How to... find Calendar events on the Web

Teaching Pre K-8, Aug/Sep 2002 by Lindroth, Linda

TECHNOLOGY IN YOUR CLASSROOM

School bells are ringing all across the country, calling teachers and students back to the classroom to begin another exciting year. While nothing stays the same, some themes remain consistent throughout the years. This year, as I turned to thoughts of fall and the eager young faces of my students, I thought of the ways the Internet has made it easier to organize my classroom and provide daily research using the wide range of "calendar" resources.

Here are just some of my favorites. I hope you'll visit our website at www.TeachingK-8.com and share your own calendar themes and resources you use for filling in your "school theme calendar."

Return to our website each month and you'll find a reproducible of historical calendar events for every month of the school year. For the first of these calendar reproducibles, you don't even have to log on to the web; you'll find it on page 22.

And now, let's move on to the web-- sites!

www.surfnetkids.com/sept.htm

SURFING THE cALENDAR - This site offers dozens of historic events, birthdays and famous firsts for each month of the year. I love it because almost every event has a complete list of related links that are a perfect fit for classroom use. As a bonus, there are printables for many of the theme pages. These printables are two-- page PDF pages that list all the resources for a given topic, the related topics and a place for student notes. You can choose to print individual printables for $1 each, or join the Printables Club for $18, and print all the themes. I definitely recommend signing up for the free semiweekly newsletter from Barbara J. Feldman and the Los Angeles Times, an e-- mail rich with themed resources and website reviews that will spark your classroom content all year long!

www.teachervision.com

LEARNING NETWORK - A visit to this website each month will be well worth your time. Monthly features focus on calendar events and popular school themes with well-- organized resource lists.

The Theme Library offers a categorized list of all the themes featured by this site. I love the comprehensive interdisciplinary approach, which includes quizzes, printables, reference resources and lesson activities divided according to content area. This is a great organizational site for back-to-school. There's even an Ice Cream Web Adventure - use it for National Inventor's Month in August and continue through September 22, which is when the ice cream cone was patented.

www.famousbirthdays.com

FAMOUS PEOPLE BIRTHDAYS - This website lets you click on a month and day for a list of famous birthdays, complete with research links for finding out more about the person. Add cross-curricular content to your usual birthday bulletin board with a list of famous people born on the birthdays of each of your students. Turn each class birthday into a "research game" in which you find out more about your classmates and the people born on their birthdays.

http://school.discovery.com/schrock guide/authorname.html/

AUTHOR BIRTHDAYS - Search this site alphabetically by name or search for children's authors by month. Jack Prelutsky finished the book, Hooray for Diffendoofer Day, by Dr. Seuss on September 8th. Find out these two author's birthdays and post them on your calendar. Visit the Diffendoofer Day website, www.random house.com/seussville /titles/diffendoofer/ for classroom activities and more background about this author partnership, which is perfect for back-to-school.

www.historychannel.com/today/

THIS DAY IN HISTORY - This is one site that offers really great curricular content for historic events. There are events for each day of the year, searchable by specific day and/or category. You can even make someone's birthday more special by sending a free History Greeting from the History Channel, which includes a list of what happened on your friend's birthday. This might be a good PR project for your class - send a History Greeting to the school staff, district administrators, and school board members on their birthdays - and complete a few of the technology standards along the way.

ww.historyorb.com

HISTORYRBy - Choose a date and search for historical events, famous birthdays, and famous deaths with this very comprehensive database of history. Martin Luther King gave his famous "I have a dream" speech on August 28, 1963. Don't wait until his birthday in January to use this with students. It is a great class discussion before involving students in writing class rules or as an introduction to setting individual and class goals for the year. Then, revisit the goals list in January with a celebration of this great civil rights leader's birthday.

There's another famous September date that will also fit this curriculum idea - the U.S. Constitution was signed on September 17, 1776. Use Citizenship Day to celebrate this great event in U.S. history - and write your own class constitution.