Category: For Teachers

Progressive Phonics

Kelly Tenkely6 Comments on Progressive Phonics5357 views

What it is: Progressive Phonics is a fantastic, free all-in-one reading program that I learned about from @rmbyrne on his blog Free Tech for Teachers (honestly, some days I wonder why I bother with a resource sharing blog…he is amazing!)  This site is totally FREE, as in every single download is available for $0, all that is required is registration.  Progressive Phonics provides books that can be read on-screen or printed out.  Books include alphabet books, beginner phonics, intermediate phonics, advanced phonics, and handwriting.  In addition to phonics rules, Progressive Phonics teaches essential sight-words (phonics rule-breakers).  Each book includes a PDF version of the book, and accompanying activity sheets such as handwriting worksheets, a word search puzzle, flash cards, and a five-minute memory game.  If you have access to iPads or iPod’s for your classroom, these FREE phonics books can be downloaded and put into the iBook bookshelf for reading.

How to integrate Progressive Phonics into your curriculum: Phonics is one of those things that a reading program either excels at, or falls flat with.  Using the Treasures reading curriculum, I was always disappointed by the lack of real phonics work and often supplemented with sites like Starfall.  Progressive Phonics is another resource that would make a fantastic supplement.  If you use a standard reading curriculum, take a look at the Progressive Phonics books and align them with your current curriculum.  For example if your current curriculum has students practicing short vowel “a”, find the corresponding phonics rule in Progressive Phonics.  Because these books are free to download, they are excellent for printing out and sending home with students for extra reading practice.  The accompanying printable games, flashcards, and puzzles will keep your students practicing that skill in and out of the classroom.  Books can be printed out and assembled as a traditional book, read on the classroom or lab computers, or transferred onto a mobile device such as the iPad or iPod Touch.  This collection of phonics resources is a must see!

Tips: One thing I really appreciate about this site is that each book comes with a page count and an approximate time to print.  I remember spending hours printing Starfall books on an old school printer, wondering if I would ever finish.  The approximate printing time lets you know what you are in for before you hit print.  Each book is offered in two formats, one is a print friendly version that has been designed to use as little ink as possible.  So smart!

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

Join Me

Kelly Tenkely2 Comments on Join Me2993 views

What it is: Join Me is an incredibly simple way to share your computer screen with others.  It works on both Windows and Mac allowing you to share your screen (and whatever is on it instantly).  The simplicity of this site is brilliant.  If you have even a sparkle of being a “techie” among family, colleagues, or friends, you most likely get regular phone calls asking for your help with something.  The problem: those asking the question don’t usually know enough to accurately articulate what their hang up is.  Join Me is a simple solution, it lets you share screens so that you can see what the problem is and walk them step by step through the solution.  Join Me is also great for the classroom, it lets students and teachers quickly share their screens for instant collaboration, feedback, or virtual meetings.

How to integrate Join Me into your curriculum: In my computer lab, I often wanted to share my screen with a student so that I could share a process with them, or provide them with feedback.  I usually used Apple’s Remote Desktop for this, the only problem was that students couldn’t initiate the shared screen.  Another problem I ran into was Remote Desktop dropping connections or crashing.  Join Me would have made an excellent backup!  With the increased use of technology, Join Me would be a great tool to help students collaborate on homework projects, enabling them to easily share screens and work as if they were in the same room.  Join Me provides a unique URL for the screen share, enables a conference call phone number, an on-screen chat, and the ability to choose a presenter and switch control of the mouse.  Join Me would be an easy way to extend the learning day for your students, or allow a student who is absent to be included in a live lesson (this could be students who are sick, students with a long-term illness, students who are traveling, or students who know they will be attending your classroom after a move).

Tips: When you use Join me, a package is downloaded to your computer to allow it to run.  If you want to use this tool with students, make sure that they have privileges to download and run packages.

