Story Jumper is a website where teachers, parents or even children can publish their own children’s book. The process is simple, fast and fun. If your students have a hard time creating a story, they can use the Story Starter, a tool that will help them write a story in just seven steps. The site comes with many drawings and photos that students can use to illustrate their story. Once the story is all complete, you can keep it for yourself or you can share it online for free with your friends, family or even the whole world. If you prefer you can order a hardback book (starting at around $25). Students will really enjoy the creative process of writing their own book and Story Jumper makes the creative process so easy. In addition to the clipart library included, you can also upload your own photos and drawings as background scenes. There is even a Classroom edition where the teacher can create a class ID make it easier to manage with a large group of students.
Archive for the Category ◊ Literacy ◊
Are your students bored with word processors designed for businesses such as Microsoft Word or Corel WordPerfect? PrimaryPad is a web-based word processor designed for UK primary schools that allows students and teachers to work together in real-time. The best thing about this site is the fact that there is no sign-up required. All your students need to do is to press on the big green button and start typing. The features are very limited compared to a full word processor application and include text formatting such as bold, underline, italics and strikethrough as well as bullets and indent. That way, students can really concentrate on writing rather than formatting. Text is not locked-in to this website. Students can export their work in popular format such as Word, PDF, HTML and Open Document. Now the best part about this word processor is the collaboration tools. A student can invite other students to join by providing them with a URL or an <iframe> tag. When they join, each student has a colour assigned to their text. As they type, you can see which student has written each part of the text because it is all in different colour. It is perfect for a teacher who wants to evaluate collaborative work and know what part was done by each student. Finally, there is a time slider to go back in time and see changes that occurred on the document. I strongly recommend this tool for any teacher doing collaborative writing with his or her students.
Is your class excited about the Winter Olympic Games approaching? If you are mathematics, science or physical education teacher, you might want to explain the physics behind all the sports presented at the Winter Olympic Games. NBC has created a video series entitled “Science of the Olympic Winter Games” and Lessonopoly has created student activities and lesson plans to support that video series. By completing these activities with your students, they will learn about friction, movement, momentum, center of gravity, chemistry of material and many more. The activities are aimed at students grade 6 to 9. Some of the subjects include : Aerial Skiing, Slapshot Physics, Cross-Country Skiing, Competition Suits, The Science of Skis, The Science of Skates, Science of Friction in Curling and many more. What a great way to get athletic students more interested in science.
The “Shakespeare Insult Generator” by “Playing With Plays” is a very fun way to help your student discover Shakespearian English. The concept is very simple, you download a PDF document which contain three columns. All you have to do to create an insult is to choose one word from each of the three columns and here you go. It is a much better tool than using modern foul language! All the “instructions” are provided on the “Playing With Plays” website.
Here is a great use of a Wiki for students and teachers: a compilation of videos about grammar. The concept is really simple : contributors to the wiki add embeds of videos from YouTube about grammar concepts. Videos currently included on the wiki include the passive voice, negative forms of “must” and “have to”, prepositions of place (at, on, in), who vs. whom, I vs. me, which vs. that, personal pronouns and many more. When visiting the wiki, you can either take advantage of this great collection of resources for teachers, or you can contribute by adding your own resources (videos from YouTube).
Many classics of literature are now available as free eBooks. Open Culture is compiling a list of great works of fiction, non-fiction and poetry that are available as eBooks for free. The eBooks are not hosted by Open Culture, however, for each book, they are links to numerous eBooks providers including Google Mobile Books, Project Gutenberg, Stanza, Feedbooks and Kindle. Most book can therefore be read on your Kindle, PC, Kindle and more. It is a great way to save money at your school by getting the free eBooks rather than paying for the paper version.
“10 Words You Need to Stop Misspelling” is a great resource to put on the wall in your classroom. It includes ten words that are commonly misspelled by students (and adults too!) It is presented in the form of signs that are very cartoony. Each word is a separate picture file. It includes “loose vs. lose”, “weird”, “definitely”, “a lot” and many more. On a side note, you may want to leave out the one about the word “definitely” or modify it before you put it in your classroom.
