Spring is here! No matter what kind of Spring weather you're having, everyone is beginning to feel the anticipation of warmer, longer days and an impending summer vacation. So, why fight it? Get Spring fever on your side by using Spring themes in your classroom! Here are some wonderful online resources built around some popular Spring themes in an expanded edition to help ring in the season. Thanks to Jim Cornish and Jerry Blumengarten for their suggestions!

Baseball

• Baseball: The Game and Beyond - http://library.thinkquest.org/11902/
  This well-designed ThinkQuest website takes a look at the game from its more technical aspects: the skills it takes to be a play-by-play announcer, the science of pitching and hitting, and umpiring a game. What's more, each section offers three levels of material, from the introductory to the expert, so everyone can enjoy the site regardless of their level of baseball knowledge. And there are important concepts presented here: why does a curve ball curve, how far will a ball travel, the role of friction. The possibilities for application in the classroom are awesome!
• Baseball Reference - http://www.baseball-reference.com/
  One of the hobbies that has taken root as an offshoot of our national pastime is the compilation of baseball statistics and mythology. Baseball reference is a fully searchable, one stop site that brings together all the facts, figures and lore fans crave. Here you'll find everything from batting averages and career leaders to team profiles and birthdays. And the links to news, analysis and travel information makes this site as useful as it is fun. Imagine the skills you can have your students practice as they plan a week-long travel itinerary following their favorite team's schedule!
• Batter's Up Baseball - http://www.prongo.com/math/
  This Flash-based hitting simulation requires students to correctly answer Math problems in order to advance runners around the bases and score runs. Players select a level of difficulty and then answer problems as they appear on the screen in order to get singles, doubles and homeruns. Each wrong answer is a strike and a player gets three outs for a game. This is a slick version of a website concept that has been around for a few years. Just be sure your computers have the free Flash plugin installed before you introduce the game to your students!
• The Science of Baseball - http://www.exploratorium.edu/baseball/
  The Exploratorium designed this award-winning site to help students appreciate the principles of physics that come into play in the game of baseball. Audio and video clips and Shockwave simulations help make this site interactive and a lot of fun for learning. There are such engaging topics as How Far Can You Hit One which studies the science of hitting, Baseball Timeline which allows you to adjust a player's stats for comparison in any era in baseball, and Tools of the Trade that covers the equipment of baseball and how it has changed over the years. The exhibits on fastball reaction time and the scientific slugger are especially engaging for young learners!

Animals

• CritterCam Chronicles - http://www.nationalgeographic.com/features/98/crittercam/
  This is not what you'd expect from a steadfast organization like National Geographic. They actually placed cameras on the backs of marine animals and caught their travels on film. You can even view some of the movies they made right here on the website! Sea turtles, sharks, seals and whales are featured here, and there's a good dose of technical information about the cameras themselves for junior scientists who want to learn more. Note - when you're done looking around check out the link on the Kitty Cam!
• Greenheye's Farm - http://www.greenheyes.com/
  Join Philip Smallwood and his family for a virtual tour of his farm in Cheshire, England. Here your class can have a tour of the farm itself, a look at farm machinery, learn more about life on a farm and read a yearlong journal, hike a nature trail and learn about the livestock that are raised there. While the site can be adapted for younger children, it's actually better suited for upper elementary and middle students.
• Polar Bears - http://www.stemnet.nf.ca/CITE/polar_bears.htm
  The Gander Academy presents this theme page on polar bears that includes primary pages, research and support pages, and activity pages designed to supplement your classroom study. Each set of pages includes at least six lessons or sets of related materials that are eye-catching and well-written for elementary-aged children. Links to other polar bear resources online help to round out this wealth of materials!
• The Wild Habitat - http://library.thinkquest.org/11234/
  This wonderfully designed ThinkQuest entry allows you to explore wild animals through the different biomes in which they live: polar and mountain regions, savanna and grasslands, tropical rainforests and woodland areas. Each biome showcases a number of animals with entries that look like fact cards they're so chocked full of information. Most animal pages include pictures of the subject in its habitat.

