Monday, August 22, 2011

Planet Orange

Planet Orange is a robust interactive site from ING investing company that teaches kids about money.  After a quick free registration, you can guide kids to complete missions on 4 different "continents" in order to earn  "OBucks." Because you have registered, you can save your progress within a group session and return to continue the activities. The site is fun, simple, and practical, and besides all of that, I really like orange.

Planet Orange offers highly visual stopping points and audio narration.

What could be more practical and real-world than teaching kids to budget?
Language Lens:
-The site would align well with math and social studies units around money and economics (perhaps those economics standards that teachers never have the time to really get to?) and help kids develop world knowledge.
-The categorical and sequential nature of the missions provides much opportunity to develop semantic and organizational skills, and causality and conditional forms could be emphasized throughout each activity.
-As an extension, you could devise missions of your own around the school to earn further Obucks and practice communication skills in a fun context.

Thank you to Free Tech for Teachers for featuring this site.

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