OCTOBER: Red Ribbon Week

Often taking place the last week of October, Red Ribbon week is a week long campaign that recognizes and promotes drug-free living, mainly to youth and teens. There are great resources available to parents and teachers to promote this week, here are some of those links and resources:

- National Family Partnership's Lock Your Meds official campaign about keeping prescription drugs out of the hands of youth. Find resources for that campaign here.

- Here is a list of Red Ribbon Activities including themed days like Decoration Day, Information Day, Faith Day
Wear Red Rally Day, Pledge Day, and Recognition Day.

- Red Ribbon Coalition, which also has a brief history to the Red Ribbon Campaign



- Red Ribbon printable worksheets

- I still have my t-shirt from the D.A.R.E. program...

- Get additional information from drugfree.org

- And there's the hip, modern, and interactive site (for the cool kids, but essentially quite informative): Above The Influence (the opening page takes a while to open) or ski on over to the Above The Influence main page.

Have contests:
- Language Arts: Poetry, Short Story, Write a script, write lyrics, create a book jacket for a book you're reading in class: how would one of the characters promote Red-Ribbon week?, rewrite the lyrics to a popular song
- Arts: Create a poster promoting healthy and drug-free living, perform a skit, perform a song (hip-hop, country, rock and roll, etc.), collaborate on a school mural (of course, this would take LOTS of planning), paint panels to display at school (maybe give each grade or class a canvas they can paint) or take the transcripts from the Above The Influence Ads and re-enact them.
- Physical Education or Recess: Have a free choice activity promoting that all can have fun without drugs, play with other other classes or grades and have an annual competition, obstacle courses, a drug-free run of who can run/skip/hop/jump the most
- History: Create an American History timeline about programs, laws, and people who promotes drug-free changes. Timetoast is a great interactive timeline maker.
- Math: Have students guess the measurement of a red ribbon

I'm stuck on more ideas, but when I get there, I'll post them.

September: Yabba, Dabba, Dooo!

Before they were identified in a popular song among our youth ("Google" Young Money performing Bed Rock), The Flintstones was quite a family.

It seems September 30, 2010 marks the 50th Anniversary of Hannah-Barbera's The Flintstones family.



Try watching an episode of The Flintstones and compare it to animated televisions families like The Simpsons, The Jetsons, and The Proud Family

Discuss family values.

Compare and describe the animation.

Explore characterization.

And, if you're thinking about using the 1994 The Flinstone's movie, uhm, may I suggest just viewing this clip:



Okay...that's all I have for now. Remember, Yabba-Dabbah-Dooo!

September 18: The Death of Jimi Hendrix

It is not often we think of bringing rock music into the classroom. But when I saw this article on the the death of Jimi Hendrix (Museums honor guitar legend Jimi Hendrix: Sept. 18 marks the 40th anniversary of the death of the rock 'n' roll icon), I wondered if our students ever heard of him and this guitar genius. Obviously this lesson may be better for the secondary education classroom, but I thought it would be an interesting lesson.

I came across this personification lesson plan from the Rock Roll Hall of Fame website. It is well written and gives the flexibility to differentiate the lesson. Other lesson plans are available on the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame website which can be found here.

I also found supporting lesson plan material on VH1's Music Studio website which caters to education, teachers, and music. This site also has various lesson plans that can be found here.

Who knows, when your students think Jimi Hendrix, they will think...personification.