Get Students Involved in Environmental Projects
Project Learning Tree (PLT), the environmental program of the American Forest Foundation, has awarded GreenWorks! grants to PLT schools across the country for community-based environmental projects. GreenWorks! is PLT’s service-learning program that engages PLT educators and students with the local community in “learning-by-doing” neighborhood improvement projects. Elementary through college–age students in 20 different states will design native plant gardens, construct hiking trails, start composting projects and investigate alternative sources of energy. Grants are awarded in the spring and fall of each year in the following two funding categories: $250 to $1,000 GreenWorks! grants (the majority of GreenWorks! funding will be awarded to project proposals in this category); $1,001 to $5,000 GreenWorks! grants (this funding category is designed to be extremely competitive, and as such, the number of proposals funded in this category will be limited).
Deadline: October 31, 2007 for fall cycle
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Increase Students’ Access to Fresh Vegetables
The Hidden Valley Food Products Company is awarding more than $500,000 in total grants in 2008 to elementary schools across the United States to support increased access to, and consumption of, fresh vegetables during lunch. The Love Your Veggies^TM Nationwide School Lunch Campaign was created to help schools implement the recent federally mandated local wellness policy that requires schools to develop and execute programs to improve their students’ overall health and nutrition, and in response to the overwhelming shortage of funds available for the execution of these programs.
Deadline: November 30, 2007
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Find Solutions for Helping English Language Learners
Sign up at The Big Deal Book Web site for hello!, a free monthly ELL e-newsletter that includes information about new grants, upcoming contests, the latest educational research and a wealth of information on interactive print and online resources for students, teachers, librarians, principals and others involved in the education of English language learners.
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Campaign to Improve School Foods
The Center for Science in the Public Interest is hosting the first-ever Junk-Free Schools Video Contest. The contest invites young filmmakers to make a video under three-minutes that presents the case for getting junk-food out of schools. It is part of a nationwide campaign to bring healthier foods to schools. The grand-prize winner will receive a $100 gift certificate for iTunes, and the video will be showcased on the Improve School Foods Web site.
Deadline: November 1, 2007
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Take Action to Improve the Environment
Automaker Lexus, in partnership with Scholastic, is awarding more than $1 million in total scholarships and grants to winners of the Lexus Environmental Challenge, a nationwide education program and contest about the environment that empowers teens to create a better world. Through this program, middle and high school students can participate in four initial environmental challenges about land, water, air and climate. Teams made up of 5 to 10 students and one teacher-advisor will define an issue, make a plan to address the issue, implement the plan and report on the results within an online Action Plan. To accompany their efforts, teams will be encouraged to provide visual documentation in a variety of media including digital photos, digital videos, Web pages and PowerPoint presentations. All winning teams from the initial four challenges will be invited to participate in the Final Fifth Challenge, where teams will develop a program with the potential to change the world.
Deadlines: Challenge 2 (Water)—November 5, 2007; Challenge 3 (Air)—December 5, 2007; Challenge 4 (Climate)—January 7, 2008
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Design a Public Service Announcement
The Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE) has announced the first CTE Month Public Service Announcement (PSA) Contest to celebrate and promote CTE Month during February 2008. The contest requires students to submit a video incorporating CTE Month’s logo and theme, “Discovering Skills for a Competitive Workforce,” in the PSA and highlighting the importance of CTE. Secondary and postsecondary students in CTE-related film, video and production classes are eligible to win $750 plus a complimentary copy of Apple’s Final Cut Studio 2, a professional video editing suite.
Deadline: November 15, 2007
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Recognize Accomplishments of Youth with Learning Disabilities
Nominations are open for the 2008 Smart Kids with Learning Disabilities Youth Achievement Award. This $1,000 award, which recognizes the strengths and accomplishments of young people with learning disabilities and ADHD, will be given to a student 19 or younger who has demonstrated initiative, talent and determination resulting in a notable accomplishment in any field, including art, music, science, math, athletics or community service. Honorable Mentions will also be awarded.
Deadline: January 31, 2008
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Help Striving Readers
The Passwords series from Curriculum Associates helps striving readers, including ELL/ESL students, acquire content-area vocabulary, improve performance and increase scores on standards-based science and social studies tests. Enter a random drawing to win a gift certificate redeemable for a free classroom set of Passwords (25 student books, one teacher guide and one audio CD). One winner will be drawn each month from August through October 2007. To enter, call (800) 225-0248 or visit the firm’s Web site.
Deadline: October 31, 2007
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Teach with Primary Sources
Through its Teaching Materials database, Primary Source Learning helps educators quickly find and use primary sources related to specific curriculum standards in all subjects. Teachers will find an Activity Maker, which they can use to make differentiated primary source warm-up activities for all grades and subjects. They will also find posters to introduce units for the K–12 curriculum. And they can search the materials collection to find learning experiences correlated to state standards that use the best instructional practices of Teaching for Understanding, Differentiated Instruction, and Literacy and Technology Integration. In addition, teachers will find collections of primary sources on a variety of themes and materials for students to use in computer labs. Everything on the site has been created by classroom teachers and includes teacher analysis and reflection on student learning.
Click Here to Access Free Primary Source Resources

Run a Business
From TeAchnology, this online simulation engages students in the real-life task of running a business—a Lemonade Stand. The goal is to make as much money as they can within 30 days. They will have complete control over almost every part of their business, including pricing, quality control, inventory control and purchasing supplies. As students sell their product, people will decide whether they like it and how much they like or dislike it. If students sell a good product for a good price, they will build business over time; if they overcharge for inferior products, they will be out of business sooner than they’d think.
Click Here to Access Free Simulation

