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Awesome Stories

Awesome Stories
"Young people easily can get mired in the flotsam and jetsam of the Internet. At Awesome Stories, educators and students discover new nonfiction worlds at a safe, accurate website. The stories will lead students on a quest for answers. Teachers will appreciate the lesson plans and activities. The site is aligned with Common Core State Standards. Simply put, Awesome Stories is an Internet gem."

http://www.awesomestories.com/

America: A Narrative History, 8e: W. W. Norton StudySpace US History Tours powered by Google Earth. This new format traces historical developments across time, touching down on locations vital to our nation's heritage and development. Points of interest in each tour launch primary and multimedia sources. Download Tours: To download: Windows users: right-click, "save link as"; Mac users: ctrl+click, "save as".

Birth of a Musical - West Side Story: Birth of a Classic The Broadway musical is a commercial art form that often aspires to, and occasionally attains, high art. It is also a collaborative medium, in which the librettist, composer, lyricist, director, and choreographer determine together the details of plot and action, the style and tone of the production, and how music, movement, and language will be used to best convey the story they wish to tell. The collaboration also involves dozens of people who play key roles, including the designers of the set, lighting, and costumes, the orchestrators and musicians, and ultimately the performers who must embody not only the characters they play, but also must be able to sing and dance—in the case of West Side Story—this most demanding music and choreography.

Paperbacks & Collections Kids Who Read Succeedby Linda Cornwell Kids need to read a lot. Time spent reading is important. Kids should read extensively both in and out of school to polish their basic reading skills and develop fluency. TAILS Tails includes Tails Installer a custom installer for USB sticks and SD cards. Tails Installer can only install Tails on a USB stick or SD card of at least 4 GB. In order to use Tails Installer, you need to start Tails from another media, and clone it onto the device of your choice, USB stick or SD card. To do that, you can either:

Five Ways to Visually Explore Wikipedia Wikipedia is one of the first places that students often go to get some background information on a topic they're researching. Besides just going to Wikipedia.org and entering a search, there are some other ways to explore the content of Wikipedia. Here are five ways that students can visually explore Wikipedia's content. Wiki Mind Map is a resource for visually exploring Wikipedia. Wiki Mind Map is essentially a search engine for Wikipedia articles that uses the Google Wonder Wheel concept. Enter a search term into Wiki Mind Map and it will generate a web of links to Wikipedia articles about your chosen search term. Teaching writing is wrong… Teaching and using writing to explore, to expand, and to explain is what we do; how to use writing is what we teach. With this in mind, “writing is best understood as a complex intellectual activity that requires students to stretch their minds, sharpen their analytical capabilities, and make valid and accurate distinctions” (National Commission on Writing in America’s Schools and Colleges, 2003, p.13). Thus, I no longer say I teach writing; I teach with writing. As both a student and a teacher, I have lived through numerous trends and theories of writing instruction. As a high school student in the early seventies, I methodically wrote the assigned five-paragraph essays about literature; then in college, used the same basic format to approach the longer papers assigned.

TEN MYTHS ABOUT CAPITALISM Capitalism in the neoliberal version has exhausted itself. Financial sharks do not want to lose profits, and shift the main burden of debt to the retirees and the poor. A ghost of the “European Spring” is haunting the Old World and the opponents of capitalism explain people how their lives are being destroyed. This is the topic of the article of a Portuguese economist Guilherme Alves Coelho. There is a well-known expression that every nation has the government it deserves.

Three Ways to Mark-up Webpages and Share Them There are a lot of excellent tools on the web for clipping, annotating, and sharing bookmarks with your friends and colleagues. For a long time I used Google Bookmarks for that purpose. Recently, I became a converted and dedicated user of Evernote. 10 Ways to Develop Expository Writing Skills With The New York Times Have you been knocking your head against the proverbial wall trying to teach – or learn – expository writing skills? New York Times models can help writers learn how to write an expository essay that is compelling, convincing and authoritative as well as engaging to read – not to mention authentic. Try a fresh approach with these 10 tips. 1. Ditch the five-paragraph essay and embrace authentic essay structure. New York Times news and feature articles are excellent models for structure, including transitions and organization.

Naval Science 302: Lesson 20 Naval Science 302: Navigation and Naval Operations II Lesson 20: Crisis Decision Making: USS Vincennes Case Study VincennesA Case Studyby Lieutenant Colonel David Evans, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired) 4 Personal Websites for the Media-Savvy Worker This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business. You post to Facebook and Twitter accounts, you blog regularly on Tumblr and you upload the occasional YouTube video. On the other hand, you don't own or operate your own website (partly because johnsmith.com was taken 15 years ago).

Annotating for Argumentation I spent the summer presenting at different conferences, edcamps, and unconferences on the value of using digital texts and tools to model, teach, and assess text annotation. I have also discussed the focus on argumentative writing with many district and school leaders. I always stress though that these methods can be be done just as easily with pencils as with pixels. Thus In this post I wanted to share my initial framework for annotating for argumentation regardless of the tool used.

This website offers the following tools for all Members and the Public: STORY NEWSLETTERS - read about new Awesome Stories, Story Briefs and media coming your way TEACHABLE MOMENTS - explore teaching strategies shared by our Awesome Teacher Leaders and other experts RUBRIC REFERENCE - selected rubrics from PARCC, SBAC, RubiStar rubrics and creation tools If you are willing to actually pay money for more in-depth access, if offers the following optional tools for Silver Individual Members, and Gold Classroom Members: AWESOME SEARCH TM - laser-sharp search by CCSS or statestandard, subject, grade, media type, story origin and key word AWESOME RADIO - share dramatic narrations of key story chapters, dramatizations of literary classics and radio plays VISUAL VOCABULARY - bring challenging words to life with images LEARNING TASKS - story-based learning tasks deepen understanding GOLD QUICKGUIDE - 8 page PDF guide to using GOLD Classroom Capabilities GOLD OVERVIEW - scrolling infographic look at what Awesome Stories GOLD does and how it works SUMMER READING OVERVIEW scrolling infographic look at Awesome Stories Summer Reading FREE programs Set up your classes Create assignments Use our Awesome Stories Learning Tasks for All Stories Use our Awesome Stories Learning Tasks for Specific Stories Create your own custom Learning Tasks View, add, edit your Bookmarked Learning Tasks and Story pages Make assignments to classes or to individual students Grade student work View reports on individual students, classes, or all students by drsinasoul May 27

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