pre-2011 web resources

[Anonymous]

I found this website through Teachers.net: It's a fun two day lesson for first graders about Japanese food, culture, and how food plays a major role in fairy tales. I like the way the site broke everything concretely into parts: Materials needed, How long the lesson will take, and the resource utilized in planning the unit. It sounds like a fun way for students to engage in the culture of Japan, via food and stories. Children learn best when the experience is hands-on and the making of sushi would definitely be a kinesthetic way for each student to display their creativity and enjoy the results. I would like to try it with my students. (And some adventurous parents might take their sons/daughters to a sushi restaurant where the students can watch a sushi master at work! What a way to connect classroom knowledge to the real world!) Who says history can't be fun?

The Website:
http://www.teachers.net/lessons/posts/1919.html

[Anonymous]

This is a funny website dedicated to the incorrect usage of the English language: Signs, t-shirts...you name it. It is viewing the English language from a non-native point-of-view. There are photos of places with incorrect usage. This sight can be an excellent site for English Language Learners to learn proper usage by identifying what is wrong with the photographs presented in this website. They are hilarious and worth checking out. The website is easy to use and there's even a section where you can purchase merchandise with the type of Engrish that makes this website hysterical. Students will get a big kick out of it -- I recommend teachers to browse for appropriateness of content before showing.

The website:

http://www.engrish.com

[Anonymous]

This is really a good one. Thanks for recommending it. This will also help me explain why most Japanese have difficulty pronouncing the letter "l" as much as many Chinese have difficulty pronouncing the letter "r". I remember a joke my father gave me when I was in college. My father was 1/4 Chinese and spoke fluent Nihongo. He said that when the First Couple of the Philippines went on a State Visit to Japan the First Lady was asked by the Host: "Mrs. First Rady, is it true that during erections in your country you have many peopre?" This was followed by a gracious introduction of the state guests: Radies and Gentremen, prease wercome President and First Rady who rove their peopre very much." I love this website. I went further to click on "Ricks Site Targed Listing," which I think would appeal much to my students of special needs. I can design good lessons, including lessons in the art using the link below.

http://www.mydailyfunnies.com

[Anonymous]

I visited the website mentioned here on three personal considerations: One, I'm an Asian; Two: I'm teaching also functional life skills to my Middle School students of special needs; and Three, I'm looking for creative ways to make my History lessons interesting to my MR students. After reading #1919 Rice is Nice lesson plan, I thought it is very applicable to my MR students using my modified curriculum for History course. Thus, even if this LP was addressed to the Elementary class by the author SuzAnne Payseur, I'm convinced it has all the ingredients that will make my 6, 7 and 8 graders excited in my History class. Thanks for the information.

[Anonymous]

What hooked me to this website are the visuals. There's a lot of pictures that I can download and use in my series of lessons. Most of my special ed students are of visual and auditory intelligences and that's the reason why most, if not all, of my lessons are replete with photographs, sketches and other like visual aids. Using visuals give my students the much needed opportunity to access learning. Given their special needs, I must design my lessons to fit their needs. This site is definitely a mine of resources that I can use in my classroom. The awesome thing is that I can use this website in designing lesson, not only in language arts, but also in History, Science and Math. In fact, I can combine the lesson on the Mongolian Saddle in my History and Science classes. Thanks for the info.

[Anonymous]

I have done the heroes and great men of world history project last year. The lessons included surfing the Internet and writing an essay and/or biographical accounts of the chosen heroes. This was done during my participation in the AEMP program. I think doing the biographies and accounts of great women in history is awesome. Aside from those Asian great women already mentioned in the post, I would like to add three great women from the Philippines. Gabriela Silang circa mid 1800s), she helped the revolutionaries against the Spanish colonizers of the island in their revolutionary movement. Her husband, Diego Silang is one of the heroes of Luzon; Melchora Aquino, aka "Tandang Sora" heroine of the Philippine Revolution against Spain in 1896; and Corazon C. Aquino (not related to Melchora Aquino) served as the rallying figure of the so-called "People Power" in the Philippines, a popularly-backed military mutiny that ousted the authoritarian ruler, Ferdinand E. Marcos in 1986. Her husband, Benigno Aquino, Jr., was a popular senator in the Philippines who was assassinated in 1983. That assassination led to nationwide protest actions with Mrs. Aquino as the rallying point that eventually toppled the Marcos dictatorship ijn the next three years that followed. Mrs. Aquino became the Time Magazine "Man of the Year" cover in 1986.

[Anonymous]

This is an awesome website that more than complements my recommended website about the Yellow River :www.cis.massd.edu/~gleung/ In this Yellow River website you can click on the Food topic and that will bring you to the Silhoutte Puppet Show link, among other listed topics. I learned that Silhoutte Puppetry or Shadow Puppet show as described in the Puppets on the Move website was popular in Northern China up and down the Yellow River. Puppets are made of animal skin (long before plastic was invented) and are transparent to light. The puppets are vividly painted and were used to depict or retell historical events or fairy tales of long tradition. Basically, both websites corroborate each other in their account of the significance of Chinese puppetry. What makes the Kennedy Art Center website on Puppet on the Move is the animation that will definitely appeal to the students. I intend to use both websites in my future unit lessons about China.

