Class Antics – Inside Elementary Education

The BBC Primary History Ancient Rome feature is one of my class’s favorite computer lab activities. Share this educational resource with your class!

The Ancient Rome site features information, an interactive timeline, and a fun game called Dig it Up!

Your students will like the information. Use is as a review, a preview, or as part of an Internet activity:

• City of Rome
• Invasion
• Rebellion
• Roman defence of Britain
• The Roman army
• Roads and places
• Leisure
• Family and children
• Technology
• Religion
• Roman remains
• Romans in Scotland

Your students will enjoy Dig it Up!  In the game, you help a team of archaeologists prove that a Roman town existed in what looks like an ordinary field.  But hurry!  If you don’t find proof quickly, a motorway will be built right across the site.

Students will enjoy employing their diggers to search for artifacts.  Once students have found the artifacts, they try to put them together and guess what they are.

Your kids will love the British accents of the characters in the game.  Tell them to be on the lookout for British spellings, such as artefact instead of artifact and ‘s’ where we would write ‘z’.  (Example: ‘realised’ instead of ‘realized’.)

The teacher’s resource area is extensive.  There are free worksheets and lesson plans, an online quiz, pictures, and videos.  The site links you to other Internet resources to teach Ancient Roman history.

Map courtesy of the teacher’s resource area.

Get Students Writing Now with Paragraph POW! (Part six: values)

I invented Paragraph POW! as a way to make writing practice more fun. We practice on special paper—lines in a box, just like on the state writing test. One difference: our paper has an awesome Paragraph POW! logo at the top.

Paragraph POW! became so successful that I developed dozens of writing prompts.  Writing prompts on lined paper are hardly marketable in workbook form, so I’m giving them away for free.

Kids often face writing prompts that require a little soul-searching.  The question asks students to make a value judgment, decide how they’d act in a hypothetical situation, or describe an ideal friend.  Kids love to write these paragraphs, particularly if they get to share their work at the end.  The sharing is especially important for values-based prompts—it encourages quality work and lets students get to know each other on a deeper level.)

Writing to a values-based prompt is not so hard:

Make a decision: don’t waffle.  Commit!  You will not be judged favorably if you change your mind halfway through the paper.  Remember, this paragraph is about your writing, not your value judgments.  (Within reason—really questionable ethics may leave a bad taste in the judges’ mouths.)

Think through your reasoning before you write.  Plan three good reasons for your value judgment, then jot down a detail for each one.  Students who don’t do this often run out of ideas quickly, and their writing reflects this.

Use the traditional structure: topic sentence, reasons, supporting details, conclusion.  Stick with what works.

Here are the Paragraph POW! how-to writing prompts. Click on each link for a printable PDF. I have also given you an all-purpose Paragraph POW! sheet so you and your students can write to your own prompts.

• Describe the qualities that make a good student.
• Describe the qualities of a true friend.
• What would you do if you found $100 on the sidewalk?
• Describe the last good deed you did.
• Describe how students should behave in class.
• What do you want to be when you grow up?

The BBC Primary History Ancient Greece feature is one of my class’s favorite computer lab activities.  Share this educational resource with your class!

The Ancient Greece site features information, an interactive timeline, and a fun Greek Hero game.

Your students will like the information. Use is as a review, a preview, or as part of an Internet activity:

• The Greek world
• Home life
• Growing up in Greece
• Gods and heroes
• Athens
• Sparta
• The Olympic Games
• Arts and theatre
• Greeks at war
• Sea and ships

The Greek Hero game will keep your students amused for hours.  Seriously, you could play this three or four times, during your weekly visits to computer lab as your class studies Ancient Greece.  The game challenges readers to an adventure spanning three important cities: Athens, Spart and Olympia.  Students will have to use their problem solving skills in addition to their videogaming skills.

The Teacher’s Resources are excellent.  The BBC has given you free worksheets, activities, pictures, and links for further study.  (Map courtesy of the teacher’s resource area.)

Opa!