Category: Subject

Word Dynamo: Vocabulary made fun

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Word Dynamo: Vocabulary made fun7827 views
What it is:  Word Dynamo is a superb site from Dictionary.com.  Word Dynamo makes learning new words a whole lot of fun.
Here is how it works:
1.  Answer 10 questions and Word Dynamo will calculate how many words a student knows. This is your word score. The word score adjusts as you learn new words, Word Dynamo helps give students study “shortcuts” to learn new words faster.
2.  Word Challenge- in word challenge students are offered a custom 20-level game designed especially for their skill level.  As students master meanings, they unlock the next threshold of difficulty.
3.  The Word Dynamo Library- here students can browse and search for things they need to learn.  Students can choose to practice by schooling level, SAT prep, subject or popular word lists.
4.  Play Games- students can practice vocabulary by matching terms and definitions, listening to the word and definition, spell a word out in a crossword puzzle, etc. New challenges are unlocked as students succeed!
5.  Create a Word List- this one is my favorite, I love that students can create their own lists based on what they need to work on.

How to integrate Word Dynamo into the classroom:  Word Dynamo is an easy fit into any classroom k-12.  This is a great addition to your language arts, math, economics, science, history, (ANY) classroom.  Word Dynamo gives students the keys to their own learning by working with them at their own level.  It would be wonderful to use Word Dynamo throughout the year to keep kids playing with words.  Students will love watching their own “estimated words you know” score creep up and up over the course of the school year.  Vocabulary is one of those things that students don’t always realize that they are learning throughout the school day.  Then *bam* they wake up one day and suddenly know a whole LOT of words.

The games and practice items on Word Dynamo make for a great vocabulary center on classroom computers during language arts.  But, as I mentioned before, my very favorite part is the ability for students to create their own lists.  At Anastasis, we have  students constantly adding to their own spelling/vocabulary list as they come across new words they want to learn.  I like that Word Dynamo give them a place to keep, practice and play with these words.  Students have ownership over their own learning and aren’t stuck practicing and testing on the words they already know. Do you assign spelling and vocabulary words each week?  Let students enter those words in their custom list to practice!

Because Word Dynamo is constantly utilizing the feedback it gets from students, it is constantly challenging them and urging them on to a new personal best.  Students can watch their score go up, engage in challenges, and choose fun games that keep them learning. In other words, this is a site you are going to want to have handy for your students!

Don’t have the opportunity for students to use Word Dynamo on their own account/computer?  Put up a challenge on the interactive whiteboard or projector-connected computer.  As students enter the classroom, they can each answer a question on the way to their seats.  Keep track of the number of words that the whole class knows.

Tips: The Quick Tour will lead you through all the Word Dynamo goodies and have you ready to use it with your students in no time!  Word Dynamo looks and works well on the iPad and iPod Touch browser…great for vocabulary practice anywhere.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Word Dynamo in  your classroom!

ABC Mouse: math, reading, geography, and science curriculum (interactives/games/books)

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on ABC Mouse: math, reading, geography, and science curriculum (interactives/games/books)2930 views
What it is:  ABC Mouse is a complete online curriculum for pre-k and kindergarten students that provides a step-by-step learning path.  There are six academic levels that include curriculum that includes over 350 interactive lessons and more than 2000 learning activities.  As a student completes one activity successfully, they are guided to the next.  The interactive lessons include online picture books, puzzles, games, songs, art, activities and printable activities that relate to different topics and disciplines.  Each lesson offers different ways to learn to meet the needs of a variety of students.  The reading curriculum in ABC Mouse helps students recognize letters and sounds of the alphabet and sight words.  There are hundreds of books build in including fables, fairy tales and non-fiction.  In addition to sight words, students can learn phonics, sound recognition and rhyming words/word families.   The math curriculum teaches students numbers, shapes, patterns and measurement.  Students will play games and activities that help them to recognize and count numbers 1-100, identify and draw shapes, and the meaning of addition and subtraction.  ABC Mouse’s World Around Us is an introduction to science, social studies and health curriculum.  In the World Around Us, students will learn about the body and health, sports, plants and animals, weather and seasons, and earth/moon/sun/stars.
The lesson builder, lets you choose the content and activities for students to interact with based on their needs and interests.  Progress tracking makes it easy to see the number of learning activities that have been completed.  There are a lot of fun goodies tucked away including a virtual zoo, farm, aquarium and the ability to record a book in your own voice.
This is a comprehensive, well put together site that is FREE to public schools in the United States and Canada.  It is a wonderful addition to the kindergarten classroom!

