Draw a Stickman

What it is:  Draw a Stickman is a delightful site that I learned about from @amandacdykes on her blog Upside Down Education.  On Draw a Stickman, students are prompted to draw a stick figure, the figure they draw springs to life and is faced with several challenges, students must follow directions and draw several props for their stick figure to interact with.  This is a mini interactive story that has students reading and following directions, solving mysteries, thinking creatively and solving problems.  Students will love the hero of the story (the character they created) and the villain (a dragon).

How to integrate the Draw a Stickman site into the classroom: Draw a Stickman is a fun interactive site that uses student creations to tell a story.  Students can complete the interactive on individual computers, iDevices (the site works great!), interactive whiteboards, or classroom computers.

Aside from just fun practice at following instructions, Draw a Stickman would be a great fictional story prompt.  Students have the bones of a story and can fill in details, vivid verbs, adjectives, etc. to tell the story.  Students can focus on fleshing out their hero, the plot of the story, the details, the setting, etc.  Students can come up with a moral of a story that they add in the customized ending.  This link can be sent as a tweet, facebook link, or in an email to accompany the story they have created.  These stories would be fun to share as a class…how many different stories did students come up with using the same base?

On an interactive whiteboard, students can go through the story together, labeling the different parts of the story (beginning, problem, climax, resolution, ending).  This interactive can help students identify parts in a story including setting, characters and plot.

Tips: After you have gone through Draw a Stickman, you can personalize the message at the end and share.  Add any two lines of text that you wish.  This could be a fun way to reveal messages to your students!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Draw a Stickman in  your classroom!

The Bookshelf Muse: Emotion, Setting, Color/Shape/Texture, Symbolism Thesaurus

The Bookshelf Muse

What it is: The Bookshelf Muse is a must add blog to any writing classroom toolbox.  On The Bookshelf Muse, students will find several thesauruses: emotion, setting, color/shape/texture, weather, and symbolism.  The emotion thesaurus offers alternatives for showing character emotion through physical action.  The Setting Thesaurus offers sensory descriptions that can help paint the picture of a setting.  The color/shape/texture thesaurus helps students include sensory information that helps convey images in specific ways.  They symbolism thesaurus helps students utilize symbolism to leave a lasting impression on their readers.  To use a thesaurus, scroll down and choose an emotion, setting, color/shape/texture, weather, or symbolism topic from the right side bar.  Suggestions will appear as a blog post.  Each thesaurus is regularly added to, there is something new each week!

How to integrate The Bookshelf Muse thesauruses into the classroom: The Bookshelf Muse thesauruses are a must add to a writer’s toolbox.  All writers experience periods of writers block.  The Bookshelf Muse thesauruses can help students break through that block.  Bookmark the thesaurus on classroom computers for quick access during writing as a writing/publishing center.  Students can access the center as needed to help fire up the creative writing process.  This blog will have your students thinking carefully about word choice and how different parts of speech color writing.

Before students begin using the emotion or setting thesaurus, visit the blog as a class using an interactive whiteboard.  Using the annotation feature, invite students to the board to highlight words based on the parts of speech.  This will help students identify vivid verbs, adjectives, and adverbs that add life to writing.

Consider creating a writer’s toolbox for your students using a tool like symbaloo or weblist.me.  Add writing tools like rhyming dictionaries, The Bookshelf Muse Thesauruses, writing prompt generators, a Flickr picture dictionary , Color in Motion, Tag Galaxy, Lightning Bug, What if Questions for Stories, The Story Starter Jr.PinBall-bounce ideas around, Poetry Idea Machine and other writing resources.  Create another Symbaloo page or weblist.me for web tools that students can use for writing (Little Bird Tales, Kerpoof, Figment, Picture a Story, pic lits, Story Bird, Zooburst, Myths and Legends, Glogster, Graphic Novel Creator, My Story Maker and Picture Book Maker).

Use the Bookshelf Muse thesauruses as a launching point to create a class thesaurus.  This can be done for setting, emotion, senses, weather, etc.  Make the thesaurus easily accessible by creating it as a blog or wiki.

Tips: The Bookshelf Muse has just started adding to a weather thesaurus, so far the only entry is blizzard but it should get your students thinking about how they can describe weather.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using The Bookshelf Muse Emotion thesauruses in your classroom!

Answer Garden

What it is: I learned about Answer Garden from an interactive post on Suzanne Whitlow’s excellent blog, Suzanne’s BlogAnswer Garden is a “new minimalistic feedback tool.”  It can be used as an online answer collection tool or embedded on a website or blog.  An Answer Garden is created as easily as entering a question and clicking create, no registration needed.  Embed the Answer Garden on any blog, website, or social network page using the embed code provided.  You can also give students a direct link to the Answer Garden. Students can post answers to your questions by entering their own answers or by clicking on and submitting existing answers.  All of the answers are represented in the form of a word cloud.   25 answers are visible per garden but as students submit the same answer, that word will grow bigger.  Creating an Answer Garden is SO simple.  Just type in your question or brainstorm statement and click create.

How to integrate Answer Garden into the classroom: Answer Garden is a fun way for students to brainstorm, plan, and work together.  Pose open-ended thinking questions on your classroom blog or website for students to answers.  Use Answer Garden to host a classroom poll.  Create a geography Answer Garden that gives students a place that they can describe a state or country they are learning about.  Use Answer Garden during reading as a place for students to reflect on different characters, plots, settings, and themes.  In history, give students a date range, event, or historical figure and let them add words to the Answer Garden that describe.  In the primary classroom, type in a phoneme combination and have students submit words that fit the phoneme rule.   Create an answer garden to recognize VIP students in your classroom where each child can answer with a character quality that they appreciate about that student.  The possibilities are endless!  This tool is SO easy to use, try it out in the Answer Garden below.

Where will use Answer Garden?… at AnswerGarden.ch.

Tips: The default settings on Answer Garden only allows students to submit one answer.  You can check the optional “Unlimited Answering” to give students multiple opportunities to submit answers.

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