HELEN
KELLER
Topic Page Assignment
Helen Keller
2nd grade
Who
is HELEN KELLER?
Helen Keller's life story is
amazing for people of any age to hear. Helen Keller is a valuable
person to american history and all students should be exposed to
her.
Websites
for grades k-2
Games to use with
Braille - This
site will translate names and other words from
written prose to braille. This site also has a game that has riddles
and the answer is given in braille, but you have to figure out what the
answer is.
Some fun facts about
being blind and a Braille key - This site tells about some
of the
medias that blind people use in everyday life. There is also a braile
key for letters and numbers, and a braile translator that will
translate anything that is typed.
Helen
Keller Kids Museum - This website has a
timeline of Helen's life and also includes some fun facts about her.
Websites
for grades 3-5
Questions
and Answers about the blind - This website has some
very interesting questions about blindness that were asked by children.
The questions are pretty basic and some of them are very interesting
things that would only be asked by a child.
A biography of Helen
Keller - This website tells all about Helen
Keller's life and also has an archival collection.
A
book about Helen Keller, reading level ages 9-12 - This book is a chapter book that can be
used in a second or third grade class to learn about Helen Keller.
This book can be used as a group
reading assignment or can be read by individuals as an extension
assignment.
A good list
of quotes from Helen Keller - This website offers some encouraging
and intelligent quotes from Helen Keller.
The Helen Keller Festival -
This is the official website of the Helen Keller festival. This could
just be used as a fun fact about Helen Keller or be used as an
extension activity.
Helen
Keller uses Braille to read
A
lesson plan for second or third grade
This
lesson allows students to learn what braille is and use it first hand.
This activity is most age appropriate for a second or third grade
students and intergrates technology with language arts. Students will
go to the page with questions and answers about the blind and read what
braille is and how blind people use braille. Then
students will go to the games website and write a message to a friend
and have it translated into braille, students will then write the
message in braile on paper and swap messages with their friend and
translate the letter that was wrote to them.
Quality Core Curriculum Standards
Technology
Intergration
A.
5. Topic: Basic Skills
Standard: Operates basic technology tools and aplications
Language Arts
B. 18. Topic: Reading
Standard: Reads a variety of materials for
information and for pleasure.
C. 58. Topic: Reference/Study
Standard: Uses the media center and available technology as sources of
information and pleasure.
Technology
Used
Students will
visit the questions and
answers about the blind webpage and read about braille and how
blind people use braille. Students can read more of the questions as
many of the questions would really spark their interest. Once students
have read about braille and have a good understanding of how it is used
they will move on to the next part of the activity.
Students go to the games website and
then go to the secret message link on the site. The secret message
allows the students to type in a message and see it in braille.
Students can play with this for a while decoding their onw names and
others and coming up with a braille mesage to send to a friend.
Are
you ready to use braille?
Step 1: Students
listen to the instructions for the activity. Make sure students are
aware of appropriate behaviors required to perform this activity.
Explain that this can be a very fun activity but students need to be on
their best behavior.
Step 2: Tell students a little about braille, and since this would be
used as a good follow up activity for learning about Helen Keller make
sure that you discuss Helen Keller and some of the things that the
students ahve previously learned about her and the way she communicates.
Step 3: Have students visit the questions and answers website and read
about braille and some of the other interesting facts about people who
are blind.
Step 4: Review with students before you move on to the next step and
make sure everyone has a good idea of what braille is and how it is
used.
Step 5: Have students visit the website that translates messages into
braille. First have them decode their names and a friend's name and
then have them write a message on paper in braille to a friend. Whent
he student's exchange messages have them decode it into standard
wirting.
Step 6: Have students turn in the messages that tehy decoded with their
names on it and use this material as assessment of the studnt's
learning.
Lesson activity 2
Timeline
of Helen Keller's Life
A lesson plan for 4th-5th grade.
This
lesson allows students to learn in depth about Helen Keller's life.
Students should have already read or learned about Helen Keller prior
to this lesson which will allow this to be a great review, but if
students have not previously learned about Helen Keller than this
lesson is a great introduction to Helen Keller. This lesson is most age
appropriate for 4th-5th grade students, and integrates language Arts
and Social Studies. Students will visit the Helen
Keller Kids Museum webpage and read about Helen's life from her
childhood to her career and her eventual death. Students will also
visit the biography page to make sure that they didn't miss any
important information about Helen's life.
Quality Core Curriculum Standards
Social Studies
A. 32 Topic: Information Processing
Standard: Arranges
time-related events into chronological order, using timelines when
feasible.
Language Arts
B. 16 Topic: Reading
Standard: Reads a variety
of materials for information and pleasure.
C. 58.
Topic: Reference/Study
Standard: Uses the media center and available technology as sources of
information and pleasure.
Students will
visit the Helen
Keller Kids Museum and read about Helen Keller's life. Students
should record all important events that occured in her life and the
date that the event occured. Students are to record the event in
microsoft word. Once students have read over this page they should
visit the biography
page just to ensure that they are not missing any important details
of her life.
Lets make a timeline
Step 1: Students
listen to the instructions for the activity. Make sure students are
aware of appropriate behaviors required to perform this activity.
Explain that this can be a very fun activity but students
need to be on
their best behavior.
Step 2: Students open microsoft word and also internet explorer and
visit the Helen Keller Kids Museum.
Step 3: Students read over the page and record all important occurances
of Helen Keller's life and the dates in Microsoft word.
Step 4: Once the students have gathered all the important information
from the museum website they then visit the Helen Keller biography page
and do the same.
Step 5: After pulling all of the information together, students create
a timeline with pencil and paper. The timeline should begin with
Helen's birthdate and include all important events labeled with the
year all the way up to Helen's death.
Step 6: Assessment of student learning is based on the timelines that
they create.
Reviews
1. Timeliner 5.0 - Published
by Tom Snyder productions, a Scholastic company.
This program is used to make timelines. Students
just have to choose the format of time and insert the
data. The timelines can be daily or can be as broad
as centuries. The timelines can also be as
general as 1861 or specific to the minute as 4:52
p.m., March 5, 1861. This
program is very user
friendly and
can be very fun for students to use with a Social Studies
extension. I did not find any
problems using this program and I definitely reccomend it's use in the
classroom anytime when
timelines are being used.
2.
Sucess Maker - Published by Pearson Digital Learning.
Success Maker is a program that offers a variety of
educational practice. It can be used for reading and math use. Their
are many games and lessons that students can do with
Succes Maker. The way the software works is the students go through a
lesson and perform all of
the activities in the lesson and then they do a final assessment for
the lesson. I found Success Maker
to be very user friendly and I hope that when I get into my own
classroom that I
will be able to have this program. The program has lessons appropriate
for all reading and math levels and once students
have mastered one level they get
to move up to the next. The only thing that I didn't like about the
program is that at my school the students are
required to use Success Maker for a certain amount of time each day and
this continues throughout all
elementary grades. I found that a lot of the students are burnt out
with using the program and would prefer something different.
3.
The Graph Club 2.0 - Publisher: Tom Snyder Productions, a Scholastic
company.
The Graph Club is a program that allows students to
make graphs. All that the students have to do is
choose what type of graph that they want to use and insert the data.
The program is user friendly and has a tutorial to
go along with it that students can listen to with headphones. I didn't
find any faults in the software
and would reccomend use of it with a math lesson over graphs.
Links to my other pages
My Hub Page
Cyber
Library
Kids
Page/World Cities Activity
Teacher
Reference and Resource Page