Poetry 180

Poetry 180 is designed to make it easy for students to hear or read a poem on each of the 180 days of the school year.  Each poem was selected with high school students in mind.   Mr. Billy Collins, developer of Poetry 180 says, "The point is to expose students to some of the fresh voices in contemporary poetry; it is not necessary that all schools read the same poem every day. Also, you may skip a poem for any reason. The poems have been chosen with high school age students in mind, but if you feel a certain poem is inappropriate, skip it."

You can subscribe to Poetry 180 and have it sent to your email daily.  

We chose day 25 as a sample for you:
 
Domestic Work, 1937

Natasha Trethewey

All week she's cleaned
someone else's house,
stared down her own face
in the shine of copper-
bottomed pots, polished
wood, toilets she'd pull
the lid to--that look saying

Let's make a change, girl.

But Sunday mornings are hers--
church clothes starched
and hanging, a record spinning
on the console, the whole house
dancing. She raises the shades,
washes the rooms in light,
buckets of water, Octagon soap.

Cleanliness is next to godliness ...

Windows and doors flung wide,
curtains two-stepping
forward and back, neck bones
bumping in the pot, a choir
of clothes clapping on the line.

Nearer my God to Thee ...

She beats time on the rugs,
blows dust from the broom
like dandelion spores, each one
a wish for something better.

from Domestic Work, 1999
Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minn.

Economics for Everybody

Everybody talks about it.  The news is full of it. But most Christians know very little about it. Economics: it’s everywhere, influencing everything — and so rarely understood.

Economics for Everybody seeks to remedy that through an insightful and entertaining exploration of the principles, practices, and consequences of economics. Thoroughly unconventional, it links entrepreneurship with lemonade, cartoons with markets, and Charlie Chaplin with supply and demand.

It’s funny, clever, profound and instructive all in one place. It’s Economics for Everybody.

Purchase on DVD or for download here.





Course Overview:

1. And God Created Economics | Stewardship in God’s Image

2. The Economic Problem of Sin | Law, Liberty & Government

3. The Path from Work to Wealth | Production, Property & Tools

4. The Route From Scarcity to Plenty | Money, Markets & Trade

5. The Role of the Entrepreneur | Capital, Calculation & Profit

6. A Tale of Two Theologies, Part 1 | From God to Politics

7. A Tale of Two Theologies, Part 2 | Economic Philosophies & Systems

8. Government Intervention | Basic Principles & Education

9. The Two Mysteries of Monetary Policy | Inflation & Depressions

10. The Welfare & Corporate States of America | The Costs of Redistribution

11. Economics Has Consequences | The Real Effects of Sin

12. Kingdom Economics

Interactives. Elements of a Story

Interactives - Elements of a Story uses the story of Cinderella as a model for learning about the elements of a story. To use this interactive students select any element of the story; setting, character, sequence, exposition, conflict, climax, or resolution then read and listen to an explanation of that element of the story. After they have worked through all of the elements of the story, they can take a quiz to test their knowledge.

Despite the fact that it uses a fairy tale, Cinderella, this is a resource that is accessible to elementary school, middle school, and high school students. Although the graphics are clearly aimed toward elementary school students, this could certainly be a review resource for older students.

NaNoWriMo Young Writer's Program

My friend told me about the NaNoWriMo Young Writer's Program.  We are using it as our writing program for this semester.    NaNoWriMo offers amazing workbooks to prepare students for November.   They offered for free and are written for elementary, middle school and high school students.  
 

National Novel Writing Month happens every November! It's a fun, seat-of-your-pants writing event where the challenge is to complete an entire novel in just 30 days. For one month, you get to lock away your inner editor, let your imagination take over, and just create!  That means participants begin writing November 1 and must finish by midnight, November 30.   The Young Writers Program (YWP) allows 17-and-under participants to set reasonable, yet challenging, individual word-count goals. 


Some of the skills NaNoWriMo builds:

• Fluency: Writing so much in so little time boosts students’ proficiency in grammar, spelling, and punctuation, and will help them approach future writing assignments with ease and confidence.
• Confidence: When creating so much text in such a short period of time, students realize just how much they can accomplish when they put their minds to it. NaNoWriMo leaves young writers asking themselves, “What’s next?”
• Creativity: Creating characters, situations, dialogue, and even whole planets from scratch helps kids think, but it also teaches them how to apply their fanciful ideas to a full project.
• Time Management: Our curriculum teaches students how to tackle a huge project by breaking it down into manageable bites!

KenKen Puzzles

KenKen puzzles are quite the puzzle to some: They can’t believe that KENKEN—something so delightfully addictive, so completely fun—has an educational basis.    It’s not a crossword. It’s not some extreme version of tic-tac-toe. So what is KENKEN and where did it come from? Simply put, it’s a grid-based numerical puzzle that uses the basic math operations—addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division—while also challenging your logic and problem-solving skills. By altering the size of a KENKEN grid, from 3 x 3 up to 9 x 9, and employing different combinations of the math operations, five different difficulty levels can be generated, and a seemingly endless number of puzzles. (And many players seem determined to try them all!) In a way, KENKEN is like a game of pool or even chess: The more you think ahead to your next move and consider all the possible outcomes, the better you’ll get—and the smarter you’ll become! 

KenKen recently announced their Classroom program which supplies teachers with KenKen puzzles on a regular basis. FREE! Sign up here.   Please be aware this is a limited time offer, subject to change or expire without notice!  Teacher Sign Up Here!  

Reading Like A Historian

With the start of school just around the corner, I am still scouring for curriculum that will enhance our study of US history.    I discovered that Stanford is offering free lessons plans that help students read history like a historian. 

The Reading Like a Historian curriculum engages students in historical inquiry. Each lesson revolves around a central historical question and features sets of primary documents modified for groups of students with diverse reading skills and abilities. This curriculum teaches students how to investigate historical questions employing reading strategies such as sourcing, contextualizing, corroborating, and close reading. Instead of memorizing historical facts, students evaluate the trustworthiness of multiple  perspectives on issues from King Philip's War to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and  make historical claims backed by documentary evidence.



Since the lessons are designed to supplement what is already being taught, this will be a great addition to our history plan!  

Units Include...

1. Colonial
2. Revolution and Early America
3. Expansion/Slavery
4. Civil War and Reconstruction
5. The Gilded Age
6.  American Imperialism
7. Progressivism
8. World War I and the 1920s
9. New Deal and World War II
10. Cold War
11. Cold War Culture/Civil Rights

Visit the "Reading Like A Historian" website by Clicking Here.

Doodle 4 Google Mississippi Exhibit

Doodle 4 Google Mississippi Exhibition

Trustmark Grand Hall

MS Museum of Art

Now through August 12, 2012

FREE to the public!

For the last five years, Google has invited K-12 students to create their own doodles and submit them as part of the Doodle 4 Google contest. This year over 114,000 students doodled on the theme “If I could travel in time, id visit….” This Doodle 4 Google 2012 exhibition showcases the best doodles from Mississippi and celebrates the creativity and artistic talents of our state’s youth. Free to the public.

Back in science with Albert Einstein:  Jonathan N, Ocean Springs, MS, Age 9