DogoNews: A Website for Inquisitive Minds

DOGONews is a website for kids with curious minds who are interested in the world around them (shouldn't that be all kids?). "DOGO" is a word that means young or small in Swahili. DOGONews is geared towards elementary school children, aged 5-10.

According to their web site:

"DOGONews (www.dogonews.com) - This section is a fun and educational alternative to sites like Time for Kids, National Geographic and Science Daily. With hundreds of archived articles and new content added daily, the section is chockfull of fun and inspiring news from all around the world.

The content is written in a simple, easy to understand format and kept relatively short, in order to keep young children focused and interested. Videos are added whenever available. There is also an integrated dictionary for challenging words and a map mash-up to provide a geographical context. The main aim of the site is for kids to read and learn about world events in a fun and interactive and safe environment."

There is a search section and News is also linked under various topics such as Latest, General, Science, Entertainment, Sports, International, Amazing, Social Studies, Did You Know, Fun, Green, and Video. The site is visually interesting and easy to follow. The articles are interesting to read and easily capture one's attention.

You will also find two other sections on the website: DOGOSites and DOGOEarth.

DOGOSites (www.dogonews.com/sites) - a directory of fun educational kids sites. A great resource for teachers, kids and parents. Each site is carefully vetted prior to inclusion.

DOGOEarth (www.dogonews.com/earth) - news headlines geo-tagged on a 3D globe to provide younger readers an interactive way to read the headlines.

DOGOEarth shows a large view of planet earth that is darkened or lightened depending on the time of the day. Cities are lit up and articles related to certain places on the earth pop-up as you look over our planet. This is a fun and interesting way to visualize where on our planet these events are happening and it is certainly an eye-catching page.

Simply an Amazing Book: The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Last week I finished reading a book to my class that very much fascinated my fourth grade students. It was the first time that I have read "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" to a class even though I enjoyed reading it myself over a year ago. The Author, Brian Selznick, is also an illustrator and although this book looks daunting at over 500 pages, it is not a difficult read because the story is often told through the wonderful drawings that can sometimes go on, page after page.

"The Invention of Hugo Cabret" is a magical book that transports the reader to Paris in the early part of the 20th century. We meet a boy named Hugo who lives in the walls of a Paris train station. Hugo has many secrets as he tends to the job of keeping the clocks in the train station accurate. His biggest secret is a mysterious machine (an automaton) that he is trying to fix. He steals toy parts from a toy store to fix his machine and is caught by the cranky owner. He also meets a young girl that he has a hard time trusting. This mysteries in this story that need to be solved and how the characters are connected and blend together in a wonderful way captured my classes attention so much that they did not like it when I paused in my reading each day.

In a world where our children are enamored by technology, they are brought back to a similar time in history, when technology was in the process of producing amazing magic. Without giving away too much of the story it does involve a type of sophisticated machine called an automaton. The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia has one such automaton and you can view it here:



The book also has a "real" historic character in it: Georges Melies, a very early filmmaker. Upon reading the book, children learn a little bit about the history and the magic of filmmaking. Here is a video of Georges Melies "A Trip to the Moon" a movie that plays an important role in the book.



You can find many more of Georges Milies' videos on Youtube.

Here is an entertaining video that explains about Georges Milies and his use of special effects in making his films. It also explains how you can do your own special effects with a video camera. While we are dazzled by today's special effects that can make just about anything possible and real, it is interesting to see how this technology started.



Here author Brian Selznick explains his book:



This is a great book and my students continue to enjoy it as they love toting such a big book around after taking it out of the library. Kids will only do this with books that they really love. Otherwise, they would be carrying dictionaries everywhere!

Some intreresting discussion questions for the book can be found at One-Minute Book Reviews.

Simply a Superb Sequel: "Hate That Cat" by Sharon Creech

While strolling through Barnes and Noble this weekend, I was thrilled to see that Sharon Creech has written a sequel to my favorite children's book, "Love That Dog".

The new book, "Hate That Cat" is just as wonderful as her first book. I love these simple books as they bring together animals, poetry, teaching, and the struggles of boyhood in a very readable and entertaining way.