Plants

• eNature - http://www.enature.com/guides/select_Wildflowers.asp?curGroup=Wildflowers
  This virtual field guide to plants and animals has an extensive listing of all kinds of plants. This particular link takes you to wild flowers, which are categorized by very visual descriptions so that even younger children can make use of the site: simple shapes, odd shapes, dandelion-like flowers, rounded clusters and seeds and fruits to name a few. You can even view the entire category. The clickable photographs are clear and colorful and the resulting pages are chocked full of information. Your students can even send an e-card of the flower they've studied!
• Global Forest Awesome - http://www.gfawesome.org/
  Global Forest Awesome is a fun, engaging look at tree biology for elementary and middle school students. The site menu is a graphic of the tree of knowledge that allows students to visually identify topics of interest. The School section offers self-contained lessons and quizzes, while the Fun Science link offers facts and "gruesomes" that change daily (yes they really are gruesome!) and a Tie Dye Flower experiment. Links on Weather, a Library of information, a Photo Gallery and a Teacher page round out this site.
• NatureServe - http://www.natureserve.org/
  NatureServe is an online database on all living things hosted by the Association for Biodiversity Information. Click on "Plants and Animals" and a search screen pops up that allows your students to tailor specific searches for the plant of your choice. You can search by common or scientific name or by location, status or ecological community. You can have the search engine ignore punctuation in the database and even include subspecies, varieties, and populations in your students' results. From the resulting hits, students can choose from four kinds of reports: summary, status, distribution and comprehensive. This is a great site for middle and high school research!
• Partners for Growing - http://mbgnet.mobot.org/pfg/samples/index.htm
  The Evergreen Project presents this set of activities on exploring plant life for elementary students. Enjoy the personalized interactive stories and songs to help students acclimate to the topic. Then immerse your class in great features on creating a school garden, training bees, leaves and their aspiration, creating a leaf collection and plant munchers (aphids, caterpillar, weevils and other insects). Activity-based and full of colorful images, you'll be glad you added this site to your plant study this Spring!

Earth Day

• Earth Day Groceries Project - http://www.earthdaybags.org/
  Ask for brown paper grocery bags from a local supermarket, have your children decorate the bags with messages of ecological awareness, then return the bags to the supermarket for use on Earth Day 2000! This is a long-running activity online which continues to grow with each passing year. Civic involvement, environmental responsibility and developmentally appropriate tasks all make this project a winner!
• Earth History Resources - http://seaborg.nmu.edu/earth
  Here is a storehouse of photographs of dioramas, fossils and models, and computer generated images and drawings designed for use in the development of either an online Internet site or interactive multimedia project related to Earth History. The geologic timelines are an exceptional tool for helping children tie-in our Earth's past with human history, and the Mammoth Dig in South Dakota is a virtual tour which helps students share in the amazement of physical archaeology.
• Garbage - http://www.learner.org/exhibits/garbage/intro.html
  This Annenberg Project presentation will help students realize how much waste actually accumulates on Earth from daily living. They'll learn, for example, that they create four pounds of garbage every day! This Annenberg Project presentation helps students to conceptualize how much waste is accumulated on the Earth from daily living. Looking at solid waste, this site helps motivate participants to make a difference on the Earth by changing our wasteful habits.
• Kid's Domain - http://www.kidsdomain.com/holiday/earthday/
  This is an awesome site for Earth Day materials available right online - online games, free downloads, cards, songs, activities, stories, crafts, recipes - even clip art! The Planet ARK Earth Disk is a great download that's free for the taking, and the Adopt a Rainforest Animal activity helps elementary students get involved with concrete examples of endangered species!
  

Click here for the Innovative Teaching Archive!

Next week's topic: "The Middle Ages"

Please send in URL's of high quality sites which may be of interest to our readers to walter@surfaquarium.com! Also, I'm always looking for new topic ideas and input!

Find More Great Resources at the Innovative Teaching Website: http://surfaquarium.com/it.htm.

Archive	http://groups.yahoo.com/group/innovative-teaching
Subscribe	innovative-teaching-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Unsubscribe	innovative-teaching-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
List Owner	walter@surfaquarium.com

This newsletter may be forwarded or copied provided the header and signature information remain intact. Show a colleague what you have found in Innovative Teaching! =D -©1999-2001 Walter McKenzie