Three holidays are fast-approaching–Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. If you’re a teacher, that means lots of tie-ins to make school festive and relevant to students.

Here are ideas for Halloween projects, lesson plans, websites, and apps (check here for updated links):

Websites and Apps

1. 30-day Halloween fitness challenge
2. Build a Jack-o-lantern (in Google Slides)
3. Carving Pumpkins
4. Carve-a-Pumpkin from Parents magazine – Resolute Digital, LLC (app)
5. Enchanted Learning
6. Halloween games, puzzles–clean, easy to understand website and few ads!
7. Halloween ghost stories
8. Halloween Kahoot Games (video for teachers)
9. Halloween Science
10. Halloween WordSearch – FinBlade (app)
11. Halloween Voice Transformer (app)
12. Landon’s Pumpkins – LAZ Reader [Level P–second grade] – Language Technologies, Inc. (app)
13. Make A Zombie – Skunk Brothers GmbH (app)
14. Math vs. Zombies (app)
15. Meddybemps Spooky
16. Pumpkin Patch Games
17. Skelton Park
18. The Kidz Page
19. WordSearch Halloween – AFKSoft (app)

Projects

1. ASCII Art–Computer Art for Everyone (a pumpkin–see inset)
2. Lesson Plan: Halloween letter for grades 2-5
3. Make a Holiday Card
4. A Holiday Card
5. A Holiday flier

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College enrollment among high school grads grew during the early 2010’s, leveling off about 2017 when it began to drop to a current low of about 62%, approx. 4% lower than 2019. The decline may be due to increased costs, that the cost-benefit of a college degree and earnings after graduation is questionable (according to some studies), the pandemic, or a plethora of other reasons.  The current trend among some colleges of not requiring ACT or SAT scores hasn’t stopped the fall.

One of the Ask a Tech Teacher contributors has come up with a good article on how to make career information more easily available to high school graduates, with a focus on those who may not want to continue to a college or University. This article reviews the many benefits of providing career education for high school students and which areas are particularly valuable. It looks at how to best include this learning into an existing curriculum. 

How High School teachers can incorporate careers education into the curriculum 

Including career education in the curriculum is important for a number of reasons. It will help students to better understand what they want to do when they grow up, and it will also give them a better idea of the different options that are available to them. Teaching high school students about careers also helps them to develop skills that will be useful in their future jobs, such as problem-solving and teamwork. In addition, it can also help to inspire them to pursue their dreams and goals.

Helping students understand their own strengths and weaknesses, and how these match up with different careers

It’s never too early to start thinking about career options. But for many students, the thought of choosing a single path can be daunting. One way to ease the pressure is to help students understand their own strengths and weaknesses, and how these match up with different careers. You can include this in the curriculum by helping students assess their skills and interests, students can then begin to narrow down their options and find a career that is a good fit. In addition, understanding their strengths and weaknesses can help students identify areas that need improvement. With this knowledge in hand, they can then take steps to address any deficiencies and become better prepared for their chosen career. Ultimately, by helping students understand themselves, we can give them the tools they need to make informed decisions about their future.

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Back when I started teaching tech, teachers loved saying that kids knew more than they did, even defer to students to teach. That doesn’t work anymore which means even the most tech-phobic of teachers must step up. Here’s a good article from Yahoo Finance on that:

Why Teaching Tech to Teachers Is More Important Than Ever

“With technology, it’s not all or nothing,” says Williams. “It’s about how to make learning meaningful. The question to ask is, where does it make …

Read more…

More on Ask a Tech Teacher about teacher tech training

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Here are basic exercises that will strengthen fingers for keyboarding. Pick those that work best for your student group. Some are great for Kindergartners, others for olders:

• Warming up Fingers
  Before exercising in the gym, you warm up. Typing is a workout for the fingers. Lay your hand flat on a table (or book) with all fingers touching. Spread your fingers apart as far as possible and hold for three seconds. Close fingers together. Repeat this exercise 10 times.

• Stretching Fingers
  Stretching fingers is just as important as warming up the muscles of the hand. To stretch your finger muscles, hold your hands facing each other. Touch the thumb from your right hand to the thumb of your left hand. Touch the first finger on your right hand to the first finger on the left hand. Repeat until all fingers are touching.

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I reprint this post every October, to remind all of us about the treachery of bullying.

In October 2006, thirteen-year-old Megan Meier hung herself in her bedroom closet after suffering months of cyberbullying. She believed her tormentors’ horrid insults, never thought she could find a way to stop them, and killed herself. She’s not the only one. In fact, according to StopBullying.gov, 52 percent of young people report being cyberbullied and over half of them don’t report it to their parents.

Everyone knows what bullying is — someone being taunted physically or mentally by others — and there are endless resources devoted to educating both students and teachers on how to combat bullying. But what about cyberbullying? Wikipedia defines “cyberbullying” as:

the use of information technology to repeatedly harm or harass other people in a deliberate manner

Cyberbullying occurs on not just social media like Twitter, Facebook, and topical forums, but multiplayer games and school discussion boards. Examples include mean texts or emails, insulting snapchats, rumors posted on social networking sites, and embarrassing photos or videos.