In "Hate That Cat" we have the same setup as the first book, we find that Miss Stretchberry moves up a grade so that she is still Jack's teacher. They still communicate through a poetry journal and Miss Stretchberry continues to use great poetry and poets (T. S. Eliot, Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Edgar Allan Poe) to inspire her class.

The class learns about the sounds of poetry in this book through devices like alliteration and onomatopoeia. I was tickled to see that "The Bells" by Edgar Allen Poe was one of the featured poems. I used this poem for many years with my own class as a beginning point for writing "sound" poems and it is always fun to say the word "tintinnabulation". Seeing that it is the 200th anniversary of Edgar Allen Poe's birth this month, I will have to revisit this poem in my class. Another featured poem in this story that I always use in my class is "This is Just to Say" by William Carlos Williams, as well as a return to his other wonderful poem "The Red Wheelbarrow". Although Walter Dean Myers doesn't return to visit the class, he does send letters to Jack and Jack learns that Walter Dean Myers' son, Christopher, is also a notable poet.

It is sounds that permeate this story. Besides the poetry, we are introduced to Jack's mother in this volume, and we learn about her inability to hear sounds and that becomes an important component to the story. That, and cats! The book may be titled "Hate That Cat" but Jack has his reasons. In the end the hated cat plays an important role and of course Jack falls in love with his own little kitten.

"Love That Dog" remains my favorite children's book, but "Love That Cat" will take a place right next to it on my bookshelf. I can't wait to share it with my class, and I know that I will see students rereading the book again and again just like they do after I read them "Love That Dog". I am simply thrilled that Sharon Creech wrote this second book!

Here is a teacher's guide to both books.

Here is just the first verse of:

The Bells
by Edgar Allan Poe

Hear the sledges with the bells,
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells-
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

Listen to "The Bells"

	Edgar Allen Poe - The Bells
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

This is a strange and "Poe"ishly nightmarish version of "The Bells"

	Edgar Allen Poe/Symphologic - The bells
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

If you want a great book for children to introduce them to Edgar Allen Poe then get a copy of "Poetry for Young People: Edgar Allen Poe". It has an interesting mini-biography as well as his poems and in his case poetic pieces based on some of his stories. It has short introductions to each poem, pictures, and lots of definitions for the difficult vocabulary words. There are other similar books by the publisher about other poets that I have in my classroom covering poets such as: Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, and William Shakespeare . I still have to purchase the poetry books of William Blake, Carl Sandburg, Lewis Carrol, Walt Whitman, and Langston Hughes. These books are a great resource for both students and teachers.

A Simple and Fun Way to Teach Vocabulary

I love to teach vocabulary in my classroom. I know my students enjoy learning and using interesting words. I use the Elements of Reading vocabulary program that was developed by Isabel Beck with great success.

Here is another website that has a word story for every day of the year and introduces students to interesting words, usages, and etymology. The Year of Vocabulary-Just for the Kids website is from Susan Ohanian, the author of "The Great Word Catalogue".

The Trouble With Boys by Peg Tyre: A Must Read Book!

"The Trouble With Boys: A Surprising Report Card on Our Sons, Their Problems at School, and What Parents and Educators Must Do" is a very interesting book that I read when the electricity was out for 5 days. The book was written by former Newsweek reporter Peg Trye after the responses whe received to a Newsweek cover article she wrote in 2006. This book looks at the trend in education that has boys underachieving and struggling in school. As an elementary educator I see part of this problem. I did not realize that it now extends up into colleges where we now are having a "girl" problem. Many girls, after working hard and reaching for their dreams, are finding it harder to get into some colleges as a college may be more willing to take a "weaker" academic boy in trying to maintain a more equal balance of student enrollment.

Upon my first read I found many interesting ideas, but what resonated with me was how she tracked the changes in education through the years. I found many of the trends that she mentioned were changes that were part of my education. From the experimental 60's, when I was part of a school system that liked to try "new" ideas in education, to attending a College Prep boarding school that had just started admitting girls as students. Even in my teaching career when it was drilled into us to teach to the girls the changes continued. Peg Tyre now maintains that we have to do the same for boys!

