2020 Presidential Candidates: Resumes and Scavenger Hunt Task Cards

Woah! What a start to summer!!! We have watched movies in the backyard outside, seen Toy Story 4, and spent a ton of time in the pool! I so enjoy the slower pace of life and my time with my kiddos that are growing up way too fast! I also appreciate that I have only been on break for 5 days and I have tons more to enjoy!!!

As many of you know, I get absolutely jazzed around election time and the upcoming: Presidential election is no exception!!!

I wanted to take the time this summer to create some great resources to get your students jazzed and informed about the next election.

Today I have finished my labor of love (I've been working on this since February!!) of candidate resumes and task cards for all 27 major candidates.  It is a great way for your kids to get a concise overview of each candidate so they can compare and contrast.

On each resume, I have included biographical data, education credentials, work history, & military experience. I have chosen to focus on minimum wage and economically helping families, education, immigration, and healthcare for the issues discussed.

There are 21 task cards that help students investigate the candidates in greater detail. I have them look for those that have been governors, served in the military, been a Rhodes Scholar, etc. The task cards give the students a scaffold for investigating these amazing women and men!

This item is going to be part of a larger growing bundle. I will be making a Primary Word Wall which will help students understand topics like Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), single payer insurance, refugee status, and much more. I will also be creating an interactive bulletin board to track the primaries in January, and an escape room to help students navigate and further understand the presidential primary process!

I think that should take up my summer nicely (on top of teaching coding camp and taking a course in STEM education....at least I'll have a tan while doing it!)

***Head on over to my Teachers Pay Teachers Store right now! This item is 50% off till midnight on Friday!

Tech You Can Use Tomorrow: Epic! Books

Hello all!  I hope the holiday season is finding you all festive and well!  Things are going fabulously over here in EngagingLand and we are counting down the day till break!!!

So, do you want some tech you can use in your class and implement tomorrow?  If you haven't yet, you MUST use Epic! Books!!!!  Epic!  is an online library that is totally free for teachers.  Teachers can have students read casually off of a guest account or can quickly and easily create an account for each student.

So .... why is it amazing?

The teachers in my district love Epic! and are using it with students who are K - 8.  My favorite thing is the amazing and quality informational text.  Their nonfiction books are amazing (I can't get enough of their National Geographic titles!) and teachers are using these to introduce kids as young as second grade to the concept of research.

A couple of weeks ago, like many urban districts, we started to enroll students from Puerto Rico.  These students all came with different backgrounds and access to education.  I was personally working with a couple of students who spoke no English at all.  The principal and I set these students up on Epic! and selected "Spanish Books" as their preference and voila!!! We had an instant Spanish language library and these students got to spend at least a part of their day exploring and in their home language!!!

If you are already using Epic! in your classroom, I would love to hear the ways you have implemented it!!! Feel free to comment below, head on over to my Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/ToEngageThemAll/ ) or email me at engaginthemall@gmail.com.

5 Ways To Teach Thanksgiving, Engage Students, and Not Lose Your Mind!

Don't forget to sign up to get ideas, tips and tricks, and freebies to engage your students!

Join me on a journey to engagement (and get some freebies too!

  

I love Thanksgiving!  Mostly I love Thanksgiving because it means I get to put up my Christmas tree the next day, but I do really love having my whole family over to just spend time together.  Thanksgiving also is a great opportunity to sneak in some learning no matter what age you teach.  So, what are some awesome, low prep activities?

If you teach middle school, Thanksgiving is a great opportunity to talk about myths and legends vs. facts.  On of my favorite activities to do before the holiday was from Beyond the Bubble.  Beyond the Bubble is operated by the Stanford History Education Group and focuses on students being critical readers of history.  Beyond the Bubble has a great activity comparing the facts of the first Thanksgiving and the picture that was painted in 1932. Click here for the activity!

2) A teacher can never have enough books and little ones can not read enough!  In the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, think about joining Epic! Books !  I’m going to blog more about Epic! Later this week but just know that your students can access high quality, digital books about Thanksgiving!  Students can read both fiction and informational text on the site and can find books that are read aloud.  Epic! Books are also great for young students to start their journey into researching!

3)  Have you taken a virtual field trip yet?  If not, one of my favorite simple and easy virtual experiences is taking a trip to Plymouth Plantation the week before Thanksgiving.  Head on over to Learn Around the World and let Brandon Hall show your kids around Plymouth Plantation and teach them about life among the Pilgrims and Wampanoag.

4) Introduce your kiddos to podcasts!  Podcasts are a super hit in my house and they help students create critical listening skills.  Stories Podcasts is one of my favorites. Students write stories and the lovely peopl at The Stories Podcasts act them out and add music.  They have a cute and short podcast about two sibling fighting about a Thanksgiving Pie Off.  I suggest it for 3rd grade and above:)

5) Lastly, I love to get the kiddos ready by playing my The History of Thanksgiving Digital Simulation.

The game is performed whole class but students compete in a group of 3 or 4.  I launch the activity by having students turn and talk and discuss the following essential questions:

What obstacles and what successes did the Pilgrims encounter as they attempted to survive at Plymouth?

Once students are in groups I give each student a point sheet and each group gets a spinner.  To use the spinner, the students need a pencil and a paperclip.

Once the students have all their paper resources, I begin the presentation.  The presentation has students spinning through the game to assign them their actions on how they would have acted in the months leading up to the first Thanksgiving. Every option in the game is taken straight from history.  If students “choose” the same path as the Pilgrims, they will be successful all the way up through the first Thanksgiving.  Students will also experience the difficulties the Pilgrims had on the way to success.

Last year when I played this game with a group of 3rd graders, they didn’t know that I had created it.  While we were playing, one of the kids turned to me and whispered, “Don’t tell my teacher but this is really fun!”  Engagement for the win!

Once the game is complete, I have my students go back through the presentation and analyze the information by completing The History of Thanksgiving: Questions for Understanding.  As a summary activity, I have the students create an advertisement that extolls the magnificence of the lives of the Pilgrims and and Warning sign that gets settlers to stay away because of the hardships.

If you are interested in The History of Thanksgiving Digital Simulation click here and head on over to my Teachers Pay Teachers page.  I promise this will not disappoint!