For my One Great Text I decided to use a video from Scholastic’s Study Jams! This site offers many videos on various Science and Math topics. Most of the videos also have interactive activities such as karaoke or quizzes that students can take afterwards. The video that I chose was one that I had used to create a sample lesson plan for a technology rich lesson on the states of matter.
http://studyjams.scholastic.com/studyjams/jams/science/matter/solids-liquids-gases.htm
I wanted to get a students point of view so I asked my cousin Emily who is in 9th grade if she thought this video would be good to use in a science lesson.
“I like the video. It is way better than other videos I have seen. Also it gets all the main facts stated out, and it reflects it nicely to soccer.”
I think she has a good point. Students may retain the information easier if they can connect what they are learning to something that they are interested in. In this case the video relates the states of matter to soccer. Since these videos try and relate new concepts to interests that students might already have, I think that these videos might be a great addition to any classroom.
If you would like to explore the other videos and activities available from Study Jams! here is the link to there homepage.
http://studyjams.scholastic.com/studyjams/index.htm
Eileen C.
I really like this website! The videos are a little more enjoyable for me than the BrainPop ones and I think they’re just as educational. I would definitely like to use this website in my future classroom to incorporate technology and also connect new concepts to my students’ background knowledge (like soccer).
The great thing about this video is not only will it interest people who like soccer or sports in general, but even if soccer isn’t a student’s favorite sport they can still relate to it because they will most likely be familiar with soccer since it is required in PE class, and maybe their friends or family members play it. So the fact that you don’t have to love/understand soccer to understand the video is a good thing. My question is would you use this video as an introduction to the unit or later on after you talked about the different types of matter?
I absolutely love these videos! They are a new video series I had never heard of before. What I really like about them is that they are a similar concept to the School House Rock videos but with a modern day application. I noticed that these videos had ethnic diversity and colorful modern language that students can easily relate to and see themselves in, which is extremely important to increase engagement. The fact that these videos are free on the web would make a great resource for classroom teachers as well as short clips to introduce contents in science and math. Thanks for the great resource.
I completely agreed with the student. This video was more interesting in more and what you said about retention and their interests going hand in hand is true. There is something to be said about getting a student excited about a subject. I would take learning something from a video over reading it in a textbook any day.