Storybook Web

What it is: Storybook Web is “based on popular children’s stories by authors Scoular Anderson, Debi Gliori, Mairi Hedderwick and Frank Rodgers.”  There are a number of fun activities on this site including the ability to listen to the author’s reading excerpts from their stories and answering questions about how they came up with ideas for writing.  Students can choose from one of eight stories, each story has a related game, word bank activity, and videos/audio for reading the story and interacting with the author.

How to integrate Storybook Web into your curriculum: Storybook Web is a fun way for students to interact with stories, making connections to the authors of the stories and the themes that they are reading about.  This site helps students think like an author.  It gives them an inside look at how authors think about writing.  Use this site as an introduction to a writing activity.  Students can watch the author videos and get an inside look at the process that a writer goes through.  This can be done using a projector connected computer or interactive whiteboard.  Storybook Web would also make a nice addition to a writing center on classroom computers.  When I taught second grade, I set up an “editing and publishing” center on my classroom computers.  Here I gave students access to an online dictionary, thesaurus, word processor/publishing program, and Read Write ThinkStorybook Web would be an excellent addition to a writing center.  Students can go to be inspired, encouraged in the writing process, and given a place to practice their own writing.  I like the word bank on Storybook Web, word choice is hard for beginning writers.  By interacting with the word bank activity on Storybook Web, students will begin to think about their own word choice.  You may want students to go through their own writing and pick out words that they would add to their word bank.  I have found that activities like this make students think about the words they are using.  Often, students will self-edit and find richer vocabulary to use in their writing.

Tips: This is an easy website for emergent readers and writers to navigate.  Students can choose to have the site narrated for them or they can turn the audio off and read on their own.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Storybook Web in your classroom!

MeeGenius

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What it is: MeeGenius is an outstanding site I just learned about from @NMHS_Principal on Twitter.   MeeGenius is an online library of picture books that kids can read independently or as a read along.  Books can be personalized with students names, just answer a few quick questions and the book is rewritten for you.  Each book comes with audio playback and word highlighting, perfect for beginning or struggling readers to read along.   

How to integrate MeeGenius into the classroom: MeeGenius is a nice web library of picture books that can digitally expand your classroom library.  Students will love the way they can personalize books using themselves and friends as characters in the book.  Personalized books can be saved and shared with friends.  Set up MeeGenius on classroom computers as a listening and reading center.  Students can practice their reading, vocabulary, and fluency.

Begin the school year by making personalized books that contain your students names in them.  Read them throughout the first week as a class on the interactive whiteboard or projector connected computer.

Older students can use MeeGenius, too!  If you have students who are learning a foreign language, have them listen to or read a story and translate it into the language they are learning.

Tips: MeeGenius is also available as an app for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using MeeGenius in your classroom.

Math Doesn’t Suck

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What it is: Danica McKellar (also known as Winnie Cooper of The Wonder Years) has written a book called Math Doesn’t Suck.  Danica makes her love for math contagious and helps middle school girls to realize that Math Doesn’t Suck.  On the Math Doesn’t Suck website, students can take a fun quiz called “Do You Hide Your Smarts (especially around guys)”, access a full solution guide to accompany the Math Doesn’t Suck book, learn more about the book, and get news and book signings.  

How to integrate Math Doesn’t Suck into the classroom: There is a large population of girls (particularly in middle school) who believe that they are no good at math, they have already convinced themselves that girls are not as good at math as boys.  They may believe that it isn’t cool or fashionable to be good at math.  Danica aims to change these perceptions with her fun book Math Doesn’t Suck. If you teach girls in middle school math, start the year off with the “Do You Hide Your Smarts” quiz.  It could give you great insight to what your girls believe about themselves in relation to math.  Start a book club or assign Math Doesn’t Suck as reading to start your year.  The book is a fun read that girls will connect with.   Help transform your students perceptions of math and begin the year with girls who believe that they can be successful and good at math.  The book includes

  • A unique Troubleshooting Guide to help students get “unstuck” and overcome their biggest challenges
  • True stories from Danica’s own life as a terrified math student, confident actress, and everything in between
  • A math horoscope, math personality quizzes, real-life testimonials, and more!

