Deserts

Deserts

http://www.neok12.com/Deserts.htm

Deserts aren’t always the easiest lessons, but this website makes it fun and easy for teachers to involve kids in learning. This website can be used by teachers of K-12 grade levels, depending on how you choose to apply the information. This website has a lot of information, games, and puzzles on Deserts, but it also has information on Math, English, Social Studies, and more! I think this is a great website for all teachers, because it enables kids to learn in a fun way and goes over many of the different deserts in the world. My favorite feature of this website is the detailed information it gives in the beginning. It has a short paragraph that informs you on what a desert is and what kind of climate it has etc. Then as you scroll down it gives you a list of several short videos that you can play for your class on deserts. It goes through desert wildlife, cactuses, and animals. I also like the games it has available for the kids. I played the first game, Label the Major Deserts of the World, and I found it to be fun and good for students who learn through visual images and repetition. The online games are easy for ELL’s to play without feeling the pressure of the class, and the aid of images is very helpful. The instructions are very simple, and the ELL would have no trouble understanding what to do even if they could not fully understand the instructions. In class I might show the students a few videos on the different deserts, then have them play some of the games. I didn’t really think there were any limitations on this source.

http://edtech.kennesaw.edu/web/desert.html

While this website is not a good as the first one, it is good for children who like to explore on their own. I think this website is good for grade levels 5-7, and teachers who enjoy an explorer type classroom. This website gives you multiple options in which you can click. Some of the options are about specific deserts that you can learn about through a few pictures and a large description, and others are about desert survival and the geology. In my class I would strategically place the kids in groups of 4-5 and enable them thirty minutes to surf this page and pick out what they find interesting. Then I would have the kids create a poster with the facts that they thought most important about a desert written on it. I like that this website has many options to choose from and many different deserts they can learn about. I think this website is good for teachers who want to create a community of ELL and native speaking learners where they can work together to learn. I think that collaborative work is good when you have the right resources and time. However, there are a few down sides to this website including the time to enable kids to surf and then present, and the chance that some kids might want to play the Jigsaw game, which is not exactly educational. If they spend all their time on the game they would not be learning any of the content. If the teacher wanted she could go to more of a builder set up where she tells the kids which desert they will need to find information on and then regulate them as the thirty minutes go by.

http://www.tooter4kids.com/Desert/index.htm

This website is great for kids in fourth and fifth grades, and is very visually appealing. I love that this website is really easy to work with and it kind of works like a book, you just press the next button when you are done with the page you are on. It starts with a very nice introduction and then goes on to explain the vocabulary and some fun facts about deserts. It also has a lot of pictures of the desert and it’s wildlife, which is always good for children who learn best through images. There is also a map with the placement of different deserts and some information on them. Once you start nearing the end there is a “cyberhunt”, which is a crossword puzzle using the information the kids would have learned about the desert. The website says that the child can find the answers if they do not know it by pressing on a button, but I could not get it to work. In general, I think that this website is fun and engaging to all students. However, if an ELL is struggling with reading, he/she might not enjoy this site that much. It requires the kids to read quickly and have a good understanding of the vocabulary before hand. Some limitations include the time it would take to finish going through the entire website, and the chance of the students actually retaining the information. If I were to use this website in my classroom I might just pick one page of it to have the students work with. For example, I could use the vocabulary page and have the students draw a picture of what a desert might look like from the words describing it. I really liked this website, but I just don’t know that it can be used in a classroom where time is limited, however, I think the kids would really enjoy it.

http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/habitats/desert-profile/

This national geographic site is helpful for students in the upper grade levels 7-10 because it has a lot of really dense readings that younger kids might not be able to handle. In comparison to the other sites it isn’t really that good for a teacher looking for a good lesson. I like that the website has a lot of different topics available so the students can search a lot of different things, but it would not be good for students who have research projects. The pros of this website include a detailed description of a desert and the photo gallery available. I don’t really think I would want to use this website for teaching purposes because it doesn’t go into depth on deserts. The dense material might also be difficult for ELL’s. The teacher would need to go over difficult words prior to the reading if he/she decided to use this site for their students. Unlike the other websites, this one talks about factors that may pose as a threat to the desert, which is a good quality. I like the small amount of material that it provides, but I don’t really think it is a sufficient amount for the grade level it appeals to. I think the main purpose of this site is to give readers a brief summary of what a desert is.

Evaluated by: Tori Lackey