Big Deal Newsletter, Oct. 5

Provide Movement Activities for Children with DisabilitiesCVS
Caremark Community Grants
provide funds of up to $5,000 for public school programs that promote
a greater level of inclusion of children with disabilities in
extracurricular activities. Proposed programs may include either
physical activities
or play opportunities
for youth under age 21 and should address the specific needs of the
population served.Deadline: October 31, 2011
Click Here for More Information

Become a Mathematics Teacher-LeaderThe
National Council of
Teachers of Mathematics
(NCTM) Emerging
Teacher-Leaders in Elementary School Mathematics grants are
intended to increase the breadth and depth of the mathematics content
knowledge of K–5 teachers who have demonstrated commitment to
mathematics teaching and learning. Applicants must have the support
of their school principal in becoming a mathematics teacher-leader
within their school or district. For the 2012–2013 school year,
grants with a maximum of $6,000 each will be awarded. Only one
teacher per school may receive the award. The grant recipient will be
expected to provide ongoing professional development within the
school or district to strengthen teachers’ mathematical
understandings and instructional practices. Current (as of October
14, 2011) full individual or e-members of NCTM are eligible to apply
for the grant.
Deadline: November 11, 2011
Click Here for More Information

Demonstrate the Connectivity of MathematicsThe
National Council of
Teachers of Mathematics(NCTM)Engaging Students in
Learning grants are
given to incorporate middle school classroom materials or lessons
that actively engage students in tasks and experiences to deepen and
connect their content knowledge. Materials may be in the form of
books, visual displays, slideshows, videotapes or other appropriate
media. The focus of these materials should be on showing the
connectivity of mathematics to other fields or to the everyday world.
Materials may not be calculators, computers or related equipment.
Proposals must address one or more of the NCTM content standards
(number and operations, geometry, measurement, algebra) and include a
plan for developing and evaluating materials as well as a statement
of the anticipated impact on student learning. To be eligible for a
grant of up to $3,000, applicants must be current (as of October 14,
2011) full individual or e-members of NCTM or those teaching at a
school with a current (as of October 14, 2011) NCTM preK–8 school
membership who teach mathematics in grades 6–8 at least 50 percent
of the school day.
Deadline: November 11, 2011
Click Here for More Information

Use Music to Increase Math AchievementThe
National Council of
Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM)
Using Mathematics to
Teach Music grantencourages the incorporation of music into the elementary school
classroom to help young students learn mathematics. Any acquisition
of equipment must support the proposed plan but not be the primary
focus of the grant. Proposals must address the following: the
combining of mathematics and music; the plan for improving students’
learning of mathematics; and the anticipated impact on students’
achievement. To be eligible for a grant of up to $3,000, applicants
must be current (as of October 14, 2011) full individual or e-members
of NCTM or those teaching at a school with a current (as of October
14, 2011) NCTM preK–8 school membership.Deadline: November 11, 2011
Click Here for More Information

Share Innovative Teaching and Learning Materials

The
Adobe Education
Exchange has
announced The 2011
Educators’ Choice
Awards.
Educators can win valuable prizes by producing and submitting
innovative teaching and learning materials. Adobe’s education
colleagues will rate your work, so impress them with exciting
projects, lesson plans, curricula, tutorials and other submissions.
Prizes—including laptop and tablet computers, digital cameras and
Adobe software—will be awarded in four categories:
Primary/Secondary Cross-Curricula; Primary/Secondary Digital Arts and
Media; Higher Education Cross-Curricular; Higher Education Digital
Arts and Media. The entry period is under way, so start submitting
your entries today.

Deadline: October 14, 2011
Click Here for More Information

Bring the Wonder of Science to LifeIn
2008, Siemens
Foundation and
Discovery Education
launched a Web site emphasizing the importance of math and science in
grades 4–6 through a day of free,
fun and engaging hands-on
science activities.
Now in its fourth year, Siemens
Science Day has
expanded to reach all elementary students and teachers through
engaging digital content and the chance to win an Ultimate
Cool School Assembly.
New standards-aligned science resources, hands-on activities and
videos are available for K–6 classrooms.
Deadline:
Entries for school assembly accepted through February 28, 2012
Click
Here for More Information About Science Day
Click Here for More Information About Assembly

Prepare Students for the New Literacies“HOT
Blogging: A Framework to Promote Higher Order Thinking”provides teachers with a systematic way to integrate blogs, deepen
comprehension and teach the new literacies of online reading
comprehension. This free
article,
by Lisa Zawilinski at the University of Connecticut, describes four
kinds of blogs (Classroom
News Blogs,
Mirror Blogs,
Showcase Blogs
and Literature
Response Blogs) and
presents examples by
type. In addition,
for teachers who wish to begin their own blogging journey, the
article includes a simple four-step
process as well as
links to classroom
blog service providers.
The article also includes a Synthesis
Scaffold for Thinking Across Text for Deeper Understanding.
Click Here to Download Blogging Framework