Tips: In the trouble shooting section, students will find solutions to these common math problems:

  • “Math bores me to death.”
  • “When it’s time to do Math, I get scared and try to avoid it.”
  • “I get confused and lost during class.”
  • “I think I understand something, but then I get the wrong answer in my homework.”
  • “At test time, I freeze up and can’t remember anything.”

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Math Doesn’t Suck in your classroom.

Kerpoof: Make a StoryBook

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What it is: Kerpoof is a website that I use often with my students, I like it so much I have written about it a few times before here and hereKerpoof has just added a brand new Make a StoryBook tool.  Kerpoof’s Make a Storybook is an excellent addition to the already great lineup of Kerpoof tools.  Here students can create their own picture and story books.  They can use Kerpoof’s backgrounds, props, and characters or draw their own illustrations.  Students can write their story in both text boxes and speech bubbles.  The interface is extremely user friendly, kids will pick it up in no time!  The sidebar has thumbnails of each page that students have created, making it easy to see their progress.  Students can save their finished Story Books on their Kerpoof account to share with other students, download the finished Story Book to their computers, or print out their completed stories.  

How to integrate Kerpoof’s Make a StoryBook into the classroom: Kerpoof’s Make a StoryBook is a fantastic place for students to “publish” their written work.  Students can practice writing fairy tales, poetry, collaborative stories, fables, math based stories, illustrated science journals and non-fiction books.  Kerpoof offers the freedom of creativity, students are only limited by their own imaginations.  Set up your classroom computers as a publishing center where students can create a finished, published piece of work.  Create collaborative class stories using Make a StoryBook on an interactive whiteboard or projector.  Print out finished stories and add them to your classroom library for other students to “check out” and read.

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Tips: In addition to the new Make a StoryBook, Kerpoof has added another fun activity called Spell a picture.  Students can choose a background for their picture and use the letters below to practice spelling words.  As they spell, pictures pop up that begin with those letters.  As they continue spelling, Kerpoof narrows the pictures down to the one that a student has spelled.  For example, when students select “c” pictures of a cow, cat, corn, car, cab, and cap pop up on the scene.  As they continue selecting letters, the pictures get more specific and Kerpoof points to the suggested pictures of what has been spelled.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Kerpoof  in your classroom.

ePub Bud: ePublish Yourself

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What it is: ePub Bud is the YouTube of Children’s eBooks.  The site is YouTube-like in that anyone can create and share their own children’s ebooks.  The goal of this not-for-profit website is to provide an easy way to find, share, and self-publish children’s ebooks.  ePub Bud lets you create an ebook for a small audience, or for the whole world, digitize a real book by mailing in a physical children’s book and having it “digitized” for the iPad, upload an ebook file that you can read on the iPad, or download an eBook (classics and books others have shared).  Best of all, everything you do on ePub Bud is completely free!

How to integrate ePub Bud into the classroom: ePublishing is quickly becoming popular and more eReader devices are showing up in the classroom.  While there is nothing like holding a paper back book in your hand, their is also nothing like holding a good ebook in your hands.  Whatever we can do as teachers to get students reading, I say use it!  Use ePub Bud in your classroom to “publish” student stories.  The books can be shared with other students, parents, and schools.  Publishing an eBook of their own is highly motivating, and will have your students eager to write.  With ePub Bud, your students could construct their own text books.  Have them create ebooks about what they are learning to share with others.

If you have access to the iPod Touch, iPhone, or iPad, consider sending in some of the books from your classroom libary to be digitized.  Many sites have free ebooks for kids, make them iPad, iPod, or iPhone friendly by uploading them to ePub Bud.  You can also search the extensive collection of classic children’s eBooks that are on ePub Bud and download those for students to read.  You will find children’s favorites from Beatrix Potter, Lewis Carrol, A.A. Milne, Frances Margaret Fox, Milton Goldsmith, and many, many more.

This is such a neat website and it is really and truly free.  You won’t even find advertisements on this site!

Tips: If you send in a book to be digitized, ePub Bud cannot send the original back for copyright purposes.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using ePub Bud in your classroom.