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

Graphic Novel Creator: Comic Master

Kelly Tenkely5 Comments on Graphic Novel Creator: Comic Master6057 views

What it is: The Graphic Novel Creator: Comic Master is a portion of the Read Me program (learn about it here).  This is a really cool online comic creator, the interface is fun to use and very intuitive.  It is obviously geared toward students with a great look and even an embedded music player.  I love the details on this site, including the headline “Reading isn’t only in books, it’s everywhere!”.  Using the Graphic Novel Creator, students can create their own multi-page graphic novels with interesting backgrounds, characters, props, and customized text.  The graphic novels can be saved and printed out.

How to integrate Graphic Novel Creator: Comic Master into your curriculum: Graphic novels are becoming increasingly popular reading material, particularly for boys.  They have even the most reluctant readers excited to pull out a book.  Now those kids who love reading graphic novels, can create their own.  A graphic novel is a great way for students to show what they know.  They can create a graphic novel re-tell of a story as a book report, describe a science experiment, re-tell a portion of history with a superhero twist, practice another language by telling a story, even define and demonstrate understanding of vocabulary words.

Tips: Be sure to check out the read me site for great teachers notes, ideas, and additional resources for teaching with the Graphic Novel Creator.  A special thank you to @thebookchook for introducing me to this tool!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Graphic Novel Creator: Comic Master in your classroom!

Read Me

Kelly Tenkely6 Comments on Read Me3628 views

What it is: Do you want your students to become deep thinkers?  Read Me is an incredible set of engaging resources that will have your students thinking deeply about who they are and how learning and thinking is vital to their life.  The resources have been designed to reach 11 to 14-year-old boys, to excite them about reading in and out of the classroom.  I can tell you that as a girl, I am enjoying these resources just as much,  I think that would be true of girls in the 11 to 14 age range as well.  Read Me (by the National Schools Partnership) has created six modules that connect with students at their interest level and teach them how to be reflective, deep thinkers and learners.

This is me- covers an understanding of autobiographical texts in traditional (diary) and modern (blog) contexts.  This is me includes teachers notes and presentations that will help students to explore autobiographical texts and self-expression through blogging.

Sport & me- asks students to explore sports websites and media texts by analyzing their structure and presentation.  Students take on the role of a persuasive sports person and ultimately create their own report or website.

Love 4 me- helps students explore different types of love by using texts from a variety of time periods and genres (including images, short extracts, music, lyrics) as well as in Romeo and Juliet.  Students engage with a range of texts that are thematically linked by love.  The culminating activity here is for students to create their own chat show and to create a collage based on love.  (I’m not sure if 11-14 year old boys would be into this topic…but this one will hook the girls for sure!)

Film + me- students use film trailers and titles to develop an understanding of how meaning is created through a combination of words, images, and sounds.  After students have analyzed film trailers and titles, they are asked to present a novel as a trailer.

Graphics 4 me- this one is my favorite because it comes with an awesome graphic novel tool (learn about it here) Here students explore how graphic novels work and become familiar with the medium and its complexity.  Students can create their own graphic novel online using this tool.

Music in me- students explore songs, their lyrics, and the impact they have on their audience.  As a result, students understand how society is presented through music and the media and stereotypes and attitudes it can help to perpetuate.

How to integrate Read Me into your curriculum: There is so much learning that will happen as a result of these six modules, but at the heart of Read Me is a goal to excite kids about reading.  Read Me has incredible ideas and resources for the language arts/literature/literacy classroom.  Use these resources to connect your students with story, passion, and understanding of how language is used.  There is something for every kid to connect with here.  Each module contains teachers notes, resources, links, and tips.  This is a truly incredible resource and collection for this age group.  Read Me encourages students to understand, analyze, evaluate, apply, and create.

Tips: This site includes a graphic novel creator.  I am writing about it separately because it deserves its own post.  You can find it here.

