Scholastic Story Starters

 

What it is:  Story Starters is a fun site for students in kindergarten through sixth grade to use each day as a quick writing activity.  Students type in their name and select a grade to begin.  Students are taken to a special Story Starter machine that generates writing ideas for newspaper articles, letters, notebooks, or postcards.  They can get a new idea by keeping some elements of the idea and spinning again to change elements.   The site also features Scholastic’s Word Wizard which always floats on the webpage.  Students can type in a word or double click any word on the webpage and get a definition of the word.

How to integrate Scholastic Story Starters into the classroom:  Scholastic Story Starters is a fun website to use with the whole class or as a writing learning center.  This is a great site to use with an interactive whiteboard or projector to generate ideas for free creative writing time.  Let students take turns being the ‘spinner’ that generates writing ideas.  Encourage students to share their writing, it is neat to hear all the different ideas that kids come up with from the same story starter.  This would be a great website to bookmark on classroom computers for students to visit as a writing center that they can visit when they are stumped for writing ideas.

 

Tips:  You may have to spin a category a few times to get a story starter that makes sense.  This is very quick and easy!

 

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Scholastic Story Starters in your classroom.

Telescopic Text

 

What it is:   Telescopic Text is a very simple website that could be very handy in the language arts classroom.  The site starts off with a very simple sentence: I made tea.  Each time you click on a word, the sentence expands adding adjectives, adverbs, and makes the sentence more interesting.

How to integrate Telescopic Text into the classroom:  Use Telescopic Text to teach your students about creative, descriptive writing and how to improve writing with descriptive words.  Compare and contrast what students knew about the sentence “I made tea.” at the beginning and how each addition of words helped them understand more about the original statement.  This can be done as a whole class using an interactive whiteboard or a computer with a projector.  Students can take turns clicking on words to expand the statement with discussion after each addition.  This is a great exercise to use before writing.  Have the students write their own simple sentence and expand it into a story with the addition of descriptive words.  

 

Tips:  The highlighted words are those that can be expanded by clicking.

 

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Telescopic Text in your classroom.

Magnetic Poetry

 

 

What it is:  Magnetic Poetry is a virtual edition of magnetic fridge poetry.  Students can choose from four kits to create their ‘magnetic’ poem.  There is Kids Kit, First Words, Best Friends, and Storymaker.  After students have chosen a kit they can choose from three backgrounds for their poetry (refrigerator, locker, or whiteboard).  Students are given a virtual tub of words to choose from that they can drag, arrange, and rearrange to create a poem or story.  When they are finished, students can send their Magnetic Poetry to an email address or save it for later viewing on the site.

How to integrate Magnetic Poetry into the classroom:  Magnetic Poetry is a great site to use in April as part of national poetry month.  This site is wonderful for those students who are hindered by spelling (you know the students who will only write with words they know how to spell).  Students can pull from the word bank of words to create a story or poem that can be saved, sent to an email address, or printed out as a draft and turned into a published piece.  This would be a fun website to use with the whole class and an interactive whiteboard, encourage your students to take turns adding words to a class poem or story.  This would also make a great center activity for students to visit and create with during the week.  

 

Tips:  If a student saves their poem, they are granting permission for the site to use their poem as a possible example on the site or on packaging. 

 

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Magnetic Poetry in your classroom.

Spell with Flickr

What it is: Spell with Flickr is a site that has been around for a while but I was reminded of it again this week when I used it with my students for a project.  Type any word or name into the Spell with Flickr website and the site will pull letter pictures from Flickr to spell out the word in pictures.  You can click on each letter to get a new picture and when you are satisfied with your picture word, you can drag and drop the word onto a desktop to use later or you can copy code to embed on a website, blog, or wiki.

How to integrate Spell with Flickr into the classroom: Spell with Flickr is a simple but neat website to use in the classroom.  Students can use Spell with Flickr to type in and practice their spelling words, to create titles for reports, to spell out their name for an auto biography poem, and to practice letter recognition.  Teachers can use Spell with Flickr as a fun way to create titles for bulletin boards, classroom signs, to make a unique word wall, or to make an alphabet banner.  Spell with Flickr can also be used on wikis and blogs making it perfect for fun titles.  Create an alphabet book, phonics blends book, or sight word book out of Spell with Flickr pictures.  