How to integrate ABC Mouse into the classroom:  ABC Mouse is a fun website.  Activities in ABC Mouse are fantastic for center use in a one-two computer classroom (or more).  The activities and games are short enough for a center activity that students can cycle through.

For kindergarten students in a computer lab, this is a great site to get their feet wet with the technology at the beginning of the year.  I often started my students on fun academic sites like Starfall.com where students could practice clicking, navigating, dragging/dropping, etc.  These type of sites build students computer confidence, improve their fine motor skills and provide them with content area learning at the same time.  I wish this site had existed when I was teaching kindergarten computer!

If you don’t have access to computers for the students but have an interactive whiteboard or projector-connected computer, students can take turns interacting with the ABC mouse activities.  The books make great class read along stories on the big screen!

ABC Mouse is a fun way to introduce new concepts/skills, as a place for students to practice concepts/skills, or for review.

Tips: If you aren’t at a public school, sign up for the sample content…the private school dollar amount is reasonable!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using ABC Mouse in  your classroom!

Moglue: Create interactive ebooks and release as apps!

Kelly Tenkely4 Comments on Moglue: Create interactive ebooks and release as apps!11282 views

What it is:  Moglue is an interactive ebook builder that helps students create and share their stories on mobile devices as an app.  This download desktop platform makes it a snap for students to create interactive ebooks and release them as apps for iOS devices (iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch), Android tablets and Android phones.  Students only need to build the content once and Moglue makes it compatible with each user interface seamlessly.  No programming is required, this is a great creation platform for all classrooms!  Using a simple drag and drop interface, students can make their stories come to life.  Every child is enabled to be an artist now.

How to integrate Moglue into the classroom:  I think tools that make content creation simple are absolute genius.  As much as I would love for every student (and myself) to know how to program, it takes quite a bit of know-how before students can make their stories and ideas come to life.  The intuitive interface of tools like Moglue let students focus on breathing life into their creations and not on the technology tools used to build them.  Tools like Moglue are wonderful for the classroom where students are often short on time and resources (someone to teach them programming).  Because the interface is so easy to use, students can focus on telling a story, releasing their inner artist, and letting their creativity shine.

Students (or classes) can use Moglue to:

  • Tell a fractured fairy tale
  • Create a choose your own adventure story
  • Demonstrate science concepts in an interactive “glossary”
  • Create a class dictionary of math, science, economics or geography words
  • Write creatively
  • Create an interactive “textbook”
  • Create an illustrated dictionary for a second language
  • Create an interactive “travel-the-world” geography book
This is a neat way for students to publish their work and share with others!

Tips: The Moglue builder can be downloaded on Mac or Windows computers and has a great tutorial to get your students started!

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

Draw a Stickman

Kelly Tenkely2 Comments on Draw a Stickman6163 views
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!

Zimmer Twins: New site just for schools!

