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 ◊ English ◊
“Parapal Online” is a collection of English Exercises including Picture dictionary exercises, Letter and e-mail writing exercises, listening exercises, general English exercises, Vocabulary building exercises, Business English exercises, Cambridge style exercises as well as Children’s exercises. All the exercises run in Flash so they will no run on many mobile devices including the iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad. The exercises are not very visually attractive, but since they are more geared toward high school students or adults, the simplistic style of the activities is appropriate. It includes fill in the gap and multiple-choice exercises. There is also a discussion board and chat room where you can meet other students.
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.
If you are looking for a very large collection of on-line education games, Primary Games Arena has to be one of the largest I have ever seen. It is a compilation of hundreds of Flash based education games about Math, English, Science, Physical Education, Music, Spanish, German, French, Religion Education, ICT, History, Geography, Art and Design, Citizenship and Technology. All the games are also sorted by grade levels (based on the UK educational system) or game types. The games are not necessarily hosted by the Primary Games Arena, but they link to only kids-appropriate games. The API let game developers feed scores from their games straight onto Primary Games Arena. I strongly recommend this site if your students need to learn while playing.
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.
Today’s resource is a little treasure because it is entirely free and it contains loads of information. It is a free dictionary produced by Farlex. It is free but ad supported, so every time you search for a word, there will be some commercial links above the definitions. However, even with publicity, this site is just amazing. It lets you search any word of the English language and provide you definitions and a little bit of information about the history of the word. It is also a thesaurus and will provide you a list of synonyms, related words and antonyms. Now here is the best part… On top of each definition, there is a little American flag and a little British flag. By clicking the American flag, you get the word pronounced the way it would be pronounced in the US and by clicking the union jack, you get the word the way it would be pronounced in the UK.
Now you think the dictionary is already very amazing for a free one? Wait, there is more. It also includes a medical dictionary, a legal dictionary, a financial dictionary and an encyclopedia. If you are looking for idioms and acronyms, there is also a section for that too! Is that enough to convince you? Wait there is more!!! The free dictionary is also available in Spanish, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian, Greek and Russians.
You really have to add this one to your bookmarks.
This simple PowerPoint presentation will be very useful if you teach English and your students have difficulties choosing between the contractions or the possessive pronouns. This presentation helps the students with three troublesome pairs:
- it’s and its
- you’re and your
- who’s and whose
Substitution tests are presented to the student so he or she can better decide which one to use in a sentence. The PowerPoint can be downloaded on the computer. It doesn’t have to be watch on-line from the website.
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.
“Tip of My Tongue” is a cool project that helps students and teachers looking for a word with incomplete information to find it. If you now what it starts with, or what it ends with or you have an idea of the length of the word, but you can’t find it, this application will be very useful. Sometimes, you just have a word on the tip of your tongue. The dictionary that runs this website is not complete, but it contains enough words that you usually find what you are looking for. The project is under development, so it can only get better as time goes by.
The conjugator is a great resource for students who need to conjugate verbs in English, French and Spanish. Unfortunately, the interface for all three versions is only available in French, but it is so minimal (only a few buttons and a drop-down menu) that most users should be able to get by. Once you get on the site, all you have to do is to enter the verb you want to conjugate and select whether you want the affirmative, interrogative or negative form. If you don’t enter the infinitive or if you enter an incomplete verb or a verb that is not recognize, the conjugator will suggest the closest match.
The French version of the conjugator, “le conjugueur” will let you conjugate any verb in French including all the tenses (simple and compound) in the passive and active voice. There are also some buttons for students to enter the accented characters. Since the French language verbs are way more complex that the ones in English, this resource is very useful for Second Language Students.
The third version is for Spanish : “El conjugador”. Again, it includes buttons for accented characters. For all versions, it is possible to print the page or to export a RTF that is better suited for printouts.
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”.
