Kentucky Academy of Technology Education

Are You Like a Butterfly?

Core Connections

http://pics.tech4learning.com

By: Jaclyn Howard, Jesse Stuart Elementary School
Hopkins County Schools

Everything is more meaningful when it relates to oneself. Butterflies are a fun and interesting way to help children learn life cycles while creating a real-life, meaningful experience. Students can better learn about life cycles when butterflies, for example, can be compared and contrasted with their own life cycle. By saturating the students' learning environment with literature on butterflies, opportunities for dramatic play, websites containing pictures and facts on butterflies, and observations of real butterflies, children can't help but to be motivated to learn. Butterflies provide invaluable opportunities for children to learn not only about the life cycle of insects and butterflies, but a look into their own stages of life.

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Polygons in Your Place!

Core Connections

lvillage.education.vic.gov.au

by:  Barbara Nantz, Muhlenberg South High School

Have you ever thought about the different shapes that are used in the world around you? What makes the lines that form a triangle always meet exactly at that third corner without overlapping? Properties and characteristics of polygons are useful to help understand this.

Working with polygons seems simple if what a kindergarten teacher taught about shapes was still true, but all that will change once you begin to examine polygons. For instance, a square was a four sided figure with all equal sides in grade school, but in high school it becomes a parallelogram with four congruent side and four congruent angles. As the mind grows, so does one's perception of shapes. As a young child the mind only thought in right angels, but once it grows older it will know that there are other shapes, like a rhombus, that would fit that grade school definition.

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Use AirLiners to Keep Students On-Task

Instructional Illuminations

www.infacom.co.uk

By: Fulton Independent Schools

Using technology to enhance student achievement and keep seventh and eighth graders on-task has been implemented by the junior high faculty at Fulton High School. One new technology tool being used by the staff is AirLiners, which are hand-held slates that project onto white boards and interact with projectors, computers, PowerPoint presentations, document cameras, videos, and on-line programs. The mobility and versatility of AirLiners has led to a variety of teaching strategies for these creative teachers. From revising portfolio pieces to highlighting vocabulary, to using the SMART Notebook to create a Venn Diagram, the junior high teachers use the AirLiners as a tool to help students stay on-task.

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