Maggie’s Earth Adventures


What it is: Maggie’s Earth Adventures is an incredible site for teachers and students.  First the amazing tools for you… Every teacher has wished for a lesson that takes little time for teacher preparation or explanation, can be used as a center activity, is a filler for students who finish their work early, serves as extra credit, is a ready made homework assignment, or can be an emergency plan for a substitute teacher.  Maggie’s Earth Adventures Teachers Lounge is the place to go!  Sign up for free weekly activity packets in subjects such as math, reading, science, and social studies.  Weekly activity packets are sent based on age levels (emergent reader, primary, and intermediate) and a different subject area is sent each week.  These are high quality teaching materials!In addition to the free weekly activities, Maggie’s Earth Adventures also features an excellent lesson plan resource, you can get an entire theme unit or a few lessons.  Some lessons even have free PowerPoint presentations to accompany the lesson.  The site is available in English or in Spanish making it perfect for the ESL classroom. Maggie is not just for teachers, you will find outstanding interactive games for your students too!  Kids can watch cartoons that tie in directly with the lesson plans.  The cartoons are packed with teaching and are interactive.  In the postcard section students can choose a picture and then choose an activity to accompany the picture.  Students can create a story clock, news article, description web, or postcard.  In the games section students can choose from games to improve math, spelling, reading, geography skills, language skills, proofreading skills, and science. Students can also download free books (these download as a printable pdf).
How to integrate Maggie’s Earth Adventures into the classroom: These high quality lessons and activities are ideal for having on hand for students who finish work early and are looking for extension activities.  They are also ideal for extra credit, homework practice, or emergency substitute plans.  Use the games as practice for important skills students are working on in language arts (spelling and punctuation) and math.  This is a great place for students to hone a newly learned skill.  The postcard maker (which actually makes much more than postcards) is a great place to send students for story starters and creative writing assignments.  This is one of those sites you will want bookmarked on your classroom computers!

Tips: Sign up to receive weekly activities and lessons from Maggie.  I know you sign up for a million things throughout the year, this is one that you will really use!

Leave a comment and share how you are using Maggie’s Earth Adventures in your classroom.

Graphic Organizers

 

 

What it is: Graphic Organizers by Houghton Mifflin is a collection of 33 free, printable graphic organizers for use in the classroom.

How to integrate Graphic Organizers into the classroom: Integrating technology isn’t just about the students using computers, it is also about making your life easier! This is a site you will return to over and over again for great graphic organizers. Use these graphic organizers to guide student learning as they are exploring other educational websites.

Tips: Graphic Organizers include clock, cluster/word web, describing wheel, fact-and-opinion chart, five w’s chart, flow chart, four column chart, garden gate, ice-cream cone, idea wheel, inverted triangle, ISP chart, KWL chart, KWS, chart, ladder, observation chart, persuasion map, planning chart, problem-solution chart, sandwich, sense chart, sequence chart, spider map, step-by-step chart, story map, T-chart, ticktacktoe, time-order chart, and tree chart.