All About Our City: Las Cruces

With this post, I think I pretty much let the cat out of the bag on the fact that I live in Las Cruces, New Mexico. I've lived here since 2000, and love this great little city in southern New Mexico. So for my students, this means that you'll spend some time during the school year learning about Las Cruces and the Mesilla Valley. We will study Las Cruces and the Mesilla Valley as it is now, and the history of the area.

When studying Las Cruces and the area, you'll need to first focus on some facts. Let's start with demographic information. What I mean by demographic information is data about certain portions of the population. In kid words, I mean that we need to find facts about people living in Las Cruces (like how much money they make on average, or what percentage finished college, etc.). Use the following websites to find some good demographic data about Las Cruces:

Sites with demographic facts about Las Cruces:

• Las Cruces Real Estate Guide
• 2010 Census Information
• Las Cruces Convention and Visitors Bureau
• Las Cruces areaconnect
• Wikipedia

Hopefully you notice right from the start that the data you find one each of these sites isn't the same. Why might this be? It's because some of the data is older, and some of it is just estimations while others are based on certain studies. Look for the numbers to be close to know that they're correct.

Next up, let's learn about the history of the Mesilla Valley. Use the following websites to find some good historical facts about the area:

Sites with historical information about Las Cruces and the Mesilla Valley:

• Las Cruces Convention and Visitors Bureau
• Special Documentary on Las Cruces made by CLCTV.com
• Doña Ana County Historical Society
• Las Cruces History at City-Data.com
• History of Old Mesilla
• Las Cruces Convention and Visitors Bureau (history of Mesilla)

Finally, we're going to use this information to create a profile of the area. I made a video about eight years ago that showed historical photos of the area alongside newer photos of the area. Using the Rio Grande Historical Collections, we are going to find photos that we can match to their current locations. I will make a trip to take photos of what these areas look like now, and we will make an updated version of this video, which I will then post to this blog (how fun!). 

Using your information, as well as some photos from the collections linked to above, you have a few options:

1. Head over to Prezi, and create a 15+ slide presentation about the area. 

2. Create a 15+ slide Animoto about the area.

3. Print the information, and make a poster board with at least 10 facts and 5 photos.

4. Write an 8+ paragraph research paper synthesizing your findings. 

Finally, we are going to create a large reproduction of a map of Las Cruces and Mesilla, and place some major landmarks on it. These landmarks include: our school, city hall, NMSU, the district, magistrate, and county court houses, Mesilla Plaza (and in Mesilla Plaza, La Posta, Fountain Theater, abnd San Albino Basilica), downtown, five restaurants, five favorite places of entertainment, and ten major roads).

We are going to use Google Maps, and will project this map of Las Cruces on the board for everyone to see. 

PicMonkey: Awesome Image Collage Tool

I was reading through one of my favorite blogs, Free Technology for Teachers, this morning, and came across a post about an awesome new image collage website called PicMonkey. I used it to make the collage of Mayan culture pictures at the bottom of this post, and it took all of two minutes, including the time to go find the images. This is a great tool that I intend on utilizing to assist students in either presenting, or organizing photos for printing.

Prezi For Presentations: Goodbye PowerPoint!

PowerPoint has been around since I was a kid. I remember doing my first PowerPoint presentation when I was in 6th grade, way back in 1992. It wasn't a very user friendly experience, but it was definitely groundbreaking. Sadly, it's not as exciting anymore, or as the kids might say, it's "played out" (do kids still say that?)

Now my students use Prezi. I have signed up for an educator account, and my students build their Prezi's under my account name. It's a fantastic update to the PowerPoint model. As they build slides, they are given a linear view to the side, but they can manipulate the space that the slides are in, making them bigger, smaller, turning them at weird angles. As the slideshow progresses, it zooms and flips around. It can be a little unnerving if you have problems with fast moving things, but students just love it.

In my class, students use Prezi to make presentations based on books and characters in reading class, present research in social studies, and to present concepts in both math and science. It's a great tool, it's easy to teach, and the students love it. Try it out!

I've included a Prezi here for you to see. This one was made by my son this past year while he was in 4th grade. He did this without me showing him anything but the absolute basics:

Westward Expansion of the United States Tech Tools

Every year, we do a unit on the Westward Expansion of the United States in the mid 1800s. There are two technology based activities that go with this unit that are always rated the highest by students. I also have a group/individual activity that student must complete as part of this unit. You can access that as a pdf document HERE. These two activities are playing Oregon Trail (yes, the original version) and watching The Donner Party documentary made by PBS awhile back. I have attached links to both here:

To play Oregon Trail online, follow the link, and make sure you've loaded up disc one on the site. It's an exact emulation of the original version that was played on Apple IIe computers way back in the 80s.
Play Oregon Trail 

Next up is The Donner Party documentary, an American Experience documentary from PBS, which you can access HERE or by playing the clip below.

 

Watch The Donner Party on PBS. See more from American Experience.

Kobe Bryant Teaches Data Collection and Analysis

I like to teach my students in as many different ways as possible while still getting through the message and the learning that needs to get through. In 5th grade here in the state of New Mexico, we teach data analysis and probability (this is also true of those of you in the upper elementary grades who are already on the Common Core or will be going to them soon). This activity is very simple, yet very effective, and will be especially fun for the sports fans in your class (and you have some).

When we start getting into discussions about data, it's important for students to know when to use the appropriate graphs (See How Do I Choose Which Type of Graph To Use?), and move on to data collection and finally to analysis of the collected data. Some of the mainstay data collection activities include measuring height of everyone in the classroom, asking everyone what their favorite color, food, animal, etc. is, and on and on and on. There are an infinite amount of possibilities.

So along those lines, when discussing growth over time, discrete events, comparing quantitative or qualitative data, it's important for students to know why they're choosing the graph they're choosing, and what they're graphing.

I have students watch the following video, which shows Kobe Bryant scoring 81 points on January 22, 2006. This video has been edited down to show only Kobe's scoring plays. I have students make a chart for the recording of raw data that divides their paper into minutes (starting at 12 and going down to 0), and they do this four times, once for each quarter. What they do is put a tally mark for each point scored, and at what point in the quarter that point was scored. Needless to say I have to do some pausing to make sure that everyone stays with the action.

When they're done, I ask students to analyze this data, and make a graph showing Kobe's point progression over the course of the game. This is a great opportunity for students to create line graphs, and build that graph up to the eventual 81 points. Many students want to start their graph back from zero at the end of each quarter, which is why I also ask students to analyze the data in at least one other way. I've had students come up with points per quarter, some say that he scored x amount of points before a certain time each quarter, and on and on. This simple activity gives students a chance to do some data analysis and collection of their own, and only takes about 25 minutes to complete.

So here's the video. I also have a simple data collection sheet you are free to use or modify. You can download that HERE: