Instructional Resources in Learning Village

Where is the first place you go to look for ideas for a lesson on a certain topic?

We all have our favorite places to go. Some of your commonly used resources may be listed in the image above. Did you (as a WSFCS teacher) know that you can go to one place and be able to access all of the sites listed?

These Instructional Resource for you to search in are all linked to the front page of the WSFCS Learning Village Curriculum Warehouse. I was impressed to be able to find them all in one place, but what even caught my attention more was that if you search for your grade or subject in Learning Village, there are links to specific things in most of these resources.
For example, if you were supposed to teach a 4th grade Science lesson on Rocks and Minerals, in one place in Learning Village, you could find:

• NC Standard Course of Study Objectives
• Links to Lessons from LearnNC on this competency goal
  
• Links to the Standard Search Site for both Promethean and SMART
• Links to a variety of Online Resources for this competency goal
• Learn360 search results for videos on this competency goal
• Link to netTrekker Search Results on this competency goal
• and Links to Related Content (which may include some already made lessons complete with Essential Questions and other needed information)
  

That means you won't have to take time to search the various sites in the image above for the pieces that fit with your curriculum area and Standard Course of Study. Learning Village is not just for Elementary School teachers .. there is also content available for both Middle and High School subjects.

To get the the WSFCS Learning Village from our New Website home page, look to the left to see Quick Links. Learning Village is the second one there. You can also get to Learning Village by clicking on Employees in the blue channel bar. From the drop down menu, click on Resources. Once you click on Planning, you will see the Learning Village Curriculum Warehouse option!

image taken from WSFCS Learning Village

NC History ... a digital version?

One of my favorite parts of teaching 4th grade in North Carolina was teaching about the state of NC in Social Studies. What better place to learn about than right where you live? I find the geography, history, and features of NC very interesting, so it was fun for me to teach about it. One of my favorite parts of NC history to teach about includes information about The Lost Colony of Roanoke.

I tried to go beyond the information in the basic textbook when teaching Social Studies When I searched for information about The Lost Colony to share in my 4th grade Social Studies class, I remember struggling to find good information online that was useful for 4th grade.
I have been looking at the NC History Digital Textbook on LearnNC, and I think I have found a solution to that problem. Although this digital textbook is geared more for secondary students, I think portions of the information can be used with elementary students, especially the images and maps. I also used the Social Studies text as a way to teach many reading skills, especially ones needed for finding and comprehending information in the non-fiction genre. Learning reading skills while investigating history made sense. Information about The Lost Colony is located in the Pre-Colonial (to 1600) section of this digital textbook.
The story of the Lost Colony is a mystery ... still unsolved today. Presenting it that way makes it much more interesting for students (and it really is an unsolved mystery). I think the background and the basic facts of the story can be presented using information from The Lost Colony: A silent "cittie" (this section is towards the bottom of the page). Since the reading level is higher than elementary, this would not be a good section to assign for student independent reading. I see lots of places to stop and ask questions to check for understanding and to provide clues on strategies to use to read nonfiction and informational text (something like the Directed Reading-Thinking Activity strategy could be used). The words that are linked to definitions could also provide good practice for students in using context clues to determine unknown words.
Located near the top of that webpage in is an illustration which could be used at the beginning of the class or lesson to possibly get students predicting what the lesson could be about. Another idea is to use it more towards the end of the lesson for students to use the information learned to create a conversation the two figures could be having. I think using visuals to promote student thinking is a great way to engage students and increase learning.
The next part of the story, The Search for the Lost Colony is one that students particularly enjoy since it is a mystery. The first paragraph on this page provides a great introduction to learning about what possibly happened to these colonists. After reading that paragraph to students, I can see having a good discussion about the information we get from different sources. The three ideas presented here (The Lumbee, A Young Mayde in the Chesapeake, and Two Factions) could be good for a class discussion or project.
Some problem-based or project-based learning could be incorporated to provide a better understanding of what students have learned. The information and links in the Learn More section in the sidebar could be used as things for groups of students to look at and report back to the class. Those areas could also be used for differentiation or for "early finishers" to look at. The related topics that are also listed in the sidebar could be good research or project topics for this lesson. This lesson could be connected with writing by encouraging the students to write about what they think happened to the lost colonists, or another LearnNC idea could be used to encourage the writing of a mystery.

These are just a few ways I came up to be able to use this 8th grade digital textbook for 4th grade. I wonder what else might be possible ....

Here is another post I did on this great resource from LearnNC.

image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/emilygreene/4117707465/