Category: Grade Level

Tar Heel Reader

Kelly Tenkely1 Comment on Tar Heel Reader3470 views

What it is: Tar Heel Reader is an excellent website that is “a collection of free, easy-to-read, and accessible books on a wide range of topics. Each book can be speech enabled and accessed using multiple interfaces (i.e. switches, alternative keyboards, touch screens, and dedicated AAC devices). The books may be downloaded as slide shows in PowerPoint, Impress, or Flash format.”  There are hundreds of books on a variety of topics.  In addition to the ready-made books, you and your students can create your own Tar Heel Readers.  Students can add pictures to their readers from Flickr or by uploading their own images.  Each of the stories can be read silently, or read to students with a child, male, or female voice (computer).

How to integrate Tar Heel Reader into the classroom:  Tar Heel Reader is a great place for beginning or struggling readers and English language learners.  Each of the stories has the option to be read silently or read aloud.  Use Tar Heel Reader to create custom stories to motivate your struggling readers.  You can include pictures of people they know, subjects they love, and make them a character in the story.  The stories can be read online or downloaded in multiple formats.  Because the stories can be downloaded as PowerPoint presentations, they can be opened in Apple’s Keynote and put on an iPod (Nano, Classic, or Touch) for mobile reading.  Students will love searching the Flickr collection and creating their own stories on Tar Heel Reader.  Older students can create books for younger grades describing science concepts (think weather, food chain, plant cycle, etc.).  This is also a great site for students to use during National Poetry month (April) to create poetry.  Use Tar Heel Readers as a ‘big book’ that your class can read together using an interactive whiteboard or a projector.  Set up a reading listening center during silent reading time with Tar Heel Reader on your classroom computers.  

 

Tips: Create a favorites page for your students.  Although the site has been created for beginning readers, some books may be inappropriate for your students.  There is a section of books for teens that are beginning readers.  Note: to create a book of your own you will need to register for free.  You will need an invitation code.  I requested a code in the comment section and got a response within 10 minutes of my comment.  You can send me a request Tweet http://twitter.com/ktenkely and I will send you an invitation code.

 

I learned about this site from Larry Ferazzlo’s excellent blog.  Thanks for highlighting this great site Larry!

 

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Tar Heel Reader in your classroom.

Teacher Led Interactive Whiteboard

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Teacher Led Interactive Whiteboard2737 views

What it is: Teacher Led IWB is a collection of resources for use with an interactive whiteboard.  This is an outstanding collection of 46 math tools and games, 3 geography maps and map makers, 6 English tools and games, and two multipurpose games.  The collection is visually appealing and helps teach key concepts visually in each content area.  There are too many great resources to go in depth here, I recommend heading over to Teacher Led IWB and taking a look right now!

How to integrate Teacher Led IWB into the classroom:  This collection is VERY impressive.  The tools and games are perfect for whole class instruction and practice in math, geography, language arts, and creating custom activities for other subjects.  Most of the tools are designed for the elementary classroom but there are some that can be used in middle school as well.  

 

Tips: If you have an interactive whiteboard, go to Teacher Led now and check out these awesome resources!  

 

 

Leave a comment and tell us which of the Teacher Led resources you have used in your classroom.

Selenia Science Comics

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Selenia Science Comics3123 views

 

What it is:  Selenia Science Comics is a fun way for students to learn about science concepts through investigations linked to comics.  The comics and investigations focus on science inquiry and materials and their properties.  Downloadable resources are provided with information on learning outcomes, background to support scientific inquiry, scientific principles behind the experiments, guidance on the investigation, and an equipment list.  Each of the investigations is linked to a online comic that poses a problem which the student is invited to solve.  There are six  comics with investigations including investigating dissolving, cooling, glue, leaks, air resistance, and hardness.  The site also features online games for students to play including wordsearches, quizzes, picture Sudoku, and spot the difference (like hidden pictures).  

How to integrate Selenia Science Comics into the classroom:  These Science Comics are an excellent way to get your students interested in science and thinking like a scientist.  Through fun comics, investigations, and experiments students learn about key science concepts in a way that will grab their attention and make science exciting.  Students can read the comics individually, in groups, or as a whole class with a projector or an interacitve whiteboard.  Following the comics, discuss what the problem to be solved is, gather ideas for solving, and perform an investigation as a whole class or in groups to solve the problems.  This solve the mystery approach to science is perfect for students inquisitive minds!  Wordsearches and Quizzes on the Science Comics site are fun for students to complete in a computer lab setting or as a center on classroom computers.  Students can play the picture Sudoku or Spot the Difference individually or broken into teams as a class with an interactive whiteboard.  After students have seen the Selenia Science Comics and performed a few investigations, they can visit a site like Kerpoof or Animoto and create their own science comics about other concepts they are learning.  

 

Tips: Be sure to visit the teacher page for great ideas and downloads of Investigations.

 

 

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Selenia Science Concepts in your classroom.

