Category: 5th Grade

50 Websites About Animals

Here are 50 animal websites for grades K-5, everything from Dinosaurs to the wildly popular Wolfquest (click here for updates):

  1. 3D Toad—3D science study
  2. Adaptations—game
  3. Animal Adaptations
  4. Animal games
  5. Animal Games II
  6. Animal games II
  7. Animal Games III
  8. Animal Habitats
  9. Animal homes
  10. Animal homes
  11. Animal Homes II
  12. Animal Homes III
  13. Animal puzzle games–cool
  14. Animals
  15. Animals—San Diego Zoo Videos
  16. Barnaby and Bellinda Bear
  17. Bembo’s Zoo
  18. Build a habitat
  19. Build a habitat II
  20. Butterfies and habitats
  21. Classify animals
  22. Cockroach—virtual
  23. Dino collection
  24. Dino Fossils then and now
  25. Dino Games
  26. Dino Games II
  27. Dinosaurs
  28. Dinosaurs II
  29. Dinosaurs IV
  30. Dinosaurs V
  31. Dinosaurs VI
  32. Endangered species collection
  33. Food chain
  34. Food Chains
  35. Frog habitat
  36. Google Earth—African Animals
  37. Google Earth—endangered animals
  38. Habitat Game
  39. Habitats—create one
  40. Habitats—match them
  41. Life Cycles
  42. Life—the Game–colorful
  43. Ocean Currents—video from NASA
  44. Ocean Safari
  45. Ocean Tracks
  46. Video Safari
  47. Virtual Cockroach
  48. Virtual Farm
  49. Virtual Zoo
  50. Wolfquest—simulation–DL

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LOTS of Resources for Kids’ Online Research

Here are quick, safe spots to send students for research (click here for updates to the list):

  1. CoolKidFacts–kid-friendly videos, pictures, info, and quizzes–all 100% suitable for children
  2. Dimensions–academic research geared for college-level
  3. Fact Monster–help with homework and facts
  4. Google Earth Timelapse–what changes to the planet over time
  5. Google Trends–what’s trending in searches
  6. History Channel–great speeches
  7. How Stuff Works–the gold standard in explaining stuff to kids
  8. Info Please–events cataloged year-by-year
  9. National Geographic for Kids
  10. Ngram Viewer–analyzes all words in all books on Google Books
  11. TagGalaxy–search using a cloud
  12. Wild Wordsmyth–picture dictionary for kids
  13. World Book–requires membership

Citing Resources

  1. BibMe
  2. Citation Machine
  3. EasyBib

Kids Search Engines

  1. Kiddle–visual search engine for kids
  2. Kidtopia

How to Research

  1. A Google A Day
  2. How to Search on Google
  3. Power Searching (with Google)
  4. Teaching students to search/research
  5. Internet Search and Research–a lesson plan for K-8

Lesson Plans

  1. Image Copyright Do’s and Don’ts
  2. Internet Search and Research

Resources/Research

  1. BrainPOP–Bring learning to your fingertips™ with the BrainPOP® Featured Movie app
  2. Kids Picture Dictionary
  3. Primary Source Documents
  4. SparkVue–collect and display live data from iPhone etc to the iPad
  5. Talk to Books–research your topic based on books
  6. TED app–TED’s official app presents talks from some of the world’s most fascinating people

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Three Projects to Kick Off the Holidays

Click to enlarge lesson plan

A Holiday Calendar

Kids love making this calendar. They get to talk about their upcoming vacations and hear what their friends are doing. It’s simple enough for third grade with advanced tools that satisfy a fifth graders growing intellect.


