You’ll definitely want to explore American Experience‘s vast educator resources, among them a Teacher’s Guide and innumerable lesson plans under units such as the following:

Life in the North and South 1847-1861: Before Brother Fought Brother

The Growing Crisis of Sectionalism in Antebellum America: A House Dividing

The American Civil War: A “Terrible Swift Sword”

The American Civil War: A “Terrible Swift Sword”

Abraham Lincoln on the American Union: “A Word Fitly Spoken”

From Courage to Freedom: Frederick Douglass’s 1845 Autobiography

As busy as the start of the school year can be, reflective teachers often realize what they need to learn to be even better at what they do.  With time and cost a factor for most people, online courses are meeting the needs of a growing number of younger and older students.  As evidence mounts for just how effective high-quality online learning can be, more people are turning to their computers to log into class.

PBS TeacherLine has been a trusted professional development source for thousands in our region and may serve your professional learning plans this year.   Starting September 19th and October 24th, PBS TeacherLine is offering 45+ courses that span grade levels and curriculum, most of which are available for graduate credit.

Among courses open for enrollment, starting September 19th:

K-6
Children’s Authors on the Web: Online Sites That Motivate Students to Write (RDLA125), 30 hours

K-8
An Introduction to Underlying Principles and Research for Effective Literacy Instruction (RDLA152), 45 hours

K-12
Fundamentals of Virtual K-12 Teaching (TECH570), 45 hours

Among those open for enrollment, starting October 24th:

PreK-3
Teaching Phonemic Awareness and Phonics (RDLA157), 45 hours

K-12
Searching and Researching on the Internet (TECH325), 30 hours

4-6
Improving Reading Comprehension (RDLA192), 45 hours

If you have any questions about PBS TeacherLine or a particular course, please contact me at 413.781.2801, ext. 292.

An Egg is Quiet (Grades PreK-1) Use this video illustrated story to practice text comprehension and encourage students’ language and vocabulary development.  (Includes NCTE-IRA Standards for ELA; Common Core State Standards Initiative)

Garden Spiders  (Grades 3-6) Introduce your class to six varieties of spiders in a busy garden ecosystem. Ask each student to take brief notes and evaluate the information. (With Teaching Tips)

A Different Kind of Fuel  (Grades 6-12) Interpreting Data, Facts and Ideas from Informational Texts: Use the specialized vocabulary presented in this video clip to help your students build proficiency while learning about the massive energy source that is the sun. (With Teaching Tips)

What’s the Author’s Purpose? Animal Shelter  (Grades 4-6) This lesson plan explores the role of animal shelters. Use the video clips and informational text with your students to explore the impact of words and the writer’s point of view.

Home-grown Self Esteem (Grades PreK-2)  With Clifford the Big Red Dog, preschoolers can develop self esteem and a feeling of accomplishment with activities they can do at home, such as plant and care for an indoor plant and practice fire/tornado drills for emergencies.

Air is Matter  (Grades K-5) This collection of still images assembled for Teachers’ Domain illustrates some of the many ways that air, which can be quite powerful, affects our lives.

Tornado Model (Grades 4-6) In this video segment from DragonflyTV, Sullivan and Alexa engineer their own tornado model to explore the forces that produce a tornado.

How Do Tornadoes Form? (Grades 6-12) This video segment adapted from NOVA describes the challenges of studying tornadoes and shows how computer simulations are helping researchers observe what they can’t possibly see in a real storm.

Here’s one of the seven resources in the collection: “Designing Swimming Prosthetic for a Dancer.“  In this video segment adapted from DESIGN SQUAD, dancer and performance artist Lisa Bufano, a bilateral leg and finger amputee, challenges the teams to build specialized prostheses for an underwater performance. The teams keep aesthetics and function in mind as they use the engineering design process to create adaptive technologies.

The program features Daniel, the son of Daniel Striped Tiger, as a shy but brave and imaginative four-year-old tiger who lives in the Neighborhood of Make Believe with the next generation of original characters from Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.  Each episode integrates music and includes two stories that focus on common early learning themes.

Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood interactive website features educational online games and activities such as a ride through the Neighborhood of Make Believe on the always popular Trolley.   At its teachers’ site you can watch a premiere, meet the characters and see the show’s learning goals.  The parents’ site also offers great resources, including Fred Roger’s Timeless Wisdom.

Among lesson plans relating to elections, all with background, activities and critical analysis, you’ll find:  Rich vs. Poor: How Wealth is Impacting the 2012 Elections; Social Media and Advertising in the 2012 Elections; Analyzing the Candidates in the 2012 Presidential Election; and A Race to Watch: Campaign 2012, The Role of Technology and the Internet.

At this great site you and students will also see main stories of the day and daily video clips as well as hear students’ voices in essays, personal stories and poems.

To connect you to the best of PBS resources, PBS Teachers is one place we go for multimedia resources and professional development for prek-12 educators.  If you want to check it out for yourself, you’ll find resources such as  PBS KIDS in the Classroom,  PBS Education News, and PBS EcoInvestigators, designed to get students in grades 3-5 engaged, excited, and prepared to take on and solve environmental problems in their community and beyond.  You’ll even be connected to  the PBS Teachers Facebook page where you’ll find still more resources, including links for NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars!

Arthur’s Lunch-o-Matic Game

In our country, one in three children is considered overweight or obese. Children can also be the most difficult to satisfy, often choosing prepackaged options over fresh ones. So with students heading back to school cafeterias before long, it’s time to think about teaching them why and how to make healthy eating choices.  As well as other PBS resources/lessons on nutrition that you can search on our site, here are additional ones from PBS LearningMedia to help students start off eating healthy in the new school year:

Lunch-o-Matic  (Grades K-2) With this online interactive game, PBS Kids’ favorite, Arthur, helps students choose the right foods to create balanced lunches . They elect a food to add to a lunch tray that contains the nutritional items the brain asks for.

OrganWise Guys Shorts: Are You OrganWise? (Grades PreK-4) In this short game show-style clip, kids learn about healthy food choices with the OrganWise Guys.  They’ll recognize that high-fiber vegetables are key components of good nutrition.

Science Profile:  Food Scientist (Grades 4-6) In this video profile from DragonFly TV, nutritionist Corey Scott researches the nutritional composition of fruits and vegetables to help develop healthier snacks.

Hey parents: are your kids in love with dinosaurs?  Join Buddy and his Dinosaur Train pals as they explore big dinosaurs, geysers, and nocturnal creatures. New episodes premiere during Dinosaur Train’s “Big Big Dinosaur Week” on PBS KIDS (Aug. 13-17).

After you watch the show, check out the website for fun games, dinosaur field guides, printable activities, and more video content.

14 Lesson Plans (Grades 9-12) address national teaching standards, offer activities and video clips from the film, and more.

Snapshot Activities contain a brief overview along with activity ideas that teachers can use to create lessons tailored to individual class curriculum, teaching style and time limitations.

Search and Explore is a comprehensive database with more than 800 photographs; 200 primary source documents and artifacts; 100 videos including clips from THE WAR, historical footage, web exclusive interviews, home movies and historic newsreels.

The Power of Story, written for students for their own documentary production and easily adapted for classroom use, this PDF handbook engages students in seeking out and understanding history in their own communities.

Team Motherboard’s Cyber Olympic Strategy (Grades 3-5) Team MotherBoard uses trial and error to figure out their best strategy for winning the Olympics. They add different combinations of individual times for the obstacle course, run, and swim.

Tae Kwon Do (Grades 4-6) Join young black belts as they examine how to refine their Tae Kwon Do kicks. Use the scientific method to determine which positions produce the strongest kicks.

Bats & Books  (Grades 4-9) Hear favorite author Jerry Spinelli explain why sports and books shouldn’t be mutually exclusive — as in the case of his character Maniac Magee — and that young athletes can become readers as well.

Kid Inventor: The Collapsible Lacrosse Stick  (Grades K-8) Many inventions are born of a need to easily store or transport an item. In this video segment from ZOOM, a young inventor named Lauren explains the motivation behind her collapsible lacrosse stick.

How the Body Responds to Exercise (Grades 6-12) Meet a group of runners preparing for a marathon and learn what effect their running has on the cardiovascular system.

