Today I used an amazing resource called iTunes U. This is an app that provides courses and lesson ideas for teachers and students. It also has materials for college students and other resources. I went on this app and clicked on the link For Educators where I found a section for Inspiring Lesson Plans. There are 30 courses in this section and 4 that caught my eye were Students as Math Authors Project, Endangered Animals Writing Project, Learn Pythagorean Theorem Through Exploration, and Weaving Your Web With “Charlotte’s Web“.

In this course it provided engaging and interactive lesson ideas in language arts surrounding the book Charlotte’s Web. They are activities that work through the book looking for themes, exploring friendships, and finally spinning their own web. It begins with three activities to be used to introduce the students to the book. The first activity is using an app to create an interactive whiteboard about life on a farm. They will also use an interactive whiteboard to create a T-chart about spiders being friends and enemies. Lastly, they will also use a word cloud app to create a word cloud with words that describe friendship. When they begin to move to understanding Charlotte’s Web they move to two resources they provide and one activity. The two resources are book on audio and a recommended reading schedule. The activity is summarizing the chapters on the interactive whiteboard. In the book the spider Charlotte helps save the pigs life and for the classroom this course has them weaving a web to help someone they would like to help. They are required to use one of 6 possible apps to create a campaign to bring attention to the one they want to help. They will then post these on the web to get them out there and try and be successful in helping that person. I liked this idea because the children are using technology, using their own thoughts and creativity, and they are also helping someone in the end. I think it could engage the majority of the kids and is a more interesting way to read a book. I think this approach could be used with other books as well. To use it in my classroom I could find the themes of the book and come up with activities they can complete to go along with them. In the end there will be a larger project that can reach out and help the students grow and fully understand the main theme of the book.