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Come to the Philadelphia Zoo this summer for FREE. The intent is to have teachers visit then plan to bring their students on a field trip later in the year. The Philadelphia Zoo is the nations first zoo and has made many improvements of the past several years.

In addition, their education department has a summer institute for teachers as described in this link.

Begin your trip with the Discovery video “Beyond the Bars: Zoos and Zoo Animals (1987)”. There are blackline masters, a teacher’s guide and a quiz you can use with your class too!

This site is full of logic games for many age levels. At this time of the school year, you may need a time filler at the end of class as students finish projects. You can even put this up on your IWB and have groups of students try their hand at solving the puzzles contained within the pages. Caution, their are puzzles with NO directions. Part of the puzzle is trying to figure out the puzzle! Be patient, as the flash loads very slowly. Enjoy...

1. Casual Game Play #1 -
   
2. Casual Game Play #2 - make sure to try the island/volcano game
3. Casual Game Play #3 - click and drag
4. Casual Game Play #4 - ball physics

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Searching for information can be cumbersome if you don't have a plan. Random searching can produce a lucky find, but most of the time you need a plan for what keywords you will use and know a little about your subject. For example if you are searching for the text of Abraham Lincoln's speeches, using "Lincoln" in the search box will result in over 151 million hits. But if you narrow your search to Lincoln's speeches +text you may get around 65,000 hits. Well either way it is too many to look through in one day!

Here is a great resource for searching.

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This is a re-post from Tim Childers' blog; Beyond the Bell. You can create a quick way to take attendance on an Excel spreadsheet that can be used in your classroom. Students check themselves IN. For a complete step-by-step series of instructions, visit Tim's blog.