Kelly Tenkely1 Comment on Zimmer Twins: New site just for schools!6643 views
Read my previous mentions of the Zimmer Twins here. 
What it is:  The Zimmer Twins movie maker is one of my favorite classroom tools.  Recently, they added a Zimmer Twins at School site that has extra goodies built-in that make it an even sweeter deal for the classroom.  Yesss. I love it when that happens.  On the Zimmer Twin site, students can create really impressive cartoon animations (seriously this is saturday morning cartoon quality). Who are the Zimmer Twins, you might ask?  Edgar and Eva Zimmer are 12-year-old twins who appear normal but have developed psychic powers.  Strange things began to happen when the twins adopted a black cat named 13.  On the Zimmer Twins website, students can create their own cartoon movie endings to a story starter or create their own animated movie from scratch.  Students can create and edit movies solo or “Collab-o-write” and work together creating a collaborative movie.
With the free school account, teachers can add 5 students, make 12 movies, visit a profile page for each student and teacher, and have the ability to moderate content.  Very handy for classroom use!  In the past, I had to create an account for every student, work out how to keep track of everyone’s creations and make sure we could share with each other.  Thanks to the new school account, all of this can be handled easily right within one account!
How to integrate the Zimmer Twins School into the classroom:  Your students are going to love this site!  They can direct and produce their very own animated movies.  The easiest way to start using Zimmer Twins in the classroom, is to use it as a story starter.  Students can watch a “starter” video and finish the story however they would like.  The first time you introduce the site, it might be fun to complete a video as a class.  Then students can take over and create their own ending to a Zimmer Twins movie.  These video clips make excellent story starters for journal writing even if you can’t take the time to make it into an actual video.  To use as a story starter, show the beginning of the short animation to your students on an interactive whiteboard or projector, then let students take over on classroom computers, working together, or writing a journal entry.  After your students are familiar with the Zimmer Twins website, they can start a story from scratch.  Students could direct “screen plays” of their writing, as a way to publish their finished work.  Zimmer Twins would make an excellent alternative to the traditional book report.  Students could create a movie where the main character is being interviewed, the story is being summarized, or retold.  Students could also create movies about historical events, describing a science experiment or concept, in math as a story problem, to demonstrate understanding of character education or for vocabulary practice.  My students have really enjoyed creating movies to show what they have learned on any topic, it is always a sure winner!  Are you looking for new ways to engage your students? Why not create a Zimmer Twins original yourself to introduce a new topic.  If you are looking for more great ideas for using Zimmer Twins in your classroom, be sure to check out the lesson plans on the teacher page, there are some good ones.
Tips: Zimmer Twins School also offers a VIP account with lots of extras including the ability to add 40 students, make unlimited movies, open comments, write blog posts, write polls, enable/disable student comments on videos. Right now a month-long VIP membership is FREE!  You can get a year membership for $89.95.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Zimmer Twins School in  your classroom!

Mastery Connect Widget: Common Core Standards at Your Fingertips

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Mastery Connect Widget: Common Core Standards at Your Fingertips3174 views
What it is:  That serendipity that I spoke of yesterday continues today.  Mastery Connect just keeps getting better and better, this recent little goodie is very handy.  Mastery Connect has released a little widget that can be embedded on any blog or website.  The Mastery Connect app sits neatly on your sidebar until you are ready to reference a Common Core standard and then *BAM* just like that it is at your beck and call.  SO handy I tell you!  The app has all Language Arts and Mathematical standards in an easy-to-use little website widget.  You can catch a glimpse of this widget app in my sidebar —->

How to integrate the Mastery Connect App into the classroom:  At Anastasis Academy, we use the Common Core standards as a rough framework and guide of where to take learning next.  We don’t constrain students to just one grade level of standards (they are all developing skills and mastery at different rates, we move as students are ready to move).  Because we don’t use ANY boxed curriculum, the standards act as an outline and guide through learning.  The Mastery Connect App is a great little help for students, teachers and parents.  The widget makes it easy to embed in a classroom blog, website or wiki.  Just copy and paste the code and the widget is there for you when you need it.

Tips: Make sure to check out the rest of Mastery Connect!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Mastery Connect App in  your classroom!

Oddizzi: where the world comes to life

Kelly Tenkely5 Comments on Oddizzi: where the world comes to life3747 views

What it is:  I love those serendipitous moments in life where the stars seem to align and everything that comes your way is tailor made to meet your needs.  This resource filled those needs for me this week!  At Anastasis, our primary students are working on an inquiry unit about how transportation has changed over time and how transportation is used in different locations in the world.  What should appear in my inbox than a little note from the people over at Oddizzi inviting me to take a look at their content.  Serendipitous I tell you.  Oddizzi is a paid-for service but they have sample content on their site to give you a taste of what you can expect.  That sample content is free and has made my day.  It may make yours too, you should head over and have a look!  Oddizzi brings the world to life in a way I have seen few other resources pull off.  Students have access to their very own interactive map where they can view places, physical features, global features, places of interest, my story and class pals.  Students can click on each feature on the map to learn more in popup bubble.  The content below the map is rich including student-friendly text, videos, “secret” facts, images and more.  Oddizzi is a great way to teach about geography, global issues, math, citizenship and multicultural topics.  One feature that I have found to be really useful is the “Sneak-a-Peak” option which condenses a page of content down to one page of easy to read sentences.  Perfect for differentiating for your different reading levels while maintaining a topic thread for the whole class.  Odd and Izzi are fun characters that lead students through the site revealing hidden secrets as they go.