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

Mo Willem’s Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus Lesson

Kelly Tenkely3 Comments on Mo Willem’s Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus Lesson5000 views

What it is: Isn’t it great when author’s have websites as enchanting as their books?  Mo Willem’s has a collection of wonderful websites starring his characters including my favorite, the Pigeon.  On the Pigeon Presents website, your students will find fun games starring their favorite characters.  They can learn more about Mo Willem’s books, meet the characters he has created, and even watch video interviews where he talks about his love of writing and illustrating.  In the teacher’s section of the site, you will find printable posters for your classroom.  On the Go Mo! site students will find Cat and her friends.  Here students can play games, learn animal sounds, color online, and see Cat the cat’s gallery.  Here students can see pictures that other students have drawn of cat and even submit their own.  My favorite discovery of all: Mo Willem’s Pigeon has a Twitter account!

How to integrate Mo Willem’s Websites into your curriculum: If you are a Mo Willem’s fan like I am, you will be thrilled to introduce your students to his site starring his characters.  Mo Willem’s has been a Caldecott Award honor for several of his books.  His first, in 2004, was Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus.  I used this book to teach my younger students about the Caldecott award, and to help them identify shapes.  Since I was in the computer lab, I taught my students to draw the pigeon using computer drawing applications.  This was a great way for my students to learn how to use digital drawing tools, while creating Caldecott worthy results.  The students pigeon’s always turned out fantastic and looked so much like the original that the kids felt like they too could be Caldecott honorees.  If you are interested in my lesson, you can purchase it here.   Mo Willem’s collection of websites would be a great tie-in to the drawing lesson and help students connect to their favorite characters.

Tips: The videos on the Pigeon Presents Get to Know Mo page are really well done and will give students and inside look at how author’s develop characters.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Mo Willem’s Websites in your classroom!

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Cost of NCLB Testing Info Graphic ($5.3 billion is TOO high)

Kelly Tenkely16 Comments on Cost of NCLB Testing Info Graphic ($5.3 billion is TOO high)15564 views

Lately I have been wondering about how much state testing costs us.  There are a lot of costs involved in standardized testing.  In addition to the cost of administering, grading, and recording the test, there are other less tangible costs such as the impact on learning.  Curious, I sent out a tweet asking if anyone had info on how much testing cost (I was coming up empty in a Google search).  A few of my PLN sent me a link to Stateline.org where I found this:

I knew the numbers would be high, but this is shocking. All of that money per state for testing.  I started wondering what else that money could have been used for and sent out another tweet, this time asking what one thing teachers would want in their classrooms if money was no object.  The info graphic above holds the results.

The info graphic is based on the following numbers (links to data sources):

iPod Touch 4 $229

iPad $499

Average cost of children’s books $21

Soccer ball $10

64 Count Box of Crayola Crayons $5

Exercise ball (to use as chair replacements) $20

Price/square foot for school addition $222

Paraprofessional Salary/year $26,000

Violin $340

I don’t know about you, but every one of those items above feels like a better use of money.

Image links: Pencils, Exercise ball, iPod Touch 4, iPad, Soccer Ball, Crayons, Violin

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Free FETC Virtual Conference

Kelly Tenkely3 Comments on Free FETC Virtual Conference3742 views

What it is: On October 7, 2010, FETC is offering a FREE virtual conference for educators.  The virtual conference will feature new presentations that originated at the FETC live event, with a focus on the latest educational tools, technologies, and services in learning.  Educational experts will be passing on inspiration sharing best practices and successes.  A virtual exhibit hall will put you in touch with exhibitors and let you learn about the newest in hardware, software and solutions, there will even be some free downloads and content.  In the virtual networking lounge you can chat and interact with other educators from around the world. The Keynote presentation for the virtual conference is titled Mobile Learning: The Game Changer for k-12 it will be hosted by Elliott Soloway and Cathleen Norris.  I saw these two present a similarly titled session at ISTE 10 and if it is anything similar, it is definitely worth catching (click here to view my notes from their ISTE 10 session)!