Magic Tree House

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What it is: The Magic Tree House is a popular book series for kids that teaches them about history through fun adventures that take place with the help of a time traveling Tree House.  Now students can take their love of the Magic Tree House Books online with the Magic Tree House Website.  Here, students can enter the Tree House and collect stamps for their passport by answering questions about each of the books.  Students can learn more about the Magic Tree House books, even reading excerpts from the books.  There are fun online games and printable activities for students to play and screen savers and wallpapers to download.

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How to integrate Magic Tree House into the classroom: This is a great site for those students who are reading the Magic Tree House books.  The quizzes are a fun way for students to check comprehension and reflect on what they have read.  I love the passport that gets stamped each time they finish a book.  If you are reading the Magic Tree House books to your students, create a class passport for the year, your whole class can help answer the questions to earn the stamps.  The site is geared toward encouraging reading and a love of reading.  It just doesn’t get better than that!

Tips: Be sure to take a look at the Teacher Tree for some great reading suggestions and lesson plan ideas.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Magic Tree House in your classroom.

Online Audio Stories

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What it is: Online Audio Stories is an impressive collection of free audio stories online.  The audio books are all free and downloadable.  The online version of the story includes accompanying text for students to follow along with.  The short stories will transport students on a fun adventure of listening to fairy tales and classics.  The extensive collection includes stories by Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, Brothers Grimm, Tales of Time, Edgar Allen Poe, Emily Bronte, Aesop, Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, Joseph Jacobs, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Blake, Oscar Wilde, Louisa May Alcott, Hans Christian Andersen, William Shakespeare, and many more.  The stories are read with excellent voice, inflection, and timing, making them a joy to listen to.  

How to integrate Online Audio Stories into the classroom: These Online Audio Stories will transport your students to new magical worlds and adventures, they will allow struggling readers to enjoy stories that may be just out of reach otherwise.  Online Audio Stories will help increase student vocabulary and improve listening comprehension skills.  Students may not choose to pick up these classics in the library, but they will enjoy listening to the stories online.  This is great exposure to the classics!   If you have computers in your classroom, set them up as a reading/listening center that students can visit during silent reading time.  Because the Online Audio Stories are free to download, these are also perfect for downloading to an iPod or MP3 player.

Tips: Let parents know about these free online stories, they make great bedtime stories, listening enjoyment for long car rides, or for a fun listening experience any time.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Online Audio Stories in your classroom.

Signed Stories

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What it is: Signed Stories is an excellent online story site that I learned about from The Techie Classroom blog.  Signed Stories makes hundreds of children’s stories available online accessible in British Sign Language and in text, pictures and sound.  This site has it all.  Students can read the story, watch it signed, and listen to the story.  This enriches literacy on a variety of levels.  Deaf and hearing alike can benefit from this excellent free website.  These are published stories and include a variety of popular titles.  Books are sorted into categories including adventure, baby and toddler, fairytales and folktales, families and friendships, funny, open house, slimy scary, or students can browse all books alphabetically.

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How to integrate Signed Stories into the classroom: Signed Stories is a fantastic add to any literacy classroom.  Students can read, listen to, or watch a book signed.  The site is accessible to all language learners and has engaging popular stories that students will love.  Expand your classroom library by pulling up Signed Stories during reading and allowing students to read online.  Signed Stories also adds great discussion to the classroom about different ways that people learn.  Students can expand their sign language vocabulary by listening to familiar stories and watching them being signed.  This is also a great site to send home.  Kids can practice their reading even when their isn’t an adult available to read with them.

Tips: Check out the Resources page for links to other interactive story sites.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Signed Stories in your classroom.