 

Tips:  If you aren’t happy with the pictures that were chosen for your letters, click on the picture for a new one. 

 

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Spell with Flickr in your classroom.

Scotch: Science Fair Central

 

What it is:   Scotch Science Fair Central is a website collaboration between Scotch brand products from 3M and Discovery Education.  The site is a wealth of free resources for creating innovative science fair projects.  The site leads students step by step through creating a science fair project starting with choosing a project idea.   Students can search through multiple science topics in life sciences, earth science, or physical science.  Within each of these topics is several subcategories and then ideas based on a testable question, what is tested, and what data is collected.  This site is very comprehensive and will have your students thinking like a scientist in no time!  The site then leads students through the steps of differentiating their project between investigations and inventions so they can choose the appropriate project type.  Step two actually leads them through the investigation or invention process depending on which project type was chosen.  Step three takes students through the process of creating the actual presentation portion of the science fair project.  There is a great section of parent resources as well as a section for science fair coordinators.

How to integrate Scotch: Science Fair Central into the classroom:  Science fair projects have the potential to teach students a lot.  They learn organization, responsibility, the scientific process, observation, testing, inquiry, problem solving, and critical thinking.  Science fair projects are extremelly worthwhile when they are accompanied by a quality process that students can follow.  I remember years when the science fair meant quickly pulling something ‘scientific’ together (two cans with a string in between to show sound travel) with very little gained from the project.  This was due in part to being assigned a science fair project without understanding the basis of how scientists work and think.  Scotch: Science Fair Central solves this dilemma because students are led step-by-step through the scientific process and along the way learn how a scientist thinks.  Before you assign a science fair project, spend a day in the computer lab with students and let them go through this site and begin to plan their science fair project.  I love how this site is organized into different types of science because it gives every student the opportunity to find a project that they are interested in and motivated by.  If you don’t have access to the lab, set up a science fair planning center on your classroom computers or guide your students through the site with a computer and projector.  If you are a science teacher, take a look at this great resource and use the planning guide to plan a school science fair.

 

Tips:  Be sure to send this site home to parents, they will appreciate the parent section as they help their child at home.

 

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Scotch: Science Fair Central in your classroom.

Ideas to Inspire

 

What it is:  Ideas to Inspire is a truly wonderful site and wealth of resources for teachers.  On this site you will find a collection of Google Doc presentations that include a number of ideas for engaging lesson activities in a variety of curriculum areas.  The collection comes from inspiring teachers from around the world.  You can find Ideas to Inspire on Writing, Interactive Math, Incredible Science, Amazing Art, Marvelous Music, and learn interesting ways to use Google Docs, Pocket Video Cameras, Interactive Whiteboards, Google Earth, Twitter, Netbooks, Webcams, and Visualizers.  Ideas to Inspire also has great tips for non-techy teachers (I remember being one of those once-upon-a-time).  Ideas to Inspire is very easy to navigate and each presentation is jam packed with truly inspiring ideas.

How to integrate Ideas to Inspire into the classroom: It happens to the best of us, we get settled in our ways and fall into a teaching slump where we can’t come up with a creative lesson idea to save our lives.  Sound familiar?  Ideas to Inspire is the place to go, here you will find inspiration, helpful tips, and get those creative juices flowing again!  Take a few minutes and look through some of the presentations, you will be happy you did. 🙂

 

Tips:  This is my last post for the day, head over to Ideas to Inspire and be inspired today!

 

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Ideas to Inspire in your classroom.

Auto Motivator

 

What it is:  Auto Motivator is a site where you can create custom motivational posters for your classroom.  You can choose a picture from the Auto Motivator site, upload a picture from your computer, or use a picture from the web.  After you create your poster (in two easy steps) you can save it as the desktop for your computer, save it as a picture file that you can print out, or purchase a poster size print from the Auto Motivator website through Zazzle.com.

