findingEducation’s Digital Teachers’ LoungeTips and insights from the findingEducation team.

Did you take the Quiztory last week? Now it’s time to check your answers:

1. Who sent a memo on Oct. 7, 1940, to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s advisors proposing aggressive action against Japan? Lt. Cmdr. Arthur McCollum

2. When did much of Europe switch from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar? Oct. 5, 1582

3. Who wrote “Guerilla Warfare” and was killed by CIA operatives and members of the Bolivian army in 1967? Che Guevara

4. Where did writer Edgar Allen Poe die? Baltimore, Md.

5. Which film was the first full-length film to feature the voices of its actors? “The Jazz Singer”

Subject: English & Literature, History, Other History, U.S. Government, U.S. History, World History
Tags: Quiztory, The Answer Sheet

Test your students’ knowledge of the notable events covered in findingDulcinea’s “On This Day” column this week with the Quiztory—a quiz on important events in history. A new Quiztory will run every Friday.

1. Who sent a memo on Oct. 7, 1940, to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s advisors proposing aggressive action against Japan?

2. When did much of Europe switch from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar?

3. Who wrote “Guerilla Warfare” and was killed by CIA operatives and members of the Bolivian army in 1967?

4. Where did writer Edgar Allen Poe die?

5. Which film was the first full-length film to feature the voices of its actors?

What’s Coming Up?

Next week, “On This Day” will take a look at Christopher Columbus’ landing in the Caribbean Islands, Italy’s declaration of war on Nazi Germany and the Cuban Missile Crisis. We’ll also examine the American athletes that gave the black power salute at the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games, and the kidnapping of Quebec’s Minister of Labor by militant separatists in 1970.

Subject: English & Literature, History, Other History, Social Studies, U.S. History, World History
Tags: Quiztory

Patrick Sweeney with a model home and blueprints created by his fifth-grade students.

This week findingEducation sat down with Patrick Sweeney, a fifth-grade teacher at Boones Ferry Primary School in the West Linn-Wilsonville School District of Oregon. Sweeney teaches all subjects in his mixed-level, self-contained classroom. How does he keep 27 students with different ability levels engaged and excited about learning while covering the necessary curriculum?

Sweeney is a big proponent of project-based learning and teaming, both within and across grade levels. By bringing interests he’s passionate about into the classroom, and combining them with project-based learning principles, he’s come up with some pretty creative ways to get kids excited about coming to school every day.

fE: What exactly is project-based learning?

PS: Project-based learning is using open-ended projects, usually based off of research, as a model for teaching. You can also define it by what it isn’t. It isn’t where subjects are broken up into sections: Math is taught is in a math class or math block, and literacy is taught separately and technology is taught separately. Project-based learning takes all subjects and integrates them. You’re interconnecting them so that everything seems to have a sense of purpose.

(more…)

Subject: Art, Geometry, Integrated Technology, Math, Other, Other Math, Other Science, Science
Tags: Educator Profiles

Subject: History, Other History, Social Studies, U.S. Government, U.S. History, World History
Tags: Quiztory, The Answer Sheet

Test your students’ knowledge of the notable events covered in findingDulcinea’s “On This Day” column this week with the Quiztory—a quiz on important events in history. A new Quiztory will run every Friday.

1. When did the Los Angeles Times building explode due to dynamite set by iron workers?

2. What was the original name of the “Peanuts” comic strip?

3. Which two presidents participated in the first debates to be held between the presidential nominees of the two major parties during the election season?

4. When did Israeli and Palestinian leaders sign an agreement handing over civil control of the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority?

5. In what U.S. state did the world’s first hydroelectric power plant begin operation?

What’s Coming Up?

Next week, “On This Day” will explore the mysterious circumstances surrounding Edgar Allen Poe’s death, take a look at the T.A. Gillespie Company Shell Loading Plant explosion and examine the shift from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar. Also look for articles on the McCollum memo, the Great Chicago fire and the execution of Che Guevara.

Subject: History, Other History, Social Studies, U.S. History, World History
Tags: Quiztory