 Celebrate Taco Day with one or more of the projects listed on our Taco Day page in Curriculum Resources from 21st Century Schools! There is literally no discipline that cannot be integrated.
This page has ideas for relevant, real world curriculum from preschool to the university level! It also includes resources such as books, cookbooks, research articles, videos and children's literature. Most, if not all, of the Common Core State Standards can be taught through these projects - and you do not have limit your project to one day! Get the parents and community involved. Invite some mariachi players, too, or just get some mariachi music. Learn some dances, paint, make a video - but definitely cook and eat!
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Ecological literacy (also referred to as ecoliteracy) is the ability to understand the natural systems that make life on earth possible. To be ecoliterate means understanding the principles of organization of ecological communities (i.e. ecosystems) and using those principles for creating sustainable human communities. “I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues…Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” --Dr. Seuss, The Lorax  Two must reads for children – of all ages- are The Lorax by Dr. Seuss and Everybody Needs a Rock by Byrd Baylor - this is an excellent introduction to environmental studies and connecting kids to nature. While it is recommended for younger children, I read it to my 4th graders, then we went on a walk and everyone followed the steps in the book for selecting their perfect rock. They kept them on their desks for the rest of the school year and took them home on the last day of school. An EXCELLENT activity! Click here to find more recommendations for children's literature to develop ecoliteracy.  Children's Literature
Please do not waste any funds purchasing basal readers or language arts textbooks/workbooks! Children should enjoy reading real books, whole books. There are much more effective ways to teach the language arts skills which are not only enjoyable for you, but motivational for the students, and you can also significantly raise student levels of achievement, learning, skills development, and oh yes - test scores! (That's another post.) Best of all, your students can actually learn to love reading, appreciate literature and develop (without fear and suffering) their voices as writers! Here is what we did at my school when it came to reading and student motivation: When I was teaching at a 4th-5th grade school in Port Lavaca, Texas, we decided to discontinue use of the basal reader (some of us). We created a resource for the entire campus which contained many classroom sets of novels. We purchased brightly colored plastic baskets from Walmart, which were just the right size for holding 25 paperback novels, and we used the Scholastic Book Club order forms to purchase the books - 25 of each title. A teacher could walk into this room, scan the shelves containing the baskets, and select the ones they wanted to use, sign them out on the sheet and take them. Each time we began a unit I would go to that room, select 3 novels/titles, take the baskets to my class, do a mini-booktalk* on each one and let the students select which one they wanted to read. That is how we formed our novel groups (literature circles). Those that needed additional support received it; those that wanted to move ahead could select other/additional books or they could move ahead in one of their independent projects. P.S. Take time to read aloud to your students every day! What about the basic skills, you ask, such as phonics, grammar, etc? You still teach them - within the context of actual reading and writing. To learn more about how to organize, design and implement the teaching of high level, quality language arts - within the context of project-based learning - attend our workshop, PBL21 - Designing the 21st Century Classroom. We offer it a part of our quarterly Regional Institutes in the United States - New Orleans, New York City, Las Vegas and San Francisco. Or, we can bring it to your campus. OR, you can host this professional development for an event in your particular region. Contact us at [email protected] * Booktalk |
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