[Anonymous]

I'm planning to incorporate this language art lesson into my social studies when we start to tackle Korea. I like the website since it also offers some Korean characters which I can incorporate in my lesson plan to make the presentation and discussion more interesting, and therefore, lively. The website is well organized and easy to read. I pay specific attention to the alphabetically arranged list of Korean deities and the brief but informative description of each with just a click appears on the screen. My students liked my lesson on the various Egyptian gods because I did it with pictures of some of the gods. I wonder if there are links to this Korean mythology website that provides pictures of the deities.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Clay and Judi for this post. I like the lesson activity in Buddhism. Considering the learning intelligences of my special needs students, the lesson activity here precisely fit my objectives for these students. My students have a mixed visual, auditory and tactile/kinesthetic intelligences, which the recommended game activity in this lesson will definitely get them engaged. I, also, find the next lesson on Samurai Resume very useful, especially, for my students who are turning 14 this year. Part of my curriculum for their Individual Transition Plan is to teach them how to write a resume. I'm definitely certain that the Samurai way will get them engaged in the lesson because it's fun while they learn the skills. Thanks again for this web resources. I will not only be able to teach my students the skills they need, but these lessons will also allow me to incorporate/involve Asia in my classroom. I will, also, recommend these websites to my colleagues in my school.

[Anonymous]

For lesson planning on Silk Roads topic/unit, I am recommending the webwsite I listed below. This website has a link to teacher's guide, which gives great ideas that you can adapt from in designing your lesson plans on this interesting topic or even unit on the historical Silk Road trade. You can use this website together with the recommended website on Silk Road. This way, you can provide more information to stuff the model lessons in the Teacher's Guide found in my recommended website. I have taught the Silk Road as a unit for a series of lesson for more than a week period for my students of special needs. I have found additional ideas, which I will incorporate in my future lessons on China and the Silk Road trade from this website.

Here's the website main address: http://www.silkroadproject.org/teachers/index.html

http://www.silkroadproject.org/teachers/teachers_guide.pdf brings you to the Teacher Guide link directly.

[Anonymous]

I surfed the website here on teaching Haiku and I couldn't agree more on what you said about its usefulness. Like you, I'm a Middle School teacher. However, I teach MR students and when I first mentioned to them the word Haiku, they thought it related to a Japanese or Korean food very much similar to tofu. One student thought I was talking about martial art. When I told them it's about Japanese poetry, they just stared at me agape. I did not pursue the idea of teaching it unless I find a more clever or creative way of teaching it. However, this year, I don't have my regular special ed students during Homeroom time. Instead, I have 28 regular or general education students for my Homeroom Since this is a non-academic period, I thought of teaching these 28 regular 8 graders in my Homeroom about Second Step. The brief period allocated for Homeroom, which is no more than 20 minutes, made the Second Step curriculum program hard to teach. Students are hardly excited and so I thought of teaching them some Nihongo table conversation one liners. That proved useful. However, I am not so knowledgeable about it so I went back to the Second Step. I'll try this Haiku project and I think they will like it. I'll try to find more websites in addition to what is already provided here.

[Anonymous]

I'm trying to access this website but somehow it's not coming full in screen. I don't know if I'm typing the address wrong or what. I want to explore this lesson about Japanese calligraphy for my future interactive lessons for my Homeroom students. And perhaps, to my students of special needs who still suffer from learning counting skills. I don't know how to incorporate Japanese calligraphy in teaching two of my MR students some counting skills. However, based on your posting, I sensed I could involve this Japanese calligraphy in my curriculum for these two LD students. Can you advice me on how to access this recommended website? Thanks.

[Anonymous]

As a science teacher, I use live science but I also found that there are many articles that talk a lot about Asia.

For example:

http://www.livescience.com/environment/070717_ap_gw_rivers.html

I gave the students as assignment to write a report on the water quality of the Yellow River in China and gave them the website as a resource. Although this is just one particular example of the Yellow River, there are numerous articles on the science of most of areas of the world including Asia. Keep this in mind if you are doing anything in science even if you teach non science courses.

[Anonymous]

I gave some other students of mine an extra credit assignment to study the chemistry of smog and I asked them to write a report on the Air Quality and Mitigation of Smog in Preparation of the 2008 Olympics. To my surprise, there is so much out there in terms of online information. Here is one of them:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070413102036.htm

This too comes from sciencedaily.com a very valuable online site for science related news. The students really learned the problems of smog but also what it is doing to other countries and China and what they plan to do about it.

[Anonymous]

This morning I started my lesson on plotting China on the map. I asked my students (using the KWL strategy) to give me any information or idea that they know about China or Chinese. I got good answers, considering that these are special needs students. One answered "They love meat and noodles." Another said "Chinese has little eyes." One student who likes geography blurted out, "Mr. Castorillo, is Mt. Everest in China?" I replied it's part of the Himalayas Mountains, and added that Himalayas spill into the boundary between India and China. I remembered that we had a reading activity about the Mt. Everest and this student remembers. It is not common to MR students to recall previous information, but I think KWL still works. I therefore recommend that strategy even in Science and History. I'm amazed that KWL works effectively even among students with MR.

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