Tabs Scissors & Tab Glue

Tab Scissors and Tab Glue are two Chrome extensions that will make your life a lot easier when you find are toggling between two different tabs. Tab Scissors works by splitting your Chrome browser into two perfectly sized windows at the selected tab. Tab glue will join the tabs together again. You can do the same thing by dragging tabs apart and resizing them, but this method is tedious and can be frustrating. Tab Scissors and Tab Glue make this task so much easier.

Applications for Education
Tab Scissors is useful when grading assignments. You can have the assignment open in one window and your grade book open in another. Students will find it useful when they are doing things like reading and answering questions or researching and taking notes. Tab Scissors and Tab Glue are almost as good as having dual monitors.

Halloween Resources for Students of All Ages

Teachers probably don't need a reminder, but Halloween is just around the corner. Today I'm going to share some resources that are Halloween-themed and can be used with students across grade levels.

• The Halloween Collection by PBS Learning- Links to a variety of Halloween-themed lesson plans for students of all ages. Make sure you don't miss the video of the flesh-eating beetles!
• TeachersFirst- Over 3 dozen resources that can be sorted by grade to find just the right activity for your students. Check out the Build a Skeleton activity.
• 7 Fun Halloween Lesson Plans for Grades 9-12- Fun and engaging lessons for older students to flex their brains.
• Science Magic Tricks- This site is geared toward older students and there are definitely some scary tricks to try out!
• History of Halloween- Information from the History Channel about the history behind this spooky day.
• Coding with Monsters- Who doesn't love to code? When it is involves monsters it is even better!
• 31 Days of Halloween STEM activities- Engineering, edible science, chemistry, and slime! Kids of all ages will love making glow in the dark slime! 

Current Events Sites for Students

CNN Student News, now called CNN 10, is one of the most popular sites for student news and current events, but there are many other sites out there that are worth taking a look at. Here are some of the ones that I have used over the last couple of years.

• KidsPost- This is associated with the Washington Post. This site focuses on important events, but has plenty of fun and entertaining articles as well. 
• PBS NewsHour Extra- News site for students in grades 7-12. This site also includes a searchable database of articles based on topic as well as lesson plans for teachers. 
• National Geographic News- This site is not designed specifically for students, but it is packed with interesting articles that focus on current events around the world. 
• TweenTribune- This site is associated with the Smithsonian and has articles that are lexile leveled for students in kindergarten through 12th grade. 
• CBBC Newsround- This is a good site for news and fun facts for students. It includes stories, pictures, and videos.

Applications for Education

Instead of having all students read and summarize the same current event, why not provide students with a list of places to find current events and have them select articles that interest them? You could link these sites on your classroom website or in Google Classroom to make it easy for students to access them.