If you are teaching poetry, “Poets.org” will be an amazing resource for you. It includes many popular poems that could be used in the classroom with the text and sometimes the audio version. There are also list of poems to Memorize, Perform, or Recite, poems to teach imagery, poems to teach forms and traditions, poems to teach the lyrics, poems to teach narrative, poems to teach irony and poems to teach Social, Historical & Cultural Context. The site also includes Curriculum Units & Lesson Plans, Essays on Teaching, Tips for Teaching and a Resource Center. If you want to discuss best practices with fellow teachers, there is also a discussion forum.
Grammar Gorillas is a fun activity for students to learn parts of speech. The student is presented with a sentence and two words are clickable. The student has to click one of the word bas on the part of speech. If the student clicks on the right word, a banana is given to the gorilla. The activity is available for beginners and for advance students.
“Free Rice” is a great website to help your students learn vocabulary and at the same time make a difference in the World to help end hunger. This is how it works. Students answer vocabulary questions and for each answer they get right, the sponsors of the website will donate 10 grains of rice through the UN World Food Program. Ten grains of rice may seem like a little amount, but since many students and many people are all playing at the same time, millions of people are getting fed through this program. Your students will learn new words and become better readers and writers while contributing to our society. So next time, instead of playing arcade games in the computer room at lunchtime, they can train their brain with “Free Rice”.
Funny site for kids to find the correct rhyme and then have their poem read out. On the first screen the situation is explained: The mayor is holding a contest to find out who is best rhymer in town. Is it you?
Firstly, the students have to choose their time –pretty challenging!- then the style: ode, beat, lyric,rap; Name of the band and they… go! Once they have completed their poem with the correct words they can have their poem read out.
Graphics are simple and there’s no music for the poems but it’s good practising for kids learning to read and spell in order to associate words, sounds and spelling by means of rhymes.
The aim of this website is to provide simple, fun, competitive games that help children learn and gain confidence with literacy skills and knowledge. The main focus is on helping children gain confidence and mastery of basic educational skills. The most attractive idea is that children can learn while playing fun games against other children from all over the world and becoming world champions!
It’s a really entertaining site for kids that can choose from different levels of difficulty to start spelling words out. It’s fun and enjoyable. Children would be entertained while learning and mastering one of the most difficult skils in the English language.
This resource is a little treasure for all teachers and their students! The visual dictionary is now available on-line and is entirely free! It is not an imitation here. It is the real one published by Merriam-Webster and that is also available on paper and on CD-ROM. I already own the version on CD-ROM of this dictionary and I find it very difficult to always have to reinstall it when I reformat my computer or when I switch computer. Now, all I have to do is to bookmark the visual dictionary and it is available from any computer.
This is a very useful tool for students, especially those who better understand when looking at a picture. The dictionary is also useful when we can think mentally of an object, but we have no idea how to call it. As it is the case for the CD-ROM version, the dictionary is divided in 15 major themes such as plant kingdom, animal kingdom, house, food, science, arts, etc. The dictionary also include the audio version of each word, which is very useful for students who don’t have English as their first language. I hope you will add a shortcut to this site on your computer desktop on in your web browser.
E-Pals is a great way to foster literacy, language and critical thinking skills in a fun and safe environment. It is a network to match classrooms around the world for students to have penpals. It is a great tool for classroom-to-classroom for project sharing. Educators around the world can also connect using that service. When searching a classroom, it is possible to enter criteria such as city, province, country, age group, language and special categories (such as preschool, gifted, special education, undergrad, etc). Using that free service, it is possible to connect with over 7 million students and teachers from 191 countries in a safe online environment.
Dr. Janice Skowron is an educational consultant specializing in differentiated instruction and reading and writing development. She has her own website to advertise her services and workshops. She also provides free resources on the web available as word files about “Literacy development”. If you are interested in increasing literacy in your classroom, there is information on vocabulary development and reading comprehension strategies.
There are also rubrics to help you with the assessment of informational essays, journal writing and story writing. Although Dr. Skowron is located in Illinois, the rubrics follow the four levels used in Ontario, so they may be used easily by Canadian or American teachers. The following documents are also available: How and Why Graphic Organizer, Brain Chain Organizer, Read Reflect Connect, Quick Write Organizer, Understanding Connecting Explaining. All the documents are in Microsoft Word format, so they may be modified to better suit your needs. On her website, she also advertises her book including: “Differentiated Instruction: Guided and Independent Learning for All Students” and “Understanding Stories”.