How to integrate Oddizzi into the classroom:  Oddizzi is a fantastic way for students to explore geography and culture.  Use Oddizzi sample content to introduce a lesson or unit, as a place for students to gather research, or as a center activity on classroom computers.  In the Sample Content you will find information on Egypt, transportation in India, Rivers and Games (flags from around the world and a game about Egypt).

Oddizzi is a great place to spur interest in geography and encourages students to learn more.  We will use the Transport in India content to help students think about questions they can ask about how transportation is used in other countries.

Geography is a subject that is often overlooked in schools in the United States.  Oddizzi helps bridge the gap between geography and other disciplines such as reading, writing, communicating, math, social studies, history, etc.  No excuses!

Use Oddizzi as a starting point for students to gather facts, information and gain a general understanding of geography and culture.  Students can use that information to create a poem about the country or location.  At Anastasis, @leadingwlove did an incredible project with students where they each chose a country they wanted to learn more about.  After learning about the country, they wrote a poem.  Each made a large thumbprint on an 8.5 x 11 piece of paper and inside the thumbprint left a negative space of the outline of the country.  They wrote their poems on the lines of the fingerprint.  The result was incredible!  Students learned a lot, practiced writing poetry and created a masterpiece to boot!  Since our students are in a one-to-one iPad environment, they took this a step further and took pictures of their finished products and added special photo effects to make a one-of-a-kind digital masterpiece for their e-portfolios.  SO awesome!  You can see the beginning of one of these poems below…

Tips: In the subscription version of Oddizzi, you can connect with other classes around the globe in a secure learning environment.  This allows your students to send online postcards to other students around the world so that they can learn first hand what life is like around the globe.  Neat! A curriculum zone offers teachers resources for integrating Oddizzi across multiple disciplines for transdiciplinary learning.  In addition, the subscription version has “Over to you” where students can contribute content to the site.  If you are interested in testing out these additional features, request a free trial of Oddizzi for your class here.

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

Mangahigh: k-12 math games

Kelly Tenkely6 Comments on Mangahigh: k-12 math games4159 views

What it is:  The title of this post is a little underwhelming- I had a hard time expressing ALL that this site does in one line.  Mangahigh is a game based learning site where students can learn all about math. What is unique about Mangahigh math learning games is the way that the learning topics are addressed.  These aren’t your typical drill/skill math games that only address the four basic operations or introductory algebra skills.  The games adapt in difficulty to student levels as they play.  Games continue to challenge students without getting too difficult too quickly and frustrating kids.  The Mangahigh games encourage students to observe, hypothesize, test, evaluate and conclude. All games are based on the Common Core standards making it easy to integrate the games into your current curriculum.  Teachers get their very own login to Mangahigh where they can assign challenges, track student progress and use the games as a form of formative assessment.  The mathematics topic in Mangahigh are geared for elementary, middle and high school students (I am a big fan of site that meet a variety of ages and needs!).

How to integrate Mangahigh into the classroom:  Mangahigh is a great way to shake up your math classroom while injecting it with a big dose of fun, discovery and challenge.  The best way to use Mangahigh is in a one-to-one setting where each student has access to the Mangahigh site.  This makes it easy for students to work at their own pace and for you to track progress.

Mangahigh would be a great way to tailor what your students are working on so that each child is getting challenged at the level they need.  Use the built-in analytics to help inform decisions about where to go next with your students.

Don’t have access to a one-to-one environment?  Don’t discount Mangahigh yet.  The site could be used in a one or two computer classroom as a math center.  Rotate your students through the center throughout the week.  Those who have computers at home can continue the learning there.  Mangahigh would be a great way for students to continue their learning.

Tips: Do you have a pen pal or collaborating school?  Mangahigh will let your students engage in a Fai-To where they can have a friendly little math smack down competition.

