Tag: classroom

Roy the Zebra

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What it is: Roy the Zebra is a site for emerging readers complete with interactive stories, games, and lesson plans. The site can be used with interactive white boards or on computers. Emerging reader skills include capital letters, full stops, words that rhyme, high frequency words, alphabetical order, question marks, singular or plural, long vowel phonemes, words within words, and consonants. The Roy the Zebra story collection is online and includes literacy worksheets, before reading discussion sheets, and after reading discussion sheets.

How to integrate Roy the Zebra into the classroom: Roy the Zebra is an excellent literacy website. Use daily with your emerging and struggling readers to enhance your literacy time. Set up Roy the Zebra as a center during literacy time in the one computer classroom. Because of the sites interactivity, it is also an ideal site to use with an interactive white board. If you have access to a computer lab your students can practice the skills learned for the day all together.

Tips: There are advertisements on the site but be assured that all activities, books, lessons, and games are completely free to use. Roy the Zebra does accept donations.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Roy the Zebra in your classroom.

Kerpoof

Kelly Tenkely2 Comments on Kerpoof4687 views

What it is: Kerpoof is a free online creativity center where students can create their own pictures, stories, and movies. The Kerpoof studio provides students with scenes, characters, and props. Students use these tools to create stories that can be printed out or movies that they write and direct. These can be saved right on the website so students can revisit their picture, story, or movie.

How to integrate Kerpoof into the classroom: Kerpoof is the creativity tool that can bring your students stories to life. Use Kerpoof as part of your publishing center. Students can use Kerpoof to illustrate their stories, or to create a real movie out of their own writing. Kerpoof would also make a fun writing prompt center in the classroom. This site also provides students with basic movie making skills and would make a nice precursor to an iMovie lesson. Students could plan out their movies on Kerpoof before they begin filming and editing with iMovie.  Kerpoof can also be used to teach character education, have students create stories or movies that show emotion and solve problems. Teach the life cycle of a butterfly during science using Kerpoof’s butterfly pavilion scene.  User Kerpoof to create life cycle scenes.   Students will create a unique login so that they can revisit their stories and movies. Allow students to visit each other’s work during reading time.  The site would be best utilized in a computer lab one to one setting. The stories and movies will take too long to just set up as a center in your classroom. If you don’t have access to a computer lab for this activity but have a projector, create an ongoing story or movie as a whole class.

Tips: Be sure to visit the teacher area of Kerpoof for some outstanding lessons and ideas for using Kerpoof in the classroom. You can also print out coloring sheets from the teacher area.

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

Twitter 2

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Watch the Viddler video below about Twitter. www.twitter.com is a social networker/micro-blogger that allows you to keep people updated on what you are up to on a daily basis. Think it doesn’t have a place in education? Think again! I think it would enhance home-school communication greatly. Take a look! You are 140 characters closer to better communication with parents…

Science

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What it is: Macmillan-McGraw Hill Science is the online student addition of the textbooks. Students is grades kindergarten through six can click on the book that matches their grade level. Here students can watch video clips, play vocabulary games, take animated summary quizzes, read e-journals, and more.

How to integrate Macmillan-McGraw Hill Science into the classroom: Even if your school does not use the Macmillan-McGraw Hill Science textbooks, this site is a wonderful supplement to any science curriculum. The fun interactive environment is sure to be a hit with students. The vocabulary review games would be fun to play as a whole class with the projector (split students into teams) or individually. You might also offer this site to students for homework help or for test review at home.

Tips: Click on the OSE button at the bottom of the screen for the Online Student edition of the text box. Below the OSE button are login names and passwords for various grade levels.

P lease leave a comment and share how you are using Macmillan-McGraw Hill Science in your classroom.

Kids Biology

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What it is: Kids Biology is a website designed to be kid friendly and informative. Here, students can learn about an assortment of animals (broken down by classes, what they eat, and where they live). Each animal has an about the animal section and a picture of the animal. Kids Biology also features kid friendly information on the origin of life, what are living things, needs of living things, cells, tissues, organs, systems, classification, five kingdoms, viruses, genetics, and Earth’s biomes. Each topic contains easy to read and understand information about the topic. Kids Biology has games that help students study what they have learned about each topic through word searches, hangman, and biology memory.

How to integrate Kids Biology into the classroom: Kids Biology would offer a nice break from traditional textbooks and worksheets. Give students time to explore the site on their own to introduce or review a new science unit. Read the online textbook as a class followed by a game using a projector. Split your kids into teams to play the game as a class. Kids Biology is also a nice resource for students researching an animal because of the kid friendly reading and wealth of information.

Tips: Save Kids Biology the bookmark bar for easy access in the classroom.

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

Seussville University

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What it is: Seussville University website is created by Random House Children’s publishing in the spirit of making learning fun. Kids favorite Dr. Seuss characters serve as their guides to learning in the fun, interactive environment. Horton the Elephant hosts the reading area where kids learn basic reading concepts such as letter recognition, sounds of letters and rhyming words. Yertle the Turtole hosts the math area where kids learn to recognize numbers, number words, to count, and do simple addition. The Lorax hosts the science area where kids are introduced to animal categories, basic astronomy and ecology. Sam-I-Am hosts the reasoning area, here kids can compare size, number, patterns, and directions and learn opposites. These activities are best for kindergarten and first grade students.

