vocabulary – Page 3 – iLearn Technology

Save the Words

September 3, 2010September 3, 2010Kelly Tenkely4 Comments3247 views

What it is: Save the Words is a site that celebrates words by “saving” words that are becoming forgotten and left behind in the English language. I learned about the site today from @BookChook on her wonderful literacy blog. The site has a simple premise, words are displayed graphically, when your roll your mouse over them they call out to you “pick me”, clicking on a word displays the definition, part of speech, and a contextual example of the word. Signing up on the site allows you to adopt words. I love the mission of this site, on the f.a.q. page they state that “Words are the cornerstone of language. The more words we have, the richer our vocabulary. Words allow us to communicate precisely. Without the right word to describe something, well…we’d be speechless.” So true, words bring so much color to language, it is a shame to use the same words over and over. I am certainly guilty of this in my overuse of words like fantastic, outstanding, wonderful, amazing, great, nice, fun, etc. in blog posts. Surely there are many more appropriate words that describe the tool I am reviewing more precisely, but we become lazy in language and use words that are easy and we don’t have to think about.

How to integrate Save the Words into your curriculum: Save the Words is a site with a beautiful goal, preserving words to keep language rich and powerful. Most of the words on the site are new to me, but I was surprised at how many of them I could make an educated guess about meaning based on what I already know about words. Use Save the Words in your classroom (at any age) to enrich your students vocabulary, help them identify word patterns and meaning clues, and to help them appreciate words. Choose a word to adopt each day as a class using a class account (adopting a word requires an email address). Commit to using the word at some point during the day. My elementary age students loved learning new words, especially words that they found out parents and other teachers didn’t know. They become the experts. In my class, I often had a secret word of the day. I would casually mention what the secret word was at some point in the morning. Throughout the day if I needed my student’s attention I would ask for the secret word, immediately students were silent with their hands raised to give me the word. Save the Words would be the perfect place to draw those secret words from.

Students could also keep a journal or word list of all of the words they have adopted, I could see this being especially popular with the Webkins age group. The words are often difficult, but I don’t think that is any reason to exclude them from the classroom vocabulary!

Today I adopted the word antipelargy: reciprocal or mutual kindness; love and care of children.

Tips: You can sign up for a word of the day delivered directly to your email on Save the Words.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Save the Words in your classroom!

Storybook Web

August 2, 2010Kelly Tenkely3 Comments4020 views

What it is: Storybook Web is “based on popular children’s stories by authors Scoular Anderson, Debi Gliori, Mairi Hedderwick and Frank Rodgers.” There are a number of fun activities on this site including the ability to listen to the author’s reading excerpts from their stories and answering questions about how they came up with ideas for writing. Students can choose from one of eight stories, each story has a related game, word bank activity, and videos/audio for reading the story and interacting with the author.

How to integrate Storybook Web into your curriculum: Storybook Web is a fun way for students to interact with stories, making connections to the authors of the stories and the themes that they are reading about. This site helps students think like an author. It gives them an inside look at how authors think about writing. Use this site as an introduction to a writing activity. Students can watch the author videos and get an inside look at the process that a writer goes through. This can be done using a projector connected computer or interactive whiteboard. Storybook Web would also make a nice addition to a writing center on classroom computers. When I taught second grade, I set up an “editing and publishing” center on my classroom computers. Here I gave students access to an online dictionary, thesaurus, word processor/publishing program, and Read Write Think. Storybook Web would be an excellent addition to a writing center. Students can go to be inspired, encouraged in the writing process, and given a place to practice their own writing. I like the word bank on Storybook Web, word choice is hard for beginning writers. By interacting with the word bank activity on Storybook Web, students will begin to think about their own word choice. You may want students to go through their own writing and pick out words that they would add to their word bank. I have found that activities like this make students think about the words they are using. Often, students will self-edit and find richer vocabulary to use in their writing.

Tips: This is an easy website for emergent readers and writers to navigate. Students can choose to have the site narrated for them or they can turn the audio off and read on their own.

