The students are going to have their own chance to participate in a continuous story. One student starts the story and is given a certain amount of time for telling it. Another student will continue the story and each student will have a chance to add to it. The teacher will use ePals and submit their idea to find another classroom to collaborate together in the story. The students will learn about each other's cultures and lives through the storytelling.

It’s easy to take today’s ubiquitous colored crayons for granted, but they were the result of one individual’s innovation. Biebow introduces Edwin Binney—a mustachioed man and head of a carbon black factory—who wished to make color-pigmented wax crayons that reflected the world outside. The resource includes a lesson plan/book card, a design challenge, and copy of a design thinking journal that provide guidance on using the book to inspire students' curiosity for design thinking. Maker Challenge: Think about the school/community/world in which you live and identify a problem that could be solved with a new invention.

A document is included in the resources folder that lists the complete standards-alignment for this book activity.

Wordwall is a free resource for teachers to create interactive and printable activities. These can be played on any web-enabled device. Students can play individually or with each other.

Create Your Own Life Cycle invites students to watch an informational Bill Nye video regarding life cycles, and then create their own life cycle from provided pictures by utilizing the Copy and Paste functions in Google Slides or PowerPoint.

Students learn about their home state by creating it using Mr. Nussbaum’s Map Builder 2. This site is great for creating just about any land map imaginable!

Thomas Edison is a famous inventor. His work with the telegraph and telephone led him to invent the phonograph, which recorded sound as indentations on a sheet of paraffin-coated paper. Students can listen to his first recordings at the NPS (National Park Services) archives. Students will learn how to create their own recordings at the Online Voice Recorder.

MyStoryBook is a user-friendly website that allows students to create their own stories. Tools are provided to help design and create stories. Once completed they can be saved.

Padlet is a great online engaging and effective tool for student discussion and content submission. Students will post images of books under the correct text set, write book reviews, and add new text sets as needed. Students can also comment on other students' posts.

Using Photopeach, students will create a digital slideshow that showcases their learning. Photopeach is an application where in just minutes the students can create a rich slideshow. Photopeach supports background music, captions, and comments so students can elaborate on their story further.

Lucidchart is a visual platform for creating flowcharts and graphic organizers in real-time. Students under the guidance of teachers can use the free version.

A Google Slide Deck introduction to the MITECS competency Creative Communicator - Students communicate clearly and express themselves creatively for a variety of purposes using the platforms, tools, styles, formats and digital media appropriate to their goals.

Example: In ninth grade English classes, the students studied the elements of spoken word, a form of poetry, to addresses community or society issues. In teams, they watched several videos of examples as a form of author study. After researching their issue of choice, students composed their spoken word poetry in Google Docs. Their teams conducted two writer’s critique for each poem: the first was a live in-person discussion and the second was through using the Comment feature in Google Docs. Students presented their Spoken Word at a live event at a local cafe. This was recorded and posted on the classroom Youtube Channel. Students posted comments on the recordings to discuss the issues using prompts that supported positive and constructive dialog.

Questions for Reflection:
- How do the MITECS compliment core content?
- How might you and your colleagues develop cross-curricular experiences to support the MITECS?
- Which of the competencies are you most familiar with?
- Which competency is an area of growth for you, as an educator?

Creating a story is not an easy task. What should I write about? Who will the characters be in my story? What will happen? These are all questions that every author needs to answer before their story can take shape. Storybird is an online community that provides original artwork to inspire students. The artwork sparks their imagination and supports story creation. Collaboration can take place when students invite others to work on their story with them.

Students will be directed to an informational article and/or video on different content areas & will be asked to use a note-taking chart to give credit for the author’s work & to restate in their own words.

Students will begin to learn how to do basic research using Michigan eLibrary's World Book's Early World of Learning. This basic encyclopedia is meant for non-readers as the text is very basic and the site will read everything aloud for those who cannot read yet or prefer to listen. Students will learn about creepy crawlies and where they live, eat and other interesting facts about them.

A curated list articles, lesson plans, videos, and other tools for classroom use. (3)

First graders whether at home or school will be online using the Internet and need to know the basic rules of staying safe. ABYCA has a very good age appropriate video to share with young students on five rules to stay safe. There is even a quiz at the end to test their knowledge after viewing the video.

In 5th grade, students can begin researching and interviewing others on topics for a weekly or monthly newsletter for the school. The students will learn interviewing techniques as well as become better writers.

Dance Mat Typing teaches kids to touch-type using the home-row method. This is a free online game that is a great introduction to keyboarding with high engagement.

Coding with Dash is so much fun! Using the Blockly app, students will be able to utilize block coding to plan, create, and execute a dance for Dash. This task card can be used with grades 3-5.

Students will use knowledge of coding to code through various holiday programs from Code.org and Google.