VSTE

Virginia Society for Technology in Education

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • About
    • About VSTE
    • Leadership
    • Awards
    • Get Involved
  • Events
    • Annual Conference
    • Brainstorm 2020: Limitless Learning
    • 2019 Conference
    • Live Events
    • Online Events
  • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
  • VE PLN
  • Blog
  • Subscribe
  • Contact Us

Featured Resources #GoOpenVA, April 6, 2021

April 5, 2021

logo for go open vaJean Weller, VSTE Board Member and VDOE Technology Integration Specialist, leads the #GoOpenVA initiative in Virginia. This collaborative initiative enables educators and others throughout Virginia to create, share, and access openly-licensed educational resources (OER, also known as open education resources). OER are free digital materials that can be used or modified to adjust to student needs; they are openly-licensed unhampered by many traditional copyright limitations.

We asked Jean to periodically curate a few of the resources to give a sense of what is available. Start with these but stay for so much more!

It's definitely spring, at last! Now is the time to take advantage of the natural curiosity of young students about the changes in their world.  Here are three high-quality educational learning resources that you can use with your K-2 students. Two are from the Virginia Department of Education’s Science Team. The third is from our Virginia K-12 Computer Science Pipeline project.

What if Basic Needs Aren’t Met? is a Science Instructional Plan from the VDOE Science Team for Kindergarten students. It encourages students to think through scenarios to make predictions, using gorgeous color photographs (helpful if you are not all in the same place to view real-life examples). A teacher might even make a connection to how human beings have adapted during the COVID-19 crisis, just like plants and animals must do at times.

What Plants Need is a First Grade Science Instructional Plan from the VDOE Science Team, and outlines the fairly common classroom practice of growing seeds. However, after students have explored the various needs of plants through their experiments, they then take what they have learned to create something new-a seed packet with instructions. The Science Team also suggests some great questions to get students to dig a bit deeper, connecting what they’ve learned with other science questions.

Plant Life Cycle (with Scratch) is a lesson provided by the Virginia K-12 Computer Science Pipeline project, which integrates Computer Science concepts into content areas. By second grade students have learned about plants and how they grow. This lets them create their own plant and cause it to grow using coding (a handy guide to Scratch is attached to the lesson). Encourage them to be creative, and then bring it back around to real life by sending students outside to look for real life plants.

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • LinkedIn
  • Email

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Join Us

VSTE membership is always free, so why not become a part of our community?

Click here to join us.

Already a member? You can support VSTE by making a donation to Friends of VSTE.

Click here to donate.

Search

Advertisement

VSTE on Twitter

  • Featured Resources #GoOpenVA, April 6, 2021 https://t.co/nIQiw03rNt

    6 days ago
  • Summer will be here before you know it! Join other elementary #educators online June 13-15! Early bird rates end Ap… https://t.co/C0hqlN7B52

    1 week ago
  • Summer will be here before you know it! Join other elementary #educators online June 13-15! Early bird rates end Ap… https://t.co/BI23pYvwDQ

    2 weeks ago

VSTE Partners

Big Deal Media

Big Book Deal, March 15, 2021

VSTE partners with Big Deal Media to bring you carefully curated resources designed for K-12 … Continue Reading

Big Book Deal, March 1st, 2021

VSTE partners with Big Deal Media to bring you carefully curated resources designed for K-12 … Continue Reading

See More from Big Deal

VSTE Affiliations

 


Copyright © 2021 Virginia Society for Technology in Education · Log in

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.