ItunesU & instaGrok

Oh my, a really nice little suggestion made to me about itunesU has opened my eyes to new discoveries. Why reinvent the wheel, when there are some awesome lesson plans, links, attachments already out there in cyber space. It's a matter of taking the time to review the information, making sure it has the content I want presented to my students.

 While surfing through the course info offered on iTunesU, I saw a great writing piece for fourth graders, incorporating nonfiction (Science) into the writing curriculum. Here a suggestion was made to add the Edmodo app called instaGrok, which is basically a search engine/topic mapping site. I plan on doing the Animal Writing project the first two weeks of school with my class. Attached is the assignment, that is taken straight from the iTunes writing for 4th graders course. Also, see the picture of story map that popped up when I typed the word "sharks" into the instaGrok search window. I like this creative writing topic and how it incorporates science.