Educational Resources from the National Park Service

It's Jen from An Adventure in Literacy. I've spent the last three summers traveling coast to coast on cross country trips. One of the highlights of these trips is the opportunity to hit all of the national parks. Most people know about the amazing beauty and natural resources that national parks offer, but I'm here today to share some of the educational resources too.

The majority of national parks have bookstores in their visitor centers. In addition to park resources, most of them have an AMAZING selection of children's books. There are nonfiction books to learn more about the features and characteristics of the park. There are also fiction books related to the parks. I'm talking about quality children's literature.

Carlsbad Caverns even had a book display by the elevators highlighting a few books!

Some visitor centers will give you 15% off with a teacher id on some items. As with all teacher discounts it depends on the park and can change at any time, but it never hurts to flash that teacher id and just ask!

If you have children of your own they can take advantage of the free Junior Ranger program. The program is individualized for each park, but it usually requires some sort of learning activities specific to the park and a junior ranger patch. You can read more about the program here.

If you're not near the visitor center resources, the National Park Service also offers some great web based resources. There is a kids page as well as a teacher page where you can search for lessons and resources. You can also visit the websites for individual national parks for educational resources. Just click on "Learn About the Park" then "Education".

National Parks are America's largest classrooms. Be sure to take advantage of all of the educational resources they have to offer. Do you have a favorite park or park resource that you use for education? Leave us a comment. We'd love to check it out!

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Wonder...Wonder...Wonderopolis!

  

What is Wonderopolis, you ask?  

I asked the same thing when a friend of mine at work mentioned it.  Immediately after leaving the copy room, I Googled it, and I was amazed!  Actually, my entire mind was full of wonder!  I could not believe what I saw!

My friend, a Special Education teacher, uses it with his students to give them some engaging material to read.  He loves it because of the many features it has, and his students can find just about anything they want to read.  Yes, they have CHOICE!  That is huge!

So, I thought, what can I use this for?  Well, there are so many ways I can use this resource to help my students as they learn.

One of our standards in the third grade is for students to read what I call "Real Life Reading", which includes such things as brochures, flyers, schedules, recipes, and websites.  The third grade teacher and I spent an entire week working on "Real Life Reading".  I used Wonderopolis with my students as the website to read.  They used the iPads to look up different "wonders" and read about them.  Here are some things we loved about it!

Look at all of the great topics!  Yes, that is Minecraft as a topic!  What kid couldn't find something to want to read?!  And there are so many more!

For those students who can't read it all, they can listen with wonder!  Plus, they can listen to a fluent reader too!

You can click on any word that has an orange dotted line and see what it means.  Plus,there are "Wonder Words" for each "wonder" where students can learn and then do a matching activity.

Before reading, students use guiding questions to help them think about what they will be reading.  Plus, it connects to current standards.

Each passage has a short little quiz they can do to see what they remember.

After they looked at the website and read about something they wanted to learn more about, they answered these real life questions about the screen shot.

It is amazing what they can learn when they are able to "wonder" a little!

What will you do in Wonderopolis?

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