the United States is a nation of immigrants, and that America’s immigrant past is reflected in our language, culture, and traditions
• Identify their own countries of heritage on a world map
• Describe the historic waves of immigration to the U. S. and the countries related to those waves
• Explain motivations and rationale for immigration to the U. S.  at various points through its history
• Provide specific examples of historic and contemporary immigrant experiences
• Compare the experiences of historic and contemporary immigrants to the U. S.

The comprehensive lesson provides rich media resources, class materials, websites and more!

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