How to integrate Seussville University into the classroom: Suessville University is a wonderful addition to any kindergarten or first grade classroom. It can be used for language, math, science, and reasoning reinforcement. Students will love the interactive games with familiar Dr. Seuss characters. This would make a fun center activity for student rotations during daily learning activities. There are also printable activities that coordinate with the website activities. Use Seussville while completing a Dr. Seuss unit. Encourage parents to use Seussville with their children at home as an extension activity.

Tips: Keep Seussville University in the bookmark bar for easy access for your students. They are bound to love this site!

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

Kinetic City

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What it is: The Kinetic City Super Crew needs students help to save their virtual world of Vearth from the science-distorting computer virus, Deep Delete. Students work together to perform engaging science activities and then download their data to the Super Crew to help repair their world. Kinetic City provides students in grades 3-5 a fun interactive way to learn standards based science. There are 100 fun science based activities to participate in. These activities can be done through physical experiments, internet research, interactive science games on Kinetic City, art projects, and physical activities. The complete Kinetic City experience was intended for use as an after school program, starting a Kinetic City club cost money but use of the online materials and games is free.

How to integrate Kinetic City into the classroom: Since Kinetic City activities are all standards based, they should fit right into your third through fifth grade curriculum. The interactive games, experiments and activities are wonderful to use as an extension of current classroom activities. Game and activity topics include gravity, the human body, human body systems, learning, animal adaptation and classification, power and energy, and more.

Tips: Visit the Kinetic City educator page for more information on starting a club and for print out guides for using the site.

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

Library of Virtual Manipulatives

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What it is: The Library of Virtual Manipulatives is a library of interactive, web-based virtual manipulatives or concept tutorials for mathematics instruction (K-12 emphasis). Manipulatives are for students in grades kindergarten through twelve and include hundreds of manipulative tools in the areas of Numbers and Operations, Algebra, Geometry, Measurement, Data Analysis, and Probability. Manipulatives include interactive base 10 blocks, money, pattern blocks, tangrams, geoboards, clocks, and bar/pie charts just to name a few.

How to integrate Virtual Manipulatives into the classroom: Virtual Manipulatives can be used in place of actual manipulatives in math class. There are many benefits to the virtual version of manipulatives. First, math manipulatives can be expensive, especially when a class set is required. The Virtual Manipulatives are completely free to use. Math manipulatives can take up a lot of storage space. The Virtual Manipulatives are accessible quickly and easily and there is never any need for set up or clean up. The Virtual Manipulatives never wear out and need to be replaced. In the one or two computer classroom, set up a Virtual Manipulative center where students can stop by individually or in groups and work with the manipulatives. Use a projector cart for whole class instruction. Virtual Manipulatives are ideal for the 1 to 1 computing environment.

Tips: Share the Virtual Manipulative site with parents. The manipulatives are great for use at home while students are completing math homework!

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

Prezent It

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What it is: Prezent It is a free online resource for creating and sharing presentations online PowerPoint style. No special software is needed, Prezent It is an online application that allows teachers or students to create and present from a web browser. Presentations can be public or private and each has its own web address. Presentations can be downloaded and shown without any internet connection. There is no file size limit with Prezent It so create away!

How to integrate Prezent It into the classroom: Prezent It can be used in place of PowerPoint type applications. Because it is web-based, students could start a project at school and finish it at home without the necessity for expensive programs and saving to flash drives. Students can use Prezent It for any school presentation. I like starting out the year with a getting to know you presentation. Each of my students creates a presentation all about their favorite things (in fact we call it “A Few of My Favorite Things”). We have a special presentation day where we watch everyone’s Prezent It. Students can choose to narrate during the presentation or just sit and watch (this will save your shy students). You won’t believe how this project will bond your class, students will find out they have many similar interests and learn things about their fellow students they may not otherwise have known. This program is very intuative and easy for students to learn. Prezent It is a great tool for teachers as well…bring your lessons to life with Prezent It and a projector!

Tips: Prezent It requires a valid email address to activate your account. If you teach students who do not have an email address, you could use a teacher email for activation purposes.

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

Engrade

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What it is: Engrade is a free online gradebook that allows teachers to manage their classes online as well as post grades, assignments, attendance, and upcoming homework online for students and parents to see. Engrade makes it easy for parents, teachers, and students to communicate and stay in contact. The free Engrade suite offers a gradebook that automatically calculates grades and provides tools for custom grading scales and weighting assignments, an attendance book that automatically emails parents with absences, a homework calendar for students and parents, and online student reports where students can view their grades, homework and attendance in real time.

How to integrate Engrade into the classroom: Engrade makes it simple to quickly post homework assignments, edit students grades, and take attendance all in one easy to use online interface. Best of all, since Engrade is online based, teachers can update grades and homework assignments from anywhere. Engrade is a wonderful way to keep parents and students informed of grades, homework assignments, and absences in one place. Communication between school and home has never been easier! Engrade is a secure, password protected site so there are no concerns about privacy or security of grades.

Tips: Be sure to check out the Teacher page on Engrade and all of the features that are offered. This truly is an amazing product!