Switch Facebook into Study ModeThe
Facebook application
Hoot.me
seeks to turn Facebook into a study
tool for students.
The app diverts students away from their wall and news feed and asks
them, “What are you working on?” It then connects students with
live group-study
sessions on their
chosen topic. These sessions can use group
videoconferencing,
which Facebook itself doesn’t yet offer, as well as the “smart
chat” function.
Smart chat allows you to type mathematical formulas in English, which
are then automatically translated into mathematical notation. A
screen-sharing option is coming soon. Hoot.me also saves and archives
the study sessions so that users can search for answers in other,
older study sessions.
Click Here to Access Free Facebook App

Enhance Students’ Global Awareness
Annually,
a committee of the CL/R
SIG (Children’s
Literature
and Reading
Special
Interest
Group)
of the International
Reading Association(IRA) selects 25 outstanding trade books for enhancing students’
understanding of people and cultures throughout the world. The
outstanding books selected for K–12 represent the year’s best in
fiction, nonfiction and poetry. To be eligible for the Notable
Books for a Global Society
(NBGS) annual list,
a book must have been published in the United States the previous
year. For example, the books on the 2010 list were published in 2009.
Click Here to Access Free Notable Book List for 2010

Plus:
A printable list of
notable books from
2005 through 2009 is
accessible from the NBGS Web site.Click Here to Access Free Book Lists for 2005–2009

Connect Students with the Power of Film
ITVS’s
Community Classroom
brings innovative media
resources to
educators in high schools and other youth-serving organizations. In
tandem with the community engagement program Community
Cinema, Community
Classroom provides educational
video modules
drawn from ITVS’s
acclaimed documentary films and pairs them with standards-based
lesson plans,activities
and other interactive
content. The films
are selected from among those aired on the PBS
series Independent
Lens and produced
through ITVS International’s Global
Perspectives Project.
The resources connect 21st century students with video content from
independent filmmakers who share new perspectives about a diverse
range of people, places, moments in history and
history-in-the-making. The film modules and lesson plans are designed
to be accessible and appropriate for a variety of learning
environments. Students and participants can complete each activity in
one class period, or teachers can combine multiple activities to
create a unit lasting one to two weeks. At home, students can
complete assignments through free
streaming videoon the program’s Web site and access many of the full-length
programs online.
Click Here to Access Free Resources

Make Decisions to Broker Peace in the Middle EastInnovative
teachers are exposing students to serious social issues through
computer games such as PeaceMaker,
a simulation of the Middle
East peace process.
In fact, students have to win PeaceMaker
twice—once while playing as the Israeli prime minister and once as
the Palestinian president. In both cases, students must respond to a
rapidly evolving political situation by choosing which
actions—building settlements, launching rockets, making
speeches—are most likely to broker peace. Play the demo and watch
the trailer online.Click Here to Play PeaceMaker Demo

Frame Complicated Issues As Personal QuestsMakes
You Think is a
collection of socially positive games from the British game developer
Red Redemption.
Each Makes You Think game allows students to make discoveries about
the subject while they play. For example, in the Climate
Challenge game,
students take the “hot seat” to guide Europe through the 21st
century, making tough choices that could make the difference between
a safe or dangerous future for humanity. Will their ideas save the
planet, or will they get voted out of power?
Click Here to Play Climate Challenge Game

Plus:
Energy waste
in the office is a major cause of carbon dioxide emissions. In the
Trouble Shooter!
game, students have 90 seconds to go through a typical office and
turn off machines that are not being used or are wasting energy. But
they need to be careful not to turn off things people are using, or
they will lose commonsense points.
Click Here to Play Trouble Shooter Game

Step into the Shoes of a Teen-Aged Immigrant
Last
year, Breakthrough,
a human rights nonprofit group, rolled out a game called ICED
(ICan
End
Deportation),
for teenagers. In the game, students role-play an immigrant
teen trying to earn citizenship.
Even players who attempt to avoid trouble with the law can be sent to
an immigration detention center for minor infractions—a possibility
confronted by legal as well as illegal U.S. immigrants. As a result,
game play can feel arbitrary, frustrating or even frightening;
players sent to solitary confinement find themselves staring at a
black screen. That’s intentional—to give the player a sense of
the kinds of constraints that immigrant youth have to live under. To
make sure the game accurately reflects these concerns, 100 high
school students—many of them undocumented immigrants—participated
in the game’s creation, helping come up with everything from the
characters to the backdrop concepts.
Click Here to Play ICED Game