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

Encyclopedia of Life: podcasts, videos, images, activities

Kelly Tenkely2 Comments on Encyclopedia of Life: podcasts, videos, images, activities3450 views

What it is:  The Encyclopedia of Life (eol) is a beautiful website that celebrates the biodiversity of life.  On the eol website, find podcasts where students can discover the diversity of life five minutes and one species at a time.  Students can dig deeper into their learning with extra features like “Meet the Scientist”, “Educational Materials” or “Extras”.  The “Extras” include Google Earth tours, videos, audio out-takes, images and contributions from listeners.  Podcasts can be subscribed to via RSS or iTunes.  The Encyclopedia of Life even provides a podcast guide for educators to use!

Teachers can create customized “Field Guides” on the eol website.  These guides are collections of text and images from the eol website to fit your classroom needs.

Students can participate in their very own BioBlitz activities where they are led in observation of biodiversity in their own backyard.

The Tools page has great extra interactives and tools for students to use as they learn about life on earth. Find tools such as a Cool Iris eol plugin, Google Earth Species quizzes and Life Desk where students can create and contribute to eol.

How to integrate Encyclopedia of Life into the classroom:  The Encyclopedia of Life is a gorgeous site for students to explore biodiversity.  Students can engage with audio, video, images and activities to learn more about life on Earth.

My favorite part of the site is the BioBlitz activities that lead students through discovering biodiversity in their own backyard.  These activities teach students to be careful observers, respectful of life and encourage curiosity and discovery.  Choose a BioBlitz activity to complete in the school yard with your students.  Use the eol site to learn about the different species you find.  Students will love the image and audio collections here!

Are you studying a specific species in your class? Create your own classroom field guides.  Better yet, put students in charge of this job.  Split students into groups, each group can create a field guide to share with the rest of the class based on a species. 

Tips: You have to login in order to create field guides on the Encyclopedia of Life.  All content can be viewed without a login.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Encyclopedia of Life in  your classroom!

Ever wondered what 10,000 young people could do to solve some of the world’s greatest problems?

Kelly Tenkely1 Comment on Ever wondered what 10,000 young people could do to solve some of the world’s greatest problems?3129 views

My Twitter friend Ewan McIntosh recently shared an incredible opportunity for involving students in solving real world problems.  I love putting kids creative minds to problems that keep us all wondering. I’m always so impressed with the unique approach that children take to problems.  Kids don’t have the same life filters that we do.  Some assumptions we make about the way things have to be done don’t exist for kids. They are free of those.

Ewan explains how your students can be involved wonderfully so I won’t reinvent the wheel:

“At TEDxLondon, BLC, Naace and a few other events this summer I asked if people wanted to join me in trying to encourage more curricula that were based less on students solving the irrelevant, contrived pseudo problems given to them in textbooks, and based more on finding great, real world problems that need solved.

A superb opportunity for action has come along.

Ever wondered what 10,000 young people could do to solve some of the world’s greatest problems? We want to know for the world’s most important ICT event, ITU Telecom World 11, by gathering young people’s vision for the future on world2011.us.

The October 24-27 event is the flagship meeting of the world’s telecoms industries, brought together by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the specialised United Nations agency responsible for information and communication technologies. In the run up to the event, and during it, we’ll be showcasing the ideas of young people, aged 8-18, alongside the debates, panels and corridor discussions of these influential delegates.

I’ve been at so many events recently that have either totally lacked the student voice, or made third party reference to it through second-hand reportag from their teachers. This is a real chance for your students to make a global impact on problems that matter, wherever they are.

It’s a once-in-a-lifetime real world project-based learning opportunity, that ties into most teachers’ curriculum at any given point in the year.

We’re providing some brief points of inspiration to get you started, over the seven key themes, and will open up a wiki space today where teachers can collaborate and add to each other’s resources on the areas.

By October 24, we hope to have videos, photos, blogs and examples or prototypes of what young people believe might help solve challenges on their own doorstep. Sign up your class, school or district to begin sharing the ideas of your students. We want you to tell us how technology could be harnessed to:

To take part, you just have to sign up your interest, and from there you’re able to submit posts to the project.”  -via http://edu.blogs.com

 

Way cool!  Thanks for sharing Ewan!