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Rayna Kinoshita
First Grade Teacher

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Recent Posts by Rayna

Sun, Nov 04, 2012 3:12 PM in Animals Characteristics and Functions

Hi Donnalyn - The UH termite project is free. You can even arrange it to have them come to you classroom and setup the termite jar. They are very good at giving you supplies and resources appropriate for students in each grade level. For example, they provided me with pre-cut construction paper and brads to put together mini-books to help students remember the different types of termites and th...

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Tue, Oct 30, 2012 4:19 PM in Animals Characteristics and Functions

I also have a hard time trying to find lessons teaching the different animal characteristics in functions to my first graders as well. If you live in Hawaii, I really enjoy having the University of Hawaii CTAHR department come and talk to my students about termites. They do an excellent job of going over all the different body parts of termites and what their functions are and how they contribut...

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Wed, Oct 03, 2012 5:19 PM in What's Your Favorite Scipack Geared to Lower Elementary Students?

Hi Jill, My favorite SciPack so far is the Coral Reefs one because it applies to a lot of the Hawaii Content Performance Standards for life and environmental science for first grade. I will definitely use what I learned from it to teach my students about the different structures sea animals and plants have that help them survive in their environment, physical characteristics that help them liv...

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Reviews
Recent Reviews by Rayna

Organisms: Grades K-4

Sun, Nov 04, 2012 4:07 PM
Good Teaching Resource, Broad Topic

The Organisms: Grades K-4 SciGuide is a good resource to help teachers familiarize themselves with the different types of animal and plant species living in various environments. It provides a wealth of external websites, interactives, and lesson plans to help teachers make learning more enjoyable for their students. The SciGuide contains 3 different themes: Community, Ecosystems, and Environment. These themes help the teacher navigate the SciGuide easily because these themes are further broken down into more specific topics. Since the SciGuide topic is very broad, it does not go in-depth with the various organisms that exist in the world. It touches upon some organisms, but not all. For example, it has resources on pilot whales, humpback whales, cockatoos, butterflies, frogs, leatherback sea turtles, fungi, emperor penguins, and earthworms. Another aspect of the SciGuide that made it a bit challenging to get the information I was looking for was that a lot of the links I clicked on led me to websites that contained more links to other websites.

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