I agree with Peg. I have always been an advocate for finding ways to teach all students and that when we teach boys we need do it in boy-friendly terms. Many boys, and some girls, do not learn best in an classroom environment where they are made to sit still, be quiet, and to complete worksheets, and to keep all their work looking "pretty". As an elementary male teacher, I sometimes find that this is a hard concept to get across to some teachers. One comment that I liked in this book, and that I didn't expect, is that while Peg Tyre agrees that we need more male teachers in the elementary schools, she does say that "good teaching is good teaching" and that female teachers can do all the things necessary to help her male students achieve.

It certainly is a topic that I don't find addressed in the schools as much as I would like to see it being talked about (which should be as often as possible!). I wonder what would happen if on the state testing one of the subgroups that the test looks at would be the boy students.

I will have to reread the book again to collect my thoughts as I read it in the dark under some blankets and with gloves on my cold fingers. I was not interested in taking notes or marking up the book. I certainly feel it is a book that teachers and parents should definitely read.

Here is an excellent "authors/google" lecture given by Peg Tyre about the boy problem and her book. You can get a good feel for the book by listening to her speech.

Here is an appearance by Peg Tyre on the Today show.

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Simply Immature

"The Encyclopedia of Immaturity" by the Editors of Klutz is a book you want to read (many times) if you are an elementary school teacher. I think it particularly suits fourth grade teachers well as this is a book that basically describes what it is like to be inside the mind of a fourth grader. You will laugh and giggle as you read through the book and may even try a few (or many) of these pranks, jokes, and tricks on your students, family, and friends. These are the kinds of things you wish you knew how to do when you were in fourth grade because you would certainly get everyone's attention. I recommend this book to everyone that enjoys a good laugh except the students in my fourth grade class!

My third grade daughter and myself spent many a delightful hour howling with laughter at this book as we waited for our electricity to be restored after the recent ice storm (it took 5 days!). Here is what the ice storm looked like at our house. There was lots and lots of noise all night as branches and trees crashed to the earth. There is now a lot of clean up to be done.

A Simple Way to Project Images and Movies in the Classroom

I have always enjoyed bringing technology into my classroom. Unfortunately schools find it hard to enable teachers to use the newest and most interesting technology because of the expense. That has left me trying to figure out how I can get a projector into my classroom and I really couldn't find an inexpensive way to do so. This week, I finally did find something extremely cool and useful that I think teachers could put to good use in their class and it does more than just a standard projector.

Th 3M Micro Professional Projector is a wallet sized projector that can be connected to computers, iPods, digital cameras, and other pieces of technology to project images on a wall or screen. It uses LED lights so it doesn't get hot and you can carry it around and project wherever you are because it can be powered by its own battery. It projects an image large and clear enough to fill up the screen in my classroom (although it looks better with the lights out). I took photos and movies on my digital camera and was able to show them immediately to my class. I see it as being very useful to show all the short movie clips I use in my classroom. Of course now I will have to get a video iPod to store all those movies! I think it would be very easy to keep my videos (such as the animoto videos of my student's poetry)on an iPod and project them on a wall or board when I am meeting with a small group or if I am teaching a whole class lesson. I see so many practical uses for the projector that I think it is a great use and addition of technology to my class.

I was worried that it would be hard to focus or the images would not be clear. I was surprised when I tried it that the focus remained true even if I was holding the projector in my hand. The images and movies were clear and focused and certainly grabbed my student's attention.


UPDATE:
Here are some newer low-cost more advanced alternatives:

AAXA LED Pico Projector with 80 Minute Battery Life, Pocket Size, Mini-HDMI, 15,000 hour LED Life, and Media Player

Taotaole Multi-media 150 Lumens Portable LED Projection Micro Projector

MeGooDo Multi-media HD Portable 1080P LED Projection Micro Projector

AAXA P2 Jr Pico Projector, 55 Lumens, Pocket Size

3M Mobile Projector MP220

Monoprice 109990 Mobile Media Display Pico Projector and Battery Backup