K-12, Teaching Tools

Celebrate Women, Pi, and St. Patrick!

Quick recap: Tomorrow (March 8th) is International Women’s Day. Pi Day is on March 14th (3.14) and St. Patrick’s Day is on March 17th. This is that funky time of year when many schools have week-long breaks, so you may not even be in class during some or all of these momentous events. But that doesn’t mean you can’t celebrate them on a different day. We all know it’s helpful to add a little novelty to class to keep students engaged, and holidays offer unique activities to help you with that.

Just in case you’ve missed it, I’ve got a March Holidays collection here, which includes International Women’s Day. It also has links to my separate Pi Day and St. Patrick’s Day collections. You can also get some free resources at this link shared by Julie Finnerty Molthen on the Teachers Using Jamboards Facebook group, specifically the “Would You Rather: Green Edition.” I just added a currently free logic puzzle from Learning Hypothesis to the St. Patrick’s Day collection, as well as a math puzzle from Games4Gains.

And don’t forget to check out Donna Lasher’s Holiday page, as she is always adding new puzzles and links.

Are you on break this week? If so, I hope it’s marvelous and that you get to do a hard reset! If not, don’t worry, you’re going to make it!

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Photo by Matt Hardy on Pexels.com
women sitting on the couch
3-12, Art, history, Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies

Women in Culture

International Women’s Day will be celebrated on March 8, 2022 this year. I have some links to activities and lessons on my March Holidays Wakelet, but I ran across the “Women in Culture” page on Google Arts and Culture the other day and wanted to make it more widely known. I could spend days exploring this site! I know you don’t have days, hours, or even more than a couple of minutes, so I’ll point out some highlights that will make it worth your while.

Let’s start by passing all of the great images and scrolling to close to the bottom of the page, where you will see this section:

If you have no other time to bathe yourself in the beauty of this site, definitely download some of the free lesson plans, which will give you guided tours through some of the amazing images and information available to you about inspiring women in all types of careers.

Still have a little time? Maybe you can browse through this exhibit of “11 Women Who Changed the World,” and try to learn more about the incredibly gifted females (Still have a little time? Maybe you can browse through this exhibit of “11 Women Who Changed the World,” and try to learn more about the incredibly gifted females who have made universally positive contributions (many of whom rarely appear in school textbooks) who have made universally positive contributions in field ranging from art to science.

Speaking of science, women in STEM are all over this page. For a small taste of what you can find, take 2 minutes to watch this superhero video about one of those women, who is using biomimicry to discover new materials to monitor our health. A few more videos from the series can be found by scrolling about 1/4 way down the page to the section, “The science of tomorrow.”

If you’ve got upper elementary or secondary students beginning Genius Hour/Passion Projects, this would be a great page for them to browse for topic inspiration. Help them find unique subjects like the “Sea Women of South Korea” or the evolution of “Women in Sports.”

Discover the women who made a difference while increasing your motivation to help more young people learn of these achievements so they, too, can see what is possible.

3-12, Education, Language Arts, Motivation, Philosophy, Social Studies, Teaching Tools, Websites

Whose Words Inspire You?

 

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In honor of International Women’s Day on March 8th, CNN posted a site where you could choose an inspirational quote by a famous woman, select a background from three choices, and share it via Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, or Tumblr.  I spent quite a bit of time reading the words of Eleanor Roosevelt, Marie Curie, and Maya Angelou, and nodding in agreement.

I have a Pinterest board of Favorite Quotations that I will often send my students to as a resource for various projects.  The ease of CNN’s site allowed me to add a few more to my collection.  If your students have access to any of the social networks, they could share some of their own.  (There were a couple of “less serious” quotes, such as from Zsa Zsa Gabor, so you will need to take the age of your students into account before referring them to this resource.)

If you do Socratic Dialogue in your class, many of these would be good jumping off points for discussion.  You can also make connections by asking the students to think of other people that would identify with the quote, or even fictional characters who could have easily spoken those words.