NASA Space Place

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What it is: NASA has hundreds of excellent educational resources online.  NASA Space Place is another awesome site for elementary kids to explore science and space.  The Space Place has fun online games, animations, projects, and fun facts about Earth, space and technology.  Space Place Live is an animated talk show where all the guests are real scientists and engineers who work on space and Earth missions.  Students can find out what it is like to work for NASA, how the scientist or engineer got started, and what they like to do for fun.  There are currently 7 episodes that students can enjoy topics include: solar wind, satellites, weather, space missions, telescopes, engineering, the birth of stars, Mars, robots, and black holes.  Even though the show is animated, the experts involved are the actual experts.  NASA Space Place has a variety of on and offline games with everything from scrambled pictures, to world puzzles, crazy quizzes and board games.  Students can learn more about weather, space, satellites, the environment, (and much more) through game play.  There are a variety of projects and experiments on the site with step by step directions for students.  These are great for the classroom, science fair, or at home on a rainy day.  Space Place makes finding games, animations, and projects related to your curriculum easy arranging the site by subjects.  Use Space Place when you are learning about planets and the solar system, stars, galaxies, and black holes, laws of the universe (light, motion, gravity), the Earth, and space technology.  Space Place has several storybooks that can be viewed on or offline.


How to integrate NASA Space Place into the classroom: Because of the wealth of resources on this site, there are a variety of ways to use it in your classroom.  The animations are a neat way to bring expert scientists and engineers into your classroom.  Share an animated video a week as your students explore the solar system and universe.  The games reinforce learning, use them as a center activity on the classroom computers as they relate to your curriculum.  Many of the games encourage exploration and trial and error (these are my favorite kind of learning games for students).  Students can explore the Amazing Facts section of the site and then complete the trivia game to test out their understanding.  In the project section, you will find experiments and science crafts. Choose some of these to complete as a class or assign each student a different project to test and share with the class.  Projects would also make an excellent stop during science fair time.  Use the Space Place Storybooks as animated flipbooks online as a class with a projector/interactive whiteboard, or print them out for your classroom library.  The books could be used as an online reading center on your classroom computers as well.  These stories are sure to capture your students imagination!


Tips: Be sure to check out the educator page on NASA Space Place, it is packed full of good ideas, newsletters, printable images of space for bulletin boards, space related articles, math related articles, printable posters, and podcasts to download.  With the renewed push for STEM education, there has never been a better time to include sites like NASA Space Place to excite and engage your students.


Leave a comment and share how you are using Nasa Interactive Timeline in your classroom.

Skratch Track

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What it is: Skratch Track is an amazing virtual bookshelf for primary students.  It uses the same idea behind Shelfari, giving students a virtual bookshelf where they can track which books they are reading, rate the book, write a little synopsis of the book, and even turn in a virtual book report to earn Skratch Track awards.  The interface of this site is very easy for primary kiddos to use independently.  Students can keep up to 15 books on their bookshelf at a time (for free account).  Parents or teachers sign up for an account and add children accounts to their head account.  Parents and teachers can then receive reports about what books kids are reading, and a copy of the book report they complete.  The book report asks students questions such as: was this book real or make believe?, How did you complete the book? (someone read it to me, I read it by myself), genre of the book, favorite characters in the book, new words learned, favorite part of the story, moral of the story, how hard was the book to read?, how did the book make you feel?, did the book remind you of something that happened to you in real life?, and did the book remind you of another book you have read?.

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How to integrate Skratch Track into the classroom: Skratch Track is a great alternative to the paper reading log.  Students will be proud to show off their virtual bookshelves and awards on their Skratch Track account.  No more keeping track of the reading log between home and school, no more extra copies, or ‘the dog ate my homework’ excuses.  Skratch Track is a great way for students to show what they are reading, how it was read (independently or with help) and makes it simple to keep track of what your students are reading at home.  The mini book reports help students to check comprehension.  They can rate the book, think about genre, record new words learned, write about their favorite part of the story, rate how difficult the book was to read, and make connections to their life and connections to other literature.  Each time a student completes a book report or earns an award, teachers or parents are notified by email and on the parent account page.  Skratch Track keeps teachers and parents connected to what children are reading so that they can begin to gauge comprehension and writing levels.

Tips: The free Skratch Track account allows a parent or teacher to sign up 2 children, record up to 15 books, and earn the first 3 awards.  To record additional books, earn all of the available awards, or sign up more children is $19.99 annually.  Skratch Track will work with educators, schools, and libraries to make bulk accounts available and affordable.  If you plan on using this with students as a reading log, it may be worth purchasing an account.

Leave a comment and share how you are using Skratch Track in your classroom.