The Shape Poem tool allows students to select a shape and focus their writing on a particular topic. The tool also prompts students to brainstorm, write, and revise their poems, thus reinforcing elements of the writing process.

Tools that reinforce elements of the writing process are among the many interactive student materials easily found in the Student Materials Index on ReadWriteThink.

The Shape Poems interactive allows elementary students to choose a familiar shape, like an apple or a balloon, and write poems about it. Using the Acrostic Poems tool, students learn to compose poems in which the letters in a main topic word begin each line of the poem and all the lines of the poem relate to or describe that word. Diamante Poems is a resource for developing diamond-shaped poems that use nouns, adjectives and gerunds to describe either one central topic or two opposing topics. It also provides definitions of the different parts of speech used in the poems.

The Plot Diagram tool supports both a basic method of beginning, middle and end of a story, or a modified version, which adds rising and falling action to the structure.

Several other student resources are available on writing prose including the Flip Book, which is designed to allow users to write and illustrate tabbed flip books up to 10 pages in length, choosing from nine different page layouts. The Plot Diagram, an organizational tool focusing on a pyramid or triangle shape, is used to map the events in a story, allowing readers and writers to visualize the key features. With the Multigenre Mapper, students can create original multi-genre, multi-modal works — one drawing and three written texts — and name the genres for each section, making the tool flexible for multiple writing activities.

Literacy instruction — which includes grammar, technical writing and reading comprehension — is a target area for ReadWriteThink's content developers at The National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association. In the coming months, look for new curricular resources on a particular author, text or genre along with tools that increase student publication options, support process-based literacy activities and provide classroom-ready materials for overview, exploration and presentation. The Student Materials Index includes a complete listing of tools to support literacy education.

EconEdLink offers resources that help teach and illustrate economic concepts, including those that focus on a classic story and some classic challenges. The following examples of lessons and companion student materials work well in the training lab and in the classroom.

The Little Red Hen is a classic story for learning and reinforcing the concepts of productive resources and incentives.

A retelling of the classic story The Little Red Hen illustrates the concepts of productive resources and incentives for students in grades K-2 and 3-5. The online story provides context for the lesson, which introduces several economic elements that can be identified in the story.

Learners get advice on a classic dilemma — how to earn extra money — through the lesson I Can Be an Entrepreneur, developed for grades 3-5 and 6-8. The interactive resource, Twenty Money-Making Ideas, is intended to guide students through the decision of what might generate money for them based on their study of entrepreneurship. The National Budget Simulation lesson allows students in grades 9-12 to serve as virtual economic advisors to the president, who must increase military spending out of political necessity but who also needs to reduce spending in other programs to limit the deficit. Using the National Budget Simulation interactive tool, students can observe the impact of their budget decisions on the national budget.

EconEdLink features several of its most popular interactive materials in the Tools section of the CyberTeach area on the Web site. Look for more additions to this section as the school year unfolds. In the coming months, CyberTeach will grow to include a teacher workspace, to be called "My EconEdLink," where teachers can login to organize their content and bookmark their favorite lessons. Also planned is an online economic calendar that updates daily and will link to relevant lessons. Other new resources for teachers include the interactive Standards page, maintained by the National Council on Economic Education, which provides links to state economic standards and lessons suitable for teaching to them.

For a taste of the large-scale interactive resources that will be the main focus of this year's offerings from ARTSEDGE, visit A Dancer's Journal: Learning to Perform the Dances of Martha Graham. A multimedia exploration designed for grades 5-12, this Flash site offers a backstage look at the preparation that goes into a modern dance production by chronicling the pre-performance world of dancers in the oldest modern dance company in the world.

This interactive page from A Dancer's Journal: Learning to Perform the Dances of Martha Graham links to a multi-media exploration of the world of modern dance.

Visitors open the locker of the company's newest (fictitious) member, Jordy Kandinsky, to access her interactive journals. The journals are filled with annotated programs, notes and background material that come alive through video clips, music, photos and animation. A collaborative project of The Martha Graham Dance Company and The Kennedy Center, A Dancer's Journal launched in the spring of 2005. See the Look-Listen-Learn educator resource for more background information.

In the coming year, ARTSEDGE will release an extensive set of interactive resources in support of The Kennedy Center's Festival of China. A Musical Map exploring world rhythms, melodies and voices also is planned, as is a major exploration of Hip Hop with dance legend Rennie Harris.

Technology to support these new interactive resources will include handheld Flash applications, geocaching and Podcasting. Also look for interactive professional development modules and deep "How-To's" to help teachers and their students get the most out of these resources.

Content developers at Xpeditions leverage the rich interactive resources of National Geographic to bring students together with some of the most powerful lessons in history and nature. For example, Remembering Pearl Harbor allows visitors to relive the World War II attack through an interactive map featuring photos, firsthand accounts, and moment-by-moment narration. Associated Xpeditions materials include The Legacy of Pearl Harbor for grades 3-5, Getting Involved in War for grades 6-8, Was the United States Ready For Pearl Harbor? for grades 9-12 and The Advisory Board in Xpeditions Hall, suitable for all grade levels.

The Genetic Markers tool is one of several interactive resources in the Atlas of the Human Journey, which supports lessons on the Genographic Project. The tool helps students understand how the occasional mutations to DNA, passed on through the generations, reveal a genetic tree on which today's many diverse branches may be followed back to their common African root.

On the other hand, the Genographic Project offers an opportunity to explore the interactive Atlas of the Human Journey by tracing genetic lineage around the world and through the ages. Visitors can follow along as new evidence is gathered from across the globe — and even participate anonymously. This site engages students in the landmark, five-year study on human migration. Among the associated Xpeditions materials for students in grades 9-12 are: Genographic: Mapping the Human Journey, Genographic: Permanent Markers, Connecting the Dots: Genographic's Markers in Context and Genographic's Legacy: Preservation and Projections.