How to integrate FETC Virtual Conference into your curriculum: Okay, so maybe you won’t be integrating the conference itself into your curriculum, but this virtual conference is sure to offer plenty of great ideas, inspiration, and a shot of enthusiasm that will carry into your classroom.  If you teach older students, you might let them sit and listen to the keynote session.  I know my students were always fascinated to find out that educators talk about innovative ideas for learning.  They assume that every teacher wants to teach in the current system.   Most are pleasantly surprised and encouraged to find out the contrary.

Tips: Register for this Free Virtual conference today by clicking here.  Hope to see you all there!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using the Free FETC Virtual Conference in your classroom!

Bloom’s Taxonomy Bloomin’ Tree

Kelly Tenkely16 Comments on Bloom’s Taxonomy Bloomin’ Tree7419 views

Okay, here is my LAST Bloom’s re-imagine (although I’m not promising it is the last that I will come up with, it is just the last I created for my classroom).

Over the past few weeks I have been sharing some of my Boom’s Taxonomy re-imagines.  I created these for my classroom so that I could share Bloom’s with my kids in different ways that would make our classroom fun, but also give them a different way of viewing the information.   Today I am sharing my Bloomin’ Tree.  As I started making my Bloom’s re-imagines, students started coming to me with ideas of how to display the information.  The tree was a student idea and the boy underneath is Lance, who made the suggestion.  (Lance was my personal Dennis the Menace, loved him to pieces!)  Some of you have asked what program I used to create my pictures.  I use Apple’s Pages for almost everything, the Bloom’s Taxonomy was no exception.  I use the free hand drawing tool, the shapes, fill tool, text box, and inspector to make my version of Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Below you will find my original Bloomin’ Tree, along with my digital version.  Many of you have asked for a printable version of these Bloom’s Taxonomy re-imagines, you can now find a bundle of 4 (Bloomin’ Peacock, Um-bloom-ra, Bloomin’ Pinwheel, and Bloomin’ Tree) in my store.  You will get 8 8.5″x11″ posters, this includes the digital version of each.

Digital Bloomin’ Tree

Here are links to the digital resources in my digital Bloomin’ Tree:

Remember:

BBC Skillwise- http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/

Spelling City- http://spellingcity.com

Starfall- http://starfall.com

Discovery Streaming- http://streaming.discoveryeducation.com

Lexipedia- http://lexipedia.com

YouTube- http://youtube.com

Gamegoo- http://www.earobics.com/gamegoo/gooey.html

PBS Kids- http://pbskids.org

Understand:

Into the Book- http://reading.ecb.org

Skype- http://skype.com

Treasures- http://activities.macmillanmh.com/reading/treasures/

Book Adventure- http://bookadventure.org

Twitter- http://twitter.com

Apply:

Kerpoof- http://kerpoof.com

PhotoBooth- Software

Scholastic- http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/learn.jsp

Fotobabble- http://fotobabble.com

Google Earth- http://google.com/earth

Analyze:

Read Write Think- http://readwritethink.org

Cool Iris- http://cooliris.com

Wordle- http://wordle.net

Creaza- http://creaza.com

Mindomo- http://mindomo.com

Evaluate:

Shelfari- http://shelfari.com

Wikipedia- http://wikipedia.com

Think.com- http://think.com

Nota- http://notaland.com

Create:

Pic-Lits- http://piclits.com

Kerpoof- http://kerpoof.com

ZimmerTwins- http://zimmertwins.com

Wiki Spaces- http://wikispaces.com

DomoNation- http://domonation.com

Glogster- http://edu.glogster.com

Creaza- http://creaza.com

Voicethread- http://voicethread.com

Kidblog- http://kidblog.org

Wetpaint- http://www.wetpaint.com

edublogs- http://edublogs.org

Stage’d- http://stagedproject.com/

Garageband- Software

iMovie- Software

 