RCampus

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on RCampus2960 views

 

What it is:  RCampus is a collaborative environment that is a one-stop shop for everything school related.  RCampus utilizes Open Education Management system that makes it easy to build personal and group websites, manage courses, eportfolios, academic communities, build rubrics, connect students with tutors, and a book exchange.  All of these tools are FREE for students and faculty.  This would be a great place to organize your classroom life and keep your students organized.  Everything is integrated making management very simple.  Students stay well informed and communication opportunities grow with RCampus.

How to integrate RCampus into the classroom:  This is an outstanding place to keep your classroom organized and easily managed.  Eportfolios are a great way for students to showcase learning, RCampus makes it easy to communicate, assess, and assist througout the year as students build their portfolios.  Set up courses where you can manage everything from one central location.  Grade, communicate, and keep yourself organized with the RCampus integrated learning and course management.  Rubrics are fast and easy to create and can be printed out or used with the RCampus click to grade system that lets you grade students from the gradebook with just a few clicks.  Students  can use RCampus to find an online tutor and teachers can sign up to be tutors on RCampus.  Trade books with no fees using the RCampus book exchange.  This is a great place to swap books with other teachers and students.  RCampus has excellent tools for communicating with parents, students, grading, and organizing your classroom, check it out!

 

Tips: RCampus is free and open access, easy and quick, highly secure, collaborative, life long, cross campus, comprehensive, and user centric.  It is the total package for classrooms and schools!

 

 

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

Scholastic Story Starters

Kelly Tenkely1 Comment on Scholastic Story Starters3499 views

 

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.

Learning Clip

Kelly Tenkely1 Comment on Learning Clip2669 views

 

What it is:  Learning Clip is a site that I reviewed in Nov. 2008 that I took another look at today and was even MORE impressed than I remembered being the first time I saw it.  Learning Clip is a collection of interactive whiteboard resources for primary math.  Resources and activities include topics such as: using and applying math, understanding numbers, number facts, calculating, understanding shape, measuring, and handling data.  Each activity is interactive and encourages students involvement and discovery in math.  Each activity comes with a brief description of the activity, a pdf of notes that accompany the activity, the age appropriateness, and a corresponding worksheet that can be printed out.  Each topic has several sub-topics and each sub-topic has several interactive activities.  When an activity is loaded, a video clip explaining the math concept will play.  Each activity includes a game or interactive activity space for students to practice what they are learning.

How to integrate Learning Clip into the classroom:  Learning Clip is an outstanding resource for interactive math activities!  The video clips help students understand the math concept that can be practiced in an interactive environment.  This site is perfect for use with an interactive whiteboard and whole class or small group instruction.  Students can take turns interacting with the content to strengthen understanding of math concepts.  Learning clip could also be successfully used in a computer lab or on classroom computers for individual student learning and practice.  One thing that Learning Clip has added since I visited last is the ability to choose what currency you would like students to practice with in the Money activities.  This site was created in the UK so this feature makes it very user friendly for us Yanks. 🙂    The activities are all wonderful!

 

Tips:  Registration is required but it is free.  If you create a username and password, consider creating one that is class friendly.  This way if you do decide to use the activities in the lab setting, students will be able to logon and access activities easily.

 

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

Telescopic Text

Kelly Tenkely1 Comment on Telescopic Text3609 views

 

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

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Magnetic Poetry2427 views

 

 

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

Kelly Tenkely4 Comments on Spell with Flickr2624 views

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.

TutPup

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on TutPup2220 views

 

What it is:   TutPup is an outstanding, free math and spelling practice website.  At TutPup students can compete in fun, educational games against kids from all over the world live.  The site reminds me a lot of the World Math Day competition.  Students are matched up with other students from around the world where they play fact games and compete in real time to see who best knows their stuff.  I love that TutPup is available to students all year long (unlike the World Math Day site), it doesn’t collect personal information about students, and there are several games to choose from each with multiple levels.  TutPup helps students build math skills in the areas of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, algebra, and a mixture of those skills.  TutPup also helps students build spelling skills with a spelling game, students listen to a word and have to spell it before their opponent.  The site is highly motivating, takes into account different learning levels, and builds a variety of skills.

How to integrate TutPup into the classroom: My students absolutely love this website.  Any time they can take part in a little friendly competition they are ready to compete.  The great thing about TutPup is that it can be differentiated for your different levels of learners.  Each student can play games at their own ability level.  This keeps the lower math students engaged and feeling successful and the higher level students challenged enough to hold their interest.  These types of sites have my students asking, “can I play this game at home too?”   When have you ever had a student ask if they could practice math or spelling facts at home?!  They truly love the competition of this site and get the added benefit of increasing their math fact recall skills.  Use TutPup as a math center in the classroom where students can practice math facts, or a practice center in the literacy block for additional spelling practice.  This is also a fun whole class activity with an interactive whiteboard or projector, students can call out the answers to the questions as a class for the teacher to enter.  You won’t have to assign this site for homework, students will ask to play from home.  Tell parents about this site as an alternative to flash card math fact practice.  

 

Tips:  TutPup offers teacher accounts and student accounts for free.  However, right now their are no available login ID’s.  I contacted TutPup about this dilemma and they are working on a solution.  In the mean time, students can access all the games as a guest player.  I’ll update this post when TutPup has solved the registration issues. 

 

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