June Ideas from Storyboardthat

Check out the June newsletter from Storyboardthat for some creative end-of-year suggestions!

Summer Online Learning

TeachersFirst is offering a wide variety of free online sessions this summer.  Please visit this site for options and registration.

NYT Word of the Day

Looking for ways to make vocabulary more exciting?  Check out the NYTimes Word of the Day. Challenge your students to create sentences and add it to your word wall!

Asian Pacific Islander Heritage Month

Sesame Street has curated a playlist of videos celebrating Asian Pacific Islander Heritage.  You can find it here.  There is a great diversity of topics for your students. Here’s the review from PBS:

On our YouTube channel, we shared 15 videos honoring the diversity and rich heritage of Asian and Pacific Islander communities. You’ll find familiar celebrities joining Ji-Young and all her Sesame Street friends in learning new words, singing rockin’ new songs, and playing happily together.

What do you know about....

While it might be a bit late to start the NY Times Country Quiz (they do them weekly during the school year and you can look at past options), you might want to share this photo version with your students.  They could work in teams or do this whole group.  You might want to use the photos (and the correct information) to encourage them to create a story or a caption.

DEI and you

DEI (as an acronym) might not be familiar. Yet diversity, equity, and inclusion are terms we all know.  If you are looking for a DEI overview, please see this blog post from Edutopia.

Teaching the parts of speech

Even though I was a science teacher in fifth grade, I used to play School House Rock (Conjunction Junction was a fan favorite) during homeroom.  Recently I came across another idea for teaching the parts of speech.  In her blog post in Edutopia, Dana Haring shares another suggestion that allows the students to be the teacher.  Read about her experience (and lesson plan suggestions) here.

Keyboard shortcuts for files

Now you can use the same keyboard shortcuts for files on folders (Ctrl +c, Ctrl + v).  Now you can open a folder right in your Chrome browser (making it easier to access multiple folders at the same time).  For complete information from Google on this new feature, please click here.