Teacher Tips

Before Using Inside Stories

Review the site.

Take a look at the entire site. Be sure to review extra materials that are included for kids and families. Try working through one of the stories, assessing whether the story will be most useful to extend, reinforce, and make relevant topics addressed in your curriculum.

Decide:

Which stories will help your students master, emphasize, or review content they are studying?
How can you help your students gain the most from the site?
How much time do you think your students will need to complete one story and react to it?

Think about your computer situation.

Do you have access to enough computers for everyone in your class to use them at the same time? If not, you might consider:

Using an LCD projector or SmartBoard to work on a story as a whole class
Dividing your class into pairs or teams, where each member has a specific role (recorder, "driver," organizer, etc.)

Do your computers meet the system requirements for using this site? If not, consult your school’s technology specialist about the possibility of installing needed software, etc.

Plan your activity.

Select the story with which your class will interact. Do you want all of them to focus on one story, or would you prefer that some of them work on different stories? NOTE: for a quick check of the content of each story, look at the story synopses.

Check to see if we have provided any lesson plans for that story that you might use or adapt.

Review the standards chart to select the standards your lesson plan will address. In this chart, each of the stories is keyed to standards in the Maryland Voluntary State Curriculum for Science and Health Education.

Look at the Resources section to see what story-related printables, links, and suggestions you might incorporate in your lesson. These printables include the reference materials students will encounter in each story. Duplicate any printables you want to share with the students.

Be sure to consult the Story Glossaries in the Resources section for each story to determine if there are any terms that you need to introduce to your students before they begin their work.

At the conclusion of each story, students will be asked to synthesize what they have learned in the story from the narrative and the resources embedded in each. Decide if you want to provide a specific structure for their thoughts, or if there are specific questions you would like your students to answer. They will be given a screen to write their thoughts. They can print these responses or email them to anyone. Decide which route you would like them to take.

Introduce your lesson and its objectives to your class.

You may want to discuss:

The environmental health question they will investigate, and what they already know about this problem
The open-endedness of the story
Their task (In each story, they are to read and/or listen to the narrative, and read reference materials the characters encounter to get a more complete understanding of the environmental health problem the character faces. At the conclusion of the activity, the character will ask for their advice. Students then have to craft an answer based on their interpretation of the story and its reference materials. They must print or email their response before they close the interactive or shut off the computer.)
Anything else you expect from them
How they are to manage their time

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