Teach Nutrition and Computer Time Management
“The Incredible Adventures of the Amazing Food Detective,” a free online video game, offers 9- and 10-year-olds 20 minutes of lessons on healthy eating and exercise, and then locks them out and urges them to get moving. Printable scavenger hunts help children understand food labels, experiments allow students to calculate sugar in drinks, and other exercises promote healthy eating. Grownups can find more information on raising healthier kids too.
Click Here to Access Free Game

Simplify School–Parent Communication
With TeacherWeb’s RSS (Rich Site Summary) feed, parents can easily keep up to date with their children’s classroom Web site. New updates from the teacher’s Web site can be included in the daily news summaries parents receive through My Yahoo, My AOL, Google and other personalized Web services. Parents can automatically add this TeacherWeb® feed to their RSS reader by going to the teacher’s classroom Web site, clicking on the RSS button, and then following the simple instructions on how to add the feed.
Click Here for More Information on TeacherWeb

Get free unlimited online access to all the print content in The Big Deal Book for Educators of Struggling Students, Middle School Through High School, The Big Deal Book for Teachers of English Language Learners and The Big Deal Book of Technology for K–12 Educators. Explore the many opportunities to fund your special programs, access timely reports and articles, locate free and inexpensive resources and identify engaging interactive Web sites.

Find Humor in the Library
October 14–20 is Teen Read Week^TM, so it’s a great time to plan for reading activities. This year’s theme, “LOL @ your library,” encourages teens to visit their library to find something that will make them laugh. Here are some resources that will lead to fun reading in the classroom.
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Plus: Visit the Teen Read Week wiki sponsored by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA).
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Join a Recycling Initiative for Literacy
Education, literacy and magazine leaders are marking the sixth anniversary of Children’s Magazine Month this October by mobilizing teachers, librarians and schoolchildren worldwide to organize KinderHarvest magazine recycling projects to collect millions of magazines for new readers. The magazines recycled by schoolchildren in their classrooms and school libraries will be given to other children and families in nearby homeless and domestic violence shelters, and to food pantries for distribution inside bags of groceries. The project will grow throughout the year, culminating with a tally of the number of magazines recycled to new readers on Earth Day 2008.
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Get IN THE MIX: “Voices from Iraq”
The PBS program “Voices from Iraq” (airing October 13–20) explores what happened when teens in Baghdad met with their peers in Bloomfield, Connecticut via videoconference just before the war began. During this live face-to-face interaction, the students discussed their similarities and differences. U.S. teens learned about the Iraqi teens’ culture and daily lives, going into their homes and schools. The teens spoke about what it is like being a teen in the present day and their hopes for the future. “Iraq Unplugged” (airing October 20–27), a follow-up to “Voices from Iraq,” covers a second videoconference filmed just weeks after the Bush Administration declared in May 2003 an end to major combat in Iraq. For teaching resources, such as discussion guides, visit the In the Mix Web site.
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Using Computer-Based Testing to Measure Skills
Funded by the National Center for Education Statistics, Problem Solving in Technology-Rich Environments (TREs): A Report from the NAEP Technology-Based Assessment Project looks at two different computer-based scenarios for measuring students’ scientific skills on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), commonly known as the Nation’s Report Card. The study concludes that computer-based testing holds promise for measuring “21st-century” and higher-order thinking skills that cannot be measured easily via traditional pencil-and-paper exams. One of the study’s researchers notes, however, that the United States may well be years away from developing the infrastructure to support such testing.
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Sifting Through the Copyright Confusion
Copyright or copywrong? The Cost of Copyright Confusion for Media Literacy, a report from American University’s Center for Social Media, pinpoints how misunderstandings about copyright guidelines affect teaching.
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Visit a Virtual Museum of Memories
Long before the Smithsonian Institution opens its newest museum on African American History and Culture, slated to open in 2015, the Institution has launched a virtual version where visitors can also donate their own memories, essays or recordings to the real-world museum. Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African American Portraits is the museum’s inaugural exhibition from the collection of the National Portrait Gallery. The exhibition’s theme, African American resistance across 150 years of U.S. history, was inspired by the words of Henry Highland Garnett, abolitionist and clergyman. Share your stories or your family photos and oral traditions by adding them to the National Museum of African American History & Culture Memory Book.
Click Here to Visit Web Site

Create a Literary Map of Your City, State or Region
Literary maps have long been used to help students and readers learn about literature, writers and places. While we tend to think of such maps in connection with teaching and learning, they can serve another purpose as well: engaging readers directly in their creation. Perhaps the most recent example of this is the interactive literary map of New York City created in 2005 by readers of the New York Times. At the invitation of Randy Cohen, the New York Times’ ethicist, readers were encouraged to identify and submit their favorite literary locations. They were also encouraged to imagine where literary places might be, reading closely to locate those that might be “approximated” (for instance, Seldin’s apartment in House of Mirth) and those, like Bartleby’s office, that are “truly elusive.” Inspired by these maps, the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) is sponsoring “21st Century Literacies and The 21st Century Literary Map Project.” NCTE is inviting educators and their students to create a literary map of their specific locale, region or state, designing maps through (1) researching literature and (2) using the medium best suited to achieving the intended purpose. Visit the NCTE site for links to examples of interactive literary maps, including the New York Times map of Manhattan, along with an essay by Randy Cohen.
Click Here to Visit Literary Map Project Web Site

Plus: On the Washington, D.C. Literary Map, created by American University Professor Vivian Vasquez, visitors click links or numbered hot spots to access audio clips and collages of literary and historical images. Sites on the map include the Lincoln Memorial, Vietnam Memorial, White House, Martin Luther King Jr. Library, Georgetown University, Duke Ellington Memorial, National Zoo and Gallaudet University.
Click Here to Access Washington Literary Map