Bloom’s Taxonomy Bloomin’ Pinwheel

Kelly Tenkely19 Comments on Bloom’s Taxonomy Bloomin’ Pinwheel18475 views

Over the past few weeks I have been sharing some of my Boom’s Taxonomy re-imagines.  I created these for my classroom so that I could share Bloom’s with my kids in different ways that would make our classroom fun, but also give them a different way of viewing the information.   Today I am sharing my Bloomin’ Pinwheel.  As I started making my Bloom’s re-imagines, students started coming to me with ideas of how to display the information.  The pinwheel was a student recommendation.  I think it turned out pretty cute!  Some of you have asked what program I used to create my pictures.  I use Apple’s Pages for almost everything, the Bloom’s Taxonomy was no exception.  I use the free hand drawing tool, the shapes, fill tool, text box, and inspector to make my version of Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Below you will find my original Bloomin’ Pinwheel, along with my digital version.  Many of you have asked for a printable version of these Bloom’s Taxonomy re-imagines, you can now find a bundle of 4 (Bloomin’ Peacock, Um-bloom-ra, Bloomin’ Pinwheel, and Bloomin’ Tree) in my store.  You will get 8 8.5″x11″ posters, this includes the digital version of each.

Here are links to the digital tools in my Boomin’ Pinwheel:

Remember:

BBC Skillwise- http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/

Spelling City- http://spellingcity.com

Starfall- http://starfall.com

Discovery Streaming- http://streaming.discoveryeducation.com

Lexipedia- http://lexipedia.com

YouTube- http://youtube.com

Gamegoo- http://www.earobics.com/gamegoo/gooey.html

PBS Kids- http://pbskids.org

Understand:

Into the Book- http://reading.ecb.org

Skype- http://skype.com

Treasures- http://activities.macmillanmh.com/reading/treasures/

Book Adventure- http://bookadventure.org

Twitter- http://twitter.com

Apply:

Kerpoof- http://kerpoof.com

PhotoBooth- Software

Scholastic- http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/learn.jsp

Fotobabble- http://fotobabble.com

Google Earth- http://google.com/earth

Analyze:

Read Write Think- http://readwritethink.org

Cool Iris- http://cooliris.com

Wordle- http://wordle.net

Creaza- http://creaza.com

Mindomo- http://mindomo.com

Evaluate:

Shelfari- http://shelfari.com

Wikipedia- http://wikipedia.com

Think.com- http://think.com

Nota- http://notaland.com

Create:

Pic-Lits- http://piclits.com

Kerpoof- http://kerpoof.com

ZimmerTwins- http://zimmertwins.com

Wiki Spaces- http://wikispaces.com

DomoNation- http://domonation.com

Glogster- http://edu.glogster.com

Creaza- http://creaza.com

Voicethread- http://voicethread.com

Kidblog- http://kidblog.org

Wetpaint- http://www.wetpaint.com

edublogs- http://edublogs.org

Stage’d- http://stagedproject.com/

Garageband- Software

iMovie- Software

 

Google Me Business Card

Kelly Tenkely4 Comments on Google Me Business Card4838 views

What it is: Google Me Business Card is a free template download from Ji Lee.   The template is a PDF file of a blank Google Search query; enter any name, subject or topic and print out your own customized Google Me Business Card.

How to integrate Google Me Business Cards into your curriculum: These business cards could be used in the classroom during a discussion of digital footprints.  Students can create their own Google Me cards to act as a reminder that what they do online has staying power.  (This is an important reminder for teachers too!)  The cards could also be used as a fun way to assign research topics; enter the topic in the search box and let students draw a card to find out what their assignment is.

Tips: To add your own text: In Acrobat Professional, open the PDF and go to Forms, Form Tools, Text field.  Now you can add a text field to enter your own text.

In Adobe Illustrator or Adobe InDesign, place the card on a new document and type your text with the text tool.

Take a screen shot of the image and import it into a word document program (Pages is my Word Document program of choice) Add a text box over the search box and enter your text.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using the Google Me Business Card in your classroom!