FBA-Fabulous Book Alert!

The Adventure Begins: First Day at Detinu International School. Jen Munnerlyn

In my opinion, this is a perfect international student book! Any student new to the international scene, or moving to a new international school, can relate to the character's feelings of eating different foods, speaking different languages, and the myriad of differences in general when arriving in a new country. It's a great book to use in the first few days of school or as a springboard for discussion about what it means to be a TCK, or Third Culture Kid. A friend and fellow teacher wrote this book (one in a series of more to come) because she herself grew up a TCK and found that there are few resources out there that address this group of children.

ESPN and Math/Science

While watching ESPN the other day, a segment came on where a surfer girl was chatting with an interviewer about how the sport relates to math and science. Hmmm, interesting...all of a sudden what is already a cool sport in the eyes of students became a lesson on wave properties and the electromagnetic spectrum. It was engaging and had me hooked. The website is geared for teachers with lessons for middle to high school students. Videos and lesson plans are included on the site with everything from waterskiing to billiards.

Fun With Geography

I am a huge fan of anything dealing with geography, and I'm loving this National Geographic sponsored site called My Wonderful World that I found recommended on another blog. There is a world geography quiz each day that you can take as well as a game to locate the various countries, continents or states. Having the quiz on a computer makes it more interesting and a great test of geographic knowledge. In a laptop school, taking the geography quiz of the day would be an excellent warm-up, and I'm thinking of using the site with upper grades in the library as a reinforcement of the curriculum.