How to integrate Auto Motivator into the classroom:  Motivational posters are perfect for the classroom setting but sometimes it is hard to find one that captures the motivation that you want to offer your students.  Maybe you have a class saying, or a specific motivational need, Auto Motivator is a wonderful place for you to create a poster that fits your classroom needs.  I love that you can use the motivational words as the desktop image on computers, these would make a fabulous background for classroom computers or computer lab computers.  Because you can save the image to your computer, you could create motivational postcards to hand to your students when they are struggling as encouragement.  The ability to get your custom poster printed by Auto Motivator through Zazzle.com is a nice option for those motivational posters you want to use year after year.  Encourage students to make their own motivational posters, these would be nice to print out and create a wall of motivation out of.  Students could also exchange motivational posters with peers as encouragement.

 

Tips:  If you are using this site with students, please note that there are Google Adwords on the Auto Motivator website.  Use this as an opportunity to teach your students to spot advertisements and discuss their purpose.

 

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Auto Motivator in your classroom.

Shahi

 

What it is:  Shahi is a mashup of Wiktionary (a Wikipedia type dictionary) and Flickr.  This visual dictionary is a great way for students to look up definitions and get a visual representation of the word.  Students can choose for the images to come from Flickr, Google, or Yahoo.  I find the most reliable image results come from Flickr.

How to integrate Shahi into the classroom: Shahi is a neat mashup of two tools.  Having a visual dictionary is great for every student but especially useful for your visual learners.  Beyond using Shahi as a dictionary, this is a perfect site for teaching your students the parts of speech.  Because pictures acompany the definitions, students can “see” that a verb is an action word.  Use Shahi as the base for a part of speech game with the whole class and a projector.  Choose a word from reading, spelling, etc. and have students ‘guess’ the part of speech based on the pictures.  This is a great way for students to learn the parts of speech through inquiry and problem solving.  Shahi would also be a useful tool for ESL or ELL students.  Bookmark Shahi on your classroom computers as a resource during reading/writing time.  Look up a spelling word on Shahi and have students journal about one of the accompanying pictures.  This site could be very useful for writing prompts.  Shahi would also be wonderful in the science classroom, students can look up difficult words or concepts and immediately have a good visual representation to aid in understanding.  In the geography classroom, students could search places and get a  collection of images that will provide them with additional insight into the place.  Cool!

 

Tips:  I learned about this site from activeducator  on Twitter.  If you haven’t yet, sign up for Twitter today, it is a great way to network and learn about education (or anything you are interested in).  Don’t forget to add me as a friend, ktenkely!  A word of warning with this site: sometimes images will be inappropriate on this site because of the tags people put on their pictures in Flickr.  For example “berry” brings pictures of fruit berries but also scantily dressed women named “Berry”.  For elementary students, pre-search words you will be using with the class for appropriateness. 

 

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Shahi  in your classroom.

The Tweet to Beat: Paying $3 per Twitter Follower

 

What it is: Twitter is an amazing networking tool.  If you aren’t currently using Twitter, today is the day my friend!  If you aren’t familiar with Twitter take a look at my prior posts here or watch the Common Craft video above.  The Tweet to Beat: Paying $3 per Twitter follower is an “ethical bribe” to get people to follow Tim Ferris on Twitter.  Here’s how it works: for every new Twitter follower Tim gets before March 23, 2009, he will donate $1 to Donorschoose.org.  An anonymous supporter will then donate $2 for every dollar that Tim donates.  This means that for every follower of Tim, $3 are donated.  What is the donation going toward?  US Public School classrooms!  The goal is to directly help 25,000 US public school students in low income and high need areas in two weeks time.  I LOVE this idea!  After seeing what is happening with our stimulus money (going to AIG for bonuses and cutting back on education), I think creative ideas like The Tweet to Beat are going to be the catalyst for change in this world!

How to integrate The Tweet to Beat: Paying $3 per Twitter Follower into the classroom: This is such a simple idea and yet the impact could be significant.  You can integrate Tweet to Beat into your classroom in a few ways.  First, if you are on Twitter, follow Tim today (go ahead you can do it right now, I’ll wait).  Second, if your students are on Twitter, encourage them to follow Tim.  Third, use Tweet to Beat as a real world math problem.  Ask questions such as how many followers does Tim need to raise $50,000?  $150,000.  Last, give older students (who have Facebook accounts) a homework assignment to post this story on their Facebook page to get others involved.  

 

Tips:  Twitter is a great way to communicate with families, build a personal learning network (PLN), communicate with other students around the world, and network.  You can follow me on Twitter by clicking here

 

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using The Tweet to Beat  in your classroom.