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3 Fun Hands-On Lesson Plans For Teachers To Use

YORKTOWN, Va. (Dec. 12, 2008) Boatswain's Mate...

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Teaching kids of all ages can be fun and a learning experience for many teachers, but often times, teachers may end up stumped at how to reach their kids and get them to understand the lesson that they are trying to impart.

Children have complex minds, and even more complex attention spans, and oftentimes the regular lesson plans just may not cut it.Here are some fun hands-on ways for your students AND you to have a great time while learning the lessons you are trying to teach:

1. Film Canister Farming have your students explore what exactly it is that makes a seed grow, and what the life of a plant involves. Use film canisters to plant and grow seeds within the classroom for each student to learn from.

 

2. Live Butterfly projects this is a fun way to explore nature with your students and have them learn the cycles of butterflies and how they live, eat and migrate. Either take them to a friendly butterfly garden or order butterfly kits to supply each kid with their own caterpillar, and watch them grow in classroom, then set aside a day to set them all free outside when they finally become butterflies.

 

3. The Body’s Five Senses this lesson is a great way to explore each of the five senses that the body possesses. Have each student go to different stations that are set up with different smells, textures sounds and tastes to discover the ways your body learns about new things.

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Planning Your Lessons Around the Net

internet

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The Internet has opened up innumerable chances to learn whatever you want. While your students might not take the time to really think about this power, it’s all around them and they undoubtedly know about it. The average school child can go online with a level of ease their parents should respect, and within an hour or so become virtual experts on their topic of choice. You can use this to your advantage in teaching them.

Part of the fun of going online is being able to learn through searching for things and finding other things. The entire process of the Web involves getting caught up in things, which can inspire a great classroom discussion of a student’s search pattern. It’srare that a search instantly finds everything. You can find basic facts like that, but trying to uncover anything really significant will naturally involve more than just a quick jaunt to the nearest search engine. Research is always going to involve some degree of thought, no matter how much technology automates the process.

When young children become involved in their educations beyond merely sitting there and being talked at, the process becomes a lot more effective for everyone. While some conspiracy theorists would think there’s an Orwellian motive behind the flaws in the educational system, it isn’t really in the world’s best interests to keep people dumb. You can contribute to making your students smarter by encouraging them to think independently, and use the vast power of the Internet to bring fresh insights and interesting perspectives into your discussions. Just don’t fall into the trap of thinking kids aren’t smart enough.

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Overcoming Disabilities Online

The world is not always a kind place for a person who isn’t quite “normal.” While normalness is a slippery slope and is extremely hard to define, a lot of people have tried. If one doesn’t fall into a certain category, one will often find themselves marginalized and neglected as being something of a freak. It’s a short fall from “slightly eccentric” to “virtual leper.” Fortunately, being online can allow a person to overcome almost any disability.

A disability can be anything that somehow hinders one’s ability to function under normal circumstances. When such a circumstance occurs in someone’s life, they can have less options than the average. In a case of that nature, going online can be a tremendous boon to the person. On the Internet, physical disabilities don’t matter, and social disabilities can far more easily be worked around. While a person’s disability won’t go away online, disabilities don’t hinder a person from learning and working more like a normal person would. While one shouldn’t call such a person abnormal, such a distinction doesn’t apply oline.

The online world is one of the best things to ever happened to peopl who have disabilities and physical challenges. While this is no cure, it does allow a person who might otherwise find it difficult to function to do so effectively. A person can go from almost totally unable to take care of their own life to being able to learn, work and hire out functions they can’t personally perform. While the Internet won’t make a disabled person completely whole, it will do a lot to make the person able to function almost normally.

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Helping Children use Their Intelligence

There have always been students whose abilities overshadow their fellows. In some cases, these students even outshine their teachers, even from a young age. While most teachers feel honored to have such a brilliant student in their midst, a lot of times the student feels a lot worse about the arrangement than the teacher does. Typically, these are the students most likely to clown around in class and act the fool, just because they get bored.

This boredom tends to come about because a student isn’t being sufficiently challenged intellectually. A student in this boat will tend to see their education as nearly pointless, because they tend to grasp what their teacher is talking about immediately. At that point the teacher just keeps talking, trying to hammer home the point to the lowest common denominator. While the smart student might be fine with this for a moment, it won’t be long before they’re cracking wise and trying to get something more interesting to be talked about. A lot of times the subject is just too easy for them.

However, a wily teacher can use this intelligence to its greatest advantage through actually encouraging this student to do research on a challenging topic during class time. While it might at first seem like administering special treatment, if you set up a few challenges leading up to this, it can be a great way for other students to push themselves to perform at the top level, and be assigned difficult projects as well. You can even set it up so that the student reports in once they get what you’re lecturing about, and test their comprehension speed.

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