Discover Why Leaves Change ColorPlant
pigments play an important role in capturing light for
photosynthesis. These pigments give leaves their colors. In this
hands-on activity
from the Chicago
Museum of Science and
Industry, students
use chromatography to separate the pigments
in leaves
and see what they’re
made of.
Click Here to Visit Web Site

Tackle Science in Pursuit of LearningScience
of NFL Football is a
10-part video seriescreated by NBC Learn
in partnership with the National
Football League
(NFL). Featuring exclusive footage and contributions from NFL players
and scientists from the National
Science Foundation,
the series helps teach students concepts such as nutrition,
kinematics and projectile motion. Lessonopoly
has created student
activities and lesson
plans to support the
video series.
Click Here to Visit Web Site

See Scientists in ActionAll
kinds of people become scientists, and scientists do all kinds of
things. On Scientists
@ the Smithsonian,
students can watch and read about 21
scientists at the Smithsonian,
including Liz Cottrell, volcano watcher; Conrad Labandeira, fossel
hunter; the Freer Team, art scientists, Stefan Schnitzer, jungle
explorer, and Mary Hagedorn, reef doctor. The site also includes
Women in Science—an
archive of photographs showing women scientists and engineers at work
as well as women trained in science and engineering who work outside
the laboratory as librarians, writers, political activists or in
other areas where their work informed or was informed by science.
Click
Here to Visit Web Site

Click Here to Access Women in Science Archive

Explore the U.S. Senate Through Art The
art in the Senate wing of the U.S. Capitol and the Senate office
buildings has been acquired principally for its public, patriotic and
commemorative characteristics. The Senate’s art is intended to
commit to posterity the persons and events of our national history,
centered on the institution of the Senate and the founding of the
Republic. This Web site presents paintings
spanning over 200
years of American historyby some of the country’s preeminent artists; a sculpture
collection that
celebrates the great figures of our national history; and more than
1,000 graphic images
that document the Senate, the Capitol and American political history.
The site also features online
exhibits about the
Senate’s history,
as seen through its art and historical collections, and specialized
collections,
including presidential inaugural memorabilia.Click Here to Visit Web Site

Plus:
Tap into a glossaryof terms—from act to
yield time—related
to the Senate and its responsibilities.Click Here to Access Glossary

Examine Stories Revealing Social ChangeOne
of the most popular PBS
programs ever was The
Political Dr. Seuss,
which revealed how children’s author Theodor Geisel advocated
social change, teaching generations of children not only how to be
better readers but better people as well. On the Independent
Lens Web site, you’ll
find video clipsfrom the program as well as two free,
downloadable lessons
that examine how the famed children’s author was influenced by the
political and social issues of the day, including racism, injustice
and especially World War II. Students can also examine how important
ideas and themes are addressed in their own favorite books and
analyze political
cartoons, past and
present. These lessons are directed toward grades 7–12 for use in
the following subject areas: language arts, social studies, art and
civics.
Click
Here to Visit Web Site
Click
Here to Download Free Lessons

Click Here to Visit Cartoon Gallery

Grab the Scuba Gear and Go on a Virtual DiveSummer
may be over, but your students can still explore the underwater world
of coral
reefs.
At the Chicago Field
Museum’s WhyReefsite, students will learn the signs of a healthy reef and find out
what can make it sick. They’ll swim with the different creatures
that live in and around a coral reef and play WhyReef’s food
web game to find out
who eats whom on a reef. Encourage students to dive into WhyReef at
different times of the day. They never know when a great white shark
or a giant sea turtle might swim by!
Click Here to Visit Web Site

Plus:
Visit the WhyReef
YouTube Channel for
instructional videos
on how to use WhyReef in your classroom. You can also download the
WhyReef Educator
Guide
from the WhyReef site.
Click
Here to Visit WhyReef YouTube Channel

Click Here to Download Free Educator Guide

Get Tips for Using YouTube in the ClassroomYouTube
has launched a new
channel designed
specifically for educators that provides tips on how to use the tool
in the classroom. The tips show everything from organizing videos to
sparking lively discussions to help struggling students through
videos. The channel also offers a new mailing list, the YouTube
Teachers Community,
to allow educators to share their own tips and ideas.Click Here to Visit YouTube Teachers Channel

Browse
K12TeacherStore.com for
a wide variety of products published by leading K–12 education
companies, all of them delivered digitally. Many of the ebooks can be
used on interactive whiteboards and various mobile reading devices.
All of the books whose covers you see displayed are on sale at a 15%
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