Forces of Nature, which won the prestigious People's Voice Award in 2004, brings students face-to-face with tornadoes, volcanoes, earthquakes and hurricanes. This resource also allows them to trigger interactive disasters, read case studies and learn the science behind the fury. Associated Xpeditions materials for this resource include lesson plans for students in grades 6-8 and 9-12, along with additional activities suitable for families, educators and other audiences.

Coming soon are a major project on the Chesapeake Bay that will focus both on the history and current environmental issues; lessons and activities for the new King Tut exhibit; educational materials for the March of the Penguins feature film; and additional student activities.

For a timely out-of-this-world activity for your next training, consider two interactive tools from Illuminations that can be used in tandem to explore the following question: Relative to the Earth, what does the path of Mars look like? The first of these two applets, Mars Earth Orbit — Model, allows students to investigate a simplified model of the position of Mars relative to the Earth. The second, Mars Earth Orbit — Actual, uses the actual distances and relationships; the result is a slightly different shape. A lesson based on these two applets is under development and will be available later this fall.

The Mars Earth Orbit tools help students understand the position of Mars relative to Earth.

Students can create dynamic drawings on isometric dot paper using the Isometric Drawing Tool, which allows the user to draw figures using edges, faces, or cubes and to shift, rotate, color, decompose and view in two or three dimensions. With Geometric Solids, they can explore various geometric solids and their properties by manipulating and coloring each shape, then examine the number of faces, edges and vertices. This tool provides an introduction to polyhedra for younger students, while allowing for advanced explorations by older students.

Two interactive resources help students understand the concept of equality in a very concrete way. The Pan Balance — Numbers tool helps students understand that equality is a relationship, not an operation. The Pan Balance — Expressions tool can be used to develop a deeper understanding of equality as a relationship, and also can be used to verify complex number sentences.

Visit the Tools Index for more student interactive resources and keep an eye out for new additions to the collection, many of which will be created using QuickTime, Shockwave and Flash. Other plans for the coming year, according to The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, include an updated look and feel to the Illuminations Web site.

Power Up! tasks students with purchasing power plants for their own cities — on a budget, of course.

Science NetLinks has developed a pair of student resources that provide an opportunity for critical thinking about energy and power — and their costs. Power Play is an interactive activity that helps students in grades 6-8 learn about harnessing energy from different power sources and is an effective resource for teaching physics. Power Up! for grades 3-5 challenges students to think about the positive and negative consequences of various types of power as they work to purchase power plants for their own virtual cities within a specific monetary budget. In the process, they learn how much power the plant provides, how much it costs and its potential effect on the environment.

Another student resource, Make a Mission, is designed to foster an understanding of the factors involved when NASA designs a real mission to space, including space and cost constraints. Students build a virtual spacecraft in order to explore the planet Mercury — just as the NASA team did when it planned and built the MESSENGER spacecraft. This activity, which offers varying levels of difficulty, is intended to help students in grades 6-8 develop critical-thinking skills and learn how those who engage in design and technology use scientific knowledge to solve practical problems. Additional information, including related lessons, is available for all Science NetLinks interactive resources. For a complete listing, visit the Tools Index.

New content development will focus on energy, particularly fuel resources and the chemistry of fuel. To strengthen the site's environmental literacy resources, The American Association for the Advancement of Science plans to introduce new materials that help teach about oceans, ecosystems, marshes and storm tracking. Additions to the current collection of lessons and resources in the Skin Deep Project for students in the 6-8 and 9-12 grade bands also are scheduled.

On the Road with Marco Polo inspires a great training activity from EDSITEment that illustrates the cross-curricular and interactive nature of MarcoPolo resources. This curriculum unit for grades 3-5 invites students to become Marco Polo adventurers who record their "travels" using the Interactive Map of Marco Polo's journey.

The Interactive Alphabet tools help students see the connection between ancient written language and today's English alphabet.

Whether young students are learning to write for the first time or reviewing these skills, the Alphabet Is Historic unit for grades K-2 will help to engage them with an introduction to the history of the English alphabet, tracking its origins from the letters invented by the Phoenicians to those we use today. Three Interactive Alphabets support the unit: How the Greek and Roman Alphabets Evolved, the Phoenician Alphabet Sound-Out tool and the Greek Alphabet Sound-Out tool.

For middle schoolers, The Emergence and Evolution of the Cuneiform Writing System in Ancient Mesopotamia helps explain the parallel development and increasing complexity of writing and civilization in the Tigris and Euphrates valleys of ancient Mesopotamia — the region that is now Iraq. An Interactive Timeline and Map activity supports the lesson with background information on the history of the region.

Other currently available interactive resources will accompany lessons still in development, including the following materials on the Persian Wars for grades 9-12: an Interactive Map, a Virtual Bridge-Building activity and a Virtual Battle Formations tool. EDSITEment also is working on a series of American History lesson plans and student activities sponsored by the "We the People" project of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Student tools including interactive maps, text and image annotation tools, and a student portfolio are in development. A Student Launch Pad will house student exercises on EDSITEment lessons, making it easier for teachers to assign the online student component of the lesson.

Share the Wealth . . . and Your Feedback!

Let us know how you have used any one — or a combination — of MarcoPolo resources in your training sessions and the reaction of your trainees. We will publish your responses in an upcoming issue of the Trainer MarcoGram.

The Trainer MarcoGram is a quarterly newsletter that provides MarcoPolo Trainers with tips, activities, news and links to online resources. Permission is granted to reprint and distribute the Trainer MarcoGram for use in a training session or classroom, or on Web sites devoted to the field of education or professional development. All Web addresses and links must be maintained in their original form as they appear in the published version.

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