BBC: Magic Key

What it is: The BBC is a constant source of excellent classroom interactives and games.  Today I ran across Magic Key while working on supplementing MacMillan Mcgraw Hill’s Treasures curriculum for first grade.  Magic Key is based on a cartoon in the UK, even if your students aren’t familiar with the cartoon, they are sure to enjoy the website adventures.  Magic Key has fun literacy games for kindergarten and first grade students.  The games help students practice full stops (sentence endings), sentence order, questions, character characteristics, capital letters, seeing patterns, figuring out new words, descriptions, and words that make sounds.  The games are age appropriate, include fun characters, and help students practice and understand important literacy skills.  In each game, students enter an adventure where the goal is to collect the Magic Key.

How to integrate BBC: Magic Key into the classroom: The Magic Key games are short and sweet, they give students the opportunity to practice new skills independently.  I like to use games like these as a center activity.  These types of short games make a great center because they provide students with immediate feedback and are self leveling.  Set Magic Key up on your classroom computers as a literacy center for students to visit independently or in small groups.  Don’t forget that the interactive whiteboard or projector connected computer can also be a center station!  These games are a great alternative to the worksheet (you didn’t really want to grade one of those anyway) and will provide your students with an opportunity to practice what they are learning.

Tips: Check out the teacher section of Magic Key for a description of each game, the curriculum tie in, and (I hesitate to mention) worksheets.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using BBC: Magic Key in your classroom.

Spelling City: Update

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What it is: Spelling City is a fabulous site for practicing spelling, I have written about its uses in the classroom before (here and here).  Spelling City has just added a new feature that teachers are going to love, the ability to add your own sentences on Spelling City!  Now you can customize your spelling lists to fit your needs.  For example, if you are studying fish and one of your spelling words is “scales”, the default sentence that Spelling City might offer is “The scales were not giving the weights accurately.”  Now as you create a list, you can click on “add” and type a new sentence to fit your classroom needs. The feature is also extremely useful for homonyms (our fifth graders are using this feature this week!).  For the teacher created sentences, the audio read of the sentence will be done by a sophisticated voice synthesis.


How to integrate Spelling City into the classroom: Now that Spelling City allows teacher generated sentences, you can customize your lists for students even more.  Have students generate sentences for the weeks spelling words and vote on which sentence should be included on Spelling City.  This is a great way to involve your students in thinking about word meanings and uses.


Tips: Spelling City has a premium membership that has been approved for funding by Adopt-a-Classroom.org.  You can use the Adopt-A-Classroom service to ask for donations to cover premium membership.


Leave a comment and share how you are using Spelling City  in your classroom.

iboard: A Day at the Park

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What it is: A Day at the Park asks students to position characters at a park and then construct sentences about their placement or movement.  Students can construct the statements by using a word bank, or the word bank can be hidden.  This is a great activity for students to practice describing words.


How to integrate iboard: A Day at the Park into the classroom: A Day at the Park was created to be used with an interactive whiteboard. To use it with an interactive whiteboard or projector, invite students up to manipulate the characters in the park scene.  Then ask other students to describe their positions and movements by constructing sentences below the scene.  This would also make an excellent literacy center activity.  Send students to the classroom computers in pairs where they can take turns placing characters and describing their positions.


Tips: iboard has a variety of activities for the interactive whiteboard that can be purchased. A Day at the Park is one of their freebie samples.


Leave a comment and share how you are using iboard: A Day at the Park in your classroom.

Pic Lits

 

What it is:   Pic Lits is a really neat creative writing site that provides pictures and a word bank for students to create a enriched sentence or sentences about the picture.   “The object is to put the right words in the right place and the right order to capture the essence, story, and meaning of the picture.”  Students can choose to only drag words from the word bank to create their sentence or compose a sentence freestyle. 

 

How to integrate Pic Lits into the classroom:   Pic Lits is a great way to get students to think creatively and critically about writing.  Students can choose any picture and then use the word list to create a sentence.  Pic Lits is complete with punctuation and any word can be capatalized.  Students can use Pic Lits individually on computers, as a whole class with a projector, or as a creative writing center in the one or two computer classroom.  When using Pic Lits as a class, choose a picture for the day and have students write their sentences on paper using words from the word bank.  Take turns sharing to hear the combination of words and the different meanings that students gathered from the picture.  This is a great writing exercise to use  in your classroom every day!  Here in Colorado, we often have indoor recesses for bad weather.  Use Pic Lits with an interactive whiteboard and invite your cooped up students to choose pictures and create sentences.  

 

Tips: Students can sign up for a free account and save each Pic Lit they create.  At the end of the year, each student can create a book of their Pic Lits to take home for creative inspiration. 

 

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