How serious is it?

The National Youth Violence Prevention Resource Center estimates that nearly 30 percent of American youth are either a bully or a target of bullying. 7% of high school students commit suicide, some because of cyberbullying:

On October 7, 2003, Ryan Halligan committed suicide by hanging himself [after being cyberbullied by high school classmates]. His body was found later by his older sister.

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Surprisingly, 15-20% of the population has a language-based learning disability and over 65% of those are deficits in reading. Often, these go undiagnosed as students, parents, and teachers simply think the child is not a good reader, is lazy, or is disinterested. Thankfully, the International Dyslexia Association sponsors an annual Dyslexia Awareness Month in October aimed to expand comprehension of this little-understood language-based learning condition.

What is Dyslexia?

Dyslexia is a condition that affects people of all ages, male and female equally, and causes them to mix up letters and words they read making what for most is a joy-filled act challenging and frustrating.

“Dyslexia refers to a cluster of symptoms, that result in people having difficulties with specific language skills, particularly reading. Students with dyslexia often experience difficulties with both oral and written language skills. … It is referred to as a learning disability because dyslexia can make it very difficult for a student to succeed… ” — the International Dyslexia Foundation

There is no cure for dyslexia. Individuals with this condition must instead develop coping strategies that help them work around their condition. In education, it is not uncommon to accommodate dyslexic students with special devices, additional time, varied format approaches (such as audio or video), and others. Most prominent educational testing centers (like SAT, ACT, PARC, and SBACC) make these available for most of the tests they offer.

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#ISTE had an interesting discussion on how to foster digital citizenship in schools. This is especially critical because students are spending so much more time than ever before online. Here’s a peak at their conversation and then a link to the rest:

3 Ways To Foster Digital Citizenship in Schools

For teachers, it can be difficult to know when and how to instill digital citizenship skills. Fortunately, there are a number of ways to weave digital citizenship into the school day and for parents to reinforce it at home. ISTE has a few suggestions:

Read on…

For more on Digital Citizenship, check our K-8 curriculum here and these additional articles:

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Here are popular resources teachers are using to teach about digital citizenship. Click the titles for more links:

Avatars

Copyrights and Digital Laws

Curriculum

1. Applied Digital Skills–all tech skills
2. Google’s Be Internet Awesome–abbreviated course
3. K-8, scaffolded, Ask a Tech Teacher (with projects)

Cyberbullying

Cybersecurity

1. Cyber Patriot program–by the Air Force

DigCit–General

Digital Footprints

Digital Privacy

Digital rights and responsibilities

1. Digital Passport
2. Digital rights—sharing info

Digital Search and Research

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Information that will help you teach digital citizenship to your students. Below, you’ll find everything from a full year-long curriculum to professional development for teachers:

Resources:

Digital Citizenship: What to Teach When (a video)

Curricula:

K-8 Digital Citizenship Curriculum

More on Digital Citizenship

How to Grow Global Digital Citizens

Teaching Digital Rights and Responsibilities

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To celebrate the launch of Natural Selection, Book 3 in the Dawn of Humanity trilogy, the ebook of Book 1–Born in a Treacherous Time–is FREE on Amazon Kindle October 15th-October 19th

When you fall in love with prehistoric fiction, read Book 2 of the trilogy, Laws of Nature before the launch of Book 3, Natural Selection, on October 19th.

Then, join the launch party on Oct. 25 and find out the answers to your pressing prehistoric people questions:

1. What did our ancestors do all day?
2. What Did Early Man Eat?
3. What I learned from Lucy
4. How Did Early Man Tell Time?
5. How Smart was Lucy 2 mya?
6. Prehistoric fiction is boring. Change my mind
7. How Did Early Man Count?
8. Could an almost-blind person get around feral Africa?
9. Does man’s unusual “wanderlust drive” explain why we spread throughout the planet? Science thinks so.
10. Early Man Can’t Talk. Change my Mind
11. Convince me Early Man Hunted by Running Down His Prey
12. Early Man didn’t Use Proper Nouns. How’s That Work?
13. Early Man Used Natural Navigation to Flawlessly Find his Way Around
14. Why did Early Man Squat, not Sit? 
15. Was Early Man Spiritual?

Thanks so much for your support!

Copyright ©2022 worddreams.wordpress.com – All rights reserved.

Jacqui Murray is the author of the popular prehistoric fiction saga, Man vs. Nature which explores seminal events in man’s evolution one trilogy at a time. She is also the author of the Rowe-Delamagente thrillers and Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy. Her non-fiction includes over a hundred books on integrating tech into education, reviews as an Amazon Vine Voice,  a columnist for NEA Today, and a freelance journalist on tech ed topics. Look for her next prehistoric fiction, Natural Selection Fall 2022.