Geocaching is a real-world treasure hunting game where players use GPS-enabled devices (a smartphone will do) to hunt for hidden containers called geocaches. Check out this short and sweet video from geocaching.com to get the full description. 

 The Jim Henson Company has Dinosaur Train themed geocaches hidden across the U.S. by PBS stations, museums, zoos, aquariums, and individual families. Each geocache features a dinosaur from the Dinosaur Train Field Guide and contains educational facts about that dinosaur.  

 Want to make your own Dinosaur Train geocache?  Follow the instructions to get started! 

GeoTours are a new feature for geocaching that allow you to see a collection of geocaches more easily, and there’s a GeoTour made especially for Dinosaur Train! Zoom into your state to see all the Dinosaur Train geocaches available. Check out the Dinosaur Train GeoTour mention in the Wall Street Journal!

Classroom resources are available to foster opportunities for students to take charge of their own learning with quality, engaging, relevant tools intended for today’s busy teachers and parents. You can explore our online discussion guide designed to complement Homeland’s video content to bring the national debate to your classroom and encourage students to approach immigration with a discerning eye.

Check out the trailer below:

• Download the PBS Kids Video App to enjoy videos from your favorite PBS KIDS shows such as Curious George, Sid the Science Kid, Dinosaur Train! 
• Be a trip detective with Oh Noah!  While traveling around the city or on a long car trip, challenge your child to identify items you pass in Spanish!
• Print the Cyberchase Activity Book to enjoy challenges, puzzles and games! 

Whether you are flying, riding, or driving make sure you have activities to keep kids engaged and entertained.  Happy trails!

Deep Time, a NOVA approved site, provides a multimedia exploration of 4 billion years of life on Earth with major transformations, geological changes, and extinction episodes. An Evolution Library for teachers and students is also available.

Deciphering Maya:  A Time Line  is another multimedia resource that allows students to trace discoveries in the effort to understand the Maya script.

Among audio stories on time and/or space by physicists:

Max Tegmark says that time is still one of the biggest mysteries in physics.

 Janna Levin talks about how Einstein and Newton had very different ideas about what space and time really are.

Sean Carroll says there’s no such thing as past or future in the elementary laws of physics.

Music and Multiple Intelligences  (Grades PreK-13+) This resource includes a definition of multiple intelligences and two videos providing examples of using students’ musical intelligence for learning.  By addressing multiple intelligences in lesson plans, teachers are able motivate all students to learn.

We Are the Music (Grades 3-4) Explore music and dance sequences of 11 cultural groups who have settled in Santa Fe, New Mexico over the past 700 years in diverse communities such as the Native Americans, Spanish, Crypto-Jewish, Celtic, German, Greek, Japanese, Tibetan, the Central Americans. All performers and narrators in these segments are of school-age.

Point of View – Sharing a Perspective on  Music (Grades 6-12)  In this lesson plan and video, students share opinions on music and write two critiques of a band playing the “St. Louis Blues,” one from their own point of view and one from that of a music critic, reflecting upon how their point of view influenced their opinion.

We also want preschool educators and parents to know about PBS Kids Rocks!, PBS Kids’ first music album, available on iTunes and Amazon.  Each song is designed to help kids learn about a variety of topics to bolster their reading and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) skills.

Currently on PBS LearningMedia an Interactive Science Party keeps science skills sharp through the summer with true investigations.  Interactives such as the following let students experiment, manipulate, and learn through play:

Amusement Parks Physics (Grades 9-12):  How do physics laws affect amusement park ride design? Students have a chance to find out by designing their own roller coaster in this interactive from Annenberg Learner.

Build-A-Fish (Grades 6-8):  In this interactive activity, students design a fish that has the right adaptations, or traits, to help it survive in a reef environment.  They choose a body, mouth, and color/pattern, then release their fish into the ocean reef to search for food and evade predators, steering it around the reef to see how well it survives with the traits they gave it.

Climate Change Challenge (Grades 6-8):  Students use video clips and an interactive game to become knowledgeable about the effects of our choices on the environment.  They complete training modules and become certified in the carbon cycle, the water cycle, human impact, nature’s impact, mitigation and oil spills. After completion of the modules, students play an interactive game about how their personal choices impact the climate.