A Holiday Newsletter

Have students collaborate on a newsletter for a classroom unit of inquiry or a theme (colonies, animals, etc). Pick a template. Add text and pictures. Pay attention to layout details. Allow several class periods to complete

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12 Projects to Teach Digital Citizenship–by Grade

 

Education has changed. No longer is it contained within four classroom walls or the physical site of a school building. Students aren’t confined by the eight hours between school bells or the struggling budget of an underfunded program. Now, education can be found anywhere — teaming up with students in Kenya, Skyping with an author in Sweden, or chatting with an astrophysicist on the International Space Station. Students can use Google Earth to take a virtual tour of a zoo or a blog to collaborate on class research. Learning has no temporal or geographic borders and is available wherever students and teachers find an Internet connection. This vast landscape of resources is offered digitally, often free, but to take that cerebral trek through the online world, children must know how to do it safely, securely, and responsibly. This used to mean limiting access to the Internet, blocking websites, and layering rules upon rules hoping (vainly) to discourage students from using an infinite and fascinating resource. It didn’t work. Best practices now suggest that instead of cocooning students, we teach them to be good digital citizens, confident and competent. Here are eleven projects to teach kids authentically, blended with your regular lessons, the often complicated topic of becoming good digital citizens, knowledgeable about their responsibilities in an Internet world. (more…)

#9: How to Look Like a Photoshop Pro–in Fifth Grade

Before trying this lesson, start with Photoshop for Fifth Graders: The First Step is Word, Autofixes,  cloning, and cropping. Don’t worry. It’s not hard–just the basics.

Ready? Let’s start with what Adobe Photoshop is–a grown-up KidPix, and the default photo-editing program for anyone serious about graphics. This series of projects (available in 55 Technology Projects for the Digital Classroom Volume I) introduces students to a traditionally-challenging program in an easy to understand way, each scaffolding to the next, thus avoiding the frustration and confusion inherent in most Photoshop training.

Adobe Photoshop has an impressive collection of tools to add pizazz to pics. You might have students open their school picture for this project. They love working with their own image.

  • #1: Artistic Renderings—artistic overlays that add flair to pictures. Go to Filter—artistic and it brings up dozens of choices. Try some (it gives a preview of the result) and select a favorite.

 

[gallery columns="2" ids="68588,68589"]

 

  • #2: blur and smudge tools on left tool bar to soften the background, and sharpen a focal point.
[gallery columns="2" ids="68590,68591"]
  • #3: Use Filter-render-clouds to create a cloudy background (the colors of your foreground and background tool)
[gallery columns="2" ids="68592,68593"]

 

Troubleshooting Tips

  • I can’t get the right colors for the clouds (check your foreground and background tools. That’s where Photoshop takes the colors)
  • I’m trying to drag the picture but I get an error message (Check your layers. Do the have the correct layer highlighted?)
  • I don’t have Photoshop. (Try GIMP–it’s free)

Do you have questions? Please add a comment and I’ll answer. Thanks.

Here’s the sign-up link if the image above doesn’t work:

https://forms.aweber.com/form/07/1910174607.htm




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“The content presented in this blog is the result of my creative imagination and not intended for use, reproduction, or incorporation into any artificial intelligence training or machine learning systems without prior written consent from the author.”


Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 30 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-12 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, contributor to NEA Today, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.

Tech Tip #25: My Keyboard Doesn’t Work

As a working technology teacher, I get hundreds of questions from parents about their home computers, how to do stuff, how to solve problems. Each Tuesday, I’ll share one of those with you. They’re always brief and always focused. Enjoy!

You sit down to type, start in on that long project with an imminent deadline, and nothing happens. The cursor blinks… and blinks… and blinks… but goes nowhere.

What do you do?

Before you buy a new keyboard, try a few things:

  • Is the keyboard’s power light on? If it is, check your screen. Is there something that’s preventing you from typing? Maybe a dialogue box that wants an answer? If the light isn’t on, continue down this list
  • Check the plugs. Maybe the cord that connects the keyboard to the computer is loose or fell out.
  • Reboot. Sometimes the stuff in the computer’s boot-up sequence that makes the keyboard work gets lost. Restart your computer so it can re-establish itself.
  • Do you eat at your keyboard? Does anyone? I say this next solution hesitantly: Bang on the key. Sometimes keys get food between them. If that doesn’t work, turn the keyboard over and see what falls out.

If none of those work, here are some pretty good suggestions from ChatGPT:

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