We here at WGBY salute all the military families out there; happy Independence Day!

” A scientist is someone who never stopped being a kid.”  What do you think? What are the best ways to encourage scientifically literate children?

• Super Why Super Readers’ Challenge
• Martha Speaks: Socks in Space
• The Electric Company: Prankster Planet

One in four children have untreated tooth decay, now the most common chronic illness among school-aged children with adults faring no better. Part of the problem is that many people don’t have dental insurance and can’t afford steep out-of-pocket costs for care. Medicare offers no dental coverage unless it’s connected to a medical procedure, and while poor children are covered by Medicaid, many dentists’ offices turn them away because the profit margins are so low. In 2009, according to the Kaiser  Family Foundation data, 19 million children had no dental insurance — more than twice the number who went without health insurance.

Frontline also looks at the practices of two private companies offering dental care for those in need, Kool Smiles and Aspen Dental, and the questions raised about whether such companies are taking advantage of some young patients and offering financing that may be exploiting poor families.

We hope you’ll watch this Frontline documentary to learn more about the state of our children’s dental health care.

Key features of this Summer Learning Program include 36 hours of summer learning content, 3 hours of video content packaged into 15-minute episodes, online games, group activities, and skill-building activity sheets.  All of this is accompanied by a 90-minute staff orientation and PowerPoint that assists with the professional development of implementation staff.

Best of all: all of these materials are free for your usage.  All you need is the motivation to get started!  You can implement this summer program in your formal or informal summer learning program.  Check out some of the great resources included in this summer curriculum:

• Front & Back Covers – Summer Learning Program (PDF)
• Guide – Summer Learning Program (PDF)
• Training Guide – Summer Learning Program (PDF)
• Episode Clips – Summer Learning Program (YouTube)
• Training Presentation – Summer Learning Program (PowerPoint, 77MB)

This month’s PBS LearningMedia picture well features world history with a lens aimed around the globe and back in time, bringing students to diverse historical moments:

Archeology (Grades 4 – 6)  In a video segment from IdahoPTV’s D4K, an Egyptologist discusses the significance of  objects found by Howard Carter in 1922 in King Tut’s tomb. Students see examples of artifacts and learn why tombs were important for Egyptian culture.

The Inspiration (Grades 6-12)  In this video segment from the American Experience: “Freedom Riders” Web site, watch interviews and newsreel footage and see archival photos to learn how Mahatma Gandhi inspired and influenced those engaged in the  U. S. struggle to end racial discrimination.  Check out a preview the video segment here and follow the link to PBS LearningMedia for support resources:

Birth and Youth (Grades 6-12) This excerpt from “The Buddha” examines the spiritual stories about and early life of Siddhartha Gautama,  born twenty-five hundred years ago in a fertile valley nestled along the border between India and Nepal.

Global Crisis (Grades 9-12) The end of World War II marks the end of Nazi Germany and the start of the Cold War; this video recounts the days and weeks after the war and the global crisis that emerged.

Many resources offer varied support materials such as background essays, discussion questions, study guides, learning objectives and related content.

Using Combinations to Solve a Problem (Grades 2-6)  In video segments two puzzles are presented. Each requires students to consider nine combinations and eliminate possibilities by using clues to find the correct solution. Each time,  students are shown a video and given an opportunity to solve the problem before they watch the CyberSquad generate the solution. Mathematics explored shows how two dimensions, with three variables each, produce nine combinations.

Addition of Decimal Numbers and a Common Error (Grades 4-7)  Students are asked to calculate sums of decimals that total more than one, carefully lining up decimal places. This activity is motivated by two video clips in which the characters calculate sums involving decimals, but in each case there is an error in the decimal point placement.

Investigating Tessellations Filling 2-D Space (Grades 2-5) Students explore the arrangement of shapes that can fill a plane with no overlaps or gaps, called tessellating. In a video segment the CyberSquad uses tessellating to overcome challenges to reach Hacker. They’re also introduced to the terms “congruence” and “similar.”

You can find more engaging lessons and resources at PBS LearningMedia.