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

Trick.ly

June 1, 2010Kelly Tenkely11 Comments4134 views

What it is: There are several url shortening tools out there that let you shrink down a cumbersome url into something more manageable for sharing. Trick.ly is a url shortener with an added feature: it can be password protected. When you share the url, you can add a clue and a password that has to be used in order for the shared website to be accessed. You may be wondering why you would want to password protect a url in the classroom, I’m glad you asked…

How to integrate Trick.ly into the classroom: I am constantly sharing shortened url’s with my students, it makes it easy to get all my students to the same website quickly. Trick.ly adds the ability to password protect the url. This could add a layer of learning and fun to accessing websites in the classroom. Give your students a Trick.ly shortened url with a secret clue that helps students “unlock” the website. For example, if you are using National Geographic Maps website with your students, don’t just send them to the website, give them a clue that is related to the website such as “Capital of Colorado”. Students have to correctly solve the puzzle to unlock access to the game. The password “Denver” would provide students with access to the website. Create Trick.ly shortened url’s with math, geography, history, spelling, vocabulary, science, or foreign language problems built in. Make the clue to solve related to the end website that students will access. Kids enjoy solving problems, adding a puzzle to a website gives students a sense of anticipation for the activity they will be completing. Trick.ly urls take just seconds to create, they are a fast, easy way to direct your students to a website.

Tips: Trick.ly would be a great way to share websites and web pages that you create for your classroom. We have a school Facebook and Twitter account. If I wanted to share pictures I took of our school carnival, I could share them with Trick.ly, adding a layer of protection.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Trick.ly in your classroom.

Edistorm

May 18, 2010May 18, 2010Kelly Tenkely5 Comments4818 views

What it is: The name Edistorm is a mash-up of the name Thomas Edison and brainstorm, it is inspired by Edison’s idea factories. Edistorm is an incredible brainstorming and collaboration tool that, on the surface, reminds me of Wallwisher. Edistorm has some additional features and abilities that make it very useful in the classroom. Just like Wallwisher, you brainstorm and collaborate using virtual sticky notes. Edistorm gives you a place to organize ideas in a real-time interactive wall. Virtual sticky notes can teach have their own color and can be organized in vertical or horizontal groupings. Edistorms can be created independently or with others in a collaborative effort. Edistorm features an idea bot that works at the bottom of the screen offering suggested ideas based on what students add to the sticky notes in the work space. There are a variety of bots including a rhyming bot, thesaurus, and related words. Public and solo Edistorms are free to create, premium accounts are available for private Edistorms.

How to integrate Edistorm into the classroom: Edistorm offers an exceptional opportunity for students to brainstorm, collaborate, and group ideas. Students can use Edistorm to brainstorm ideas for writing, research, for grouping ideas, and collaborating on group projects. Create an Edistorm for your students and ask them to group like ideas, sort, and expand on thoughts. This could be done for any historical event, literature, science concept, and even phonics. Students could practice spelling by typing out their spelling words along with a sentence or synonyms on sticky notes. Then, they can group words by spelling pattern or common phoneme blends. Create an Edistorm of sticky notes with English words and sticky notes with a foreign language word on them. Students can work together to group words with their meanings. In math, create Edistorms with word problems on one color of sticky note and answers on another set of sticky notes. Students can work to create groups of problems and their solutions. Edistorm can be used for whole class activities using an interactive whiteboard, the class can brainstorm together and collect ideas or use the grouping feature in an activity created by the teacher or students.

Tips: Edistorm requires an email address for sign up. If you teach younger students, you may want to create classroom Edistorm sessions that you have control over.

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

Stage’d

May 4, 2010May 4, 2010Kelly Tenkely10 Comments4843 views

What it is: I am constantly learning about cool new website tools for the classroom from my PLN (Personal Learning Network), today I learned about an animated comic creator called Stage’d from fellow Blogging Alliance member @MrR0gers. Stage’d is a tool that helps students to tell digital stories in a new 3-d way. Students can create a stage full of characters and dialogue as if they are directing their own digital play. They can choose characters, costumes, animations, set design and provide characters with dialog. When the 3-d comic has been saved, it can be emailed or linked to with a unique url. Stage’d is perfect for use in any classroom, to save a comic requires no personal identifying information or even an email address. All students have to do is type in the name of the director (first name only or a pseudonym).

How to integrate Stage’d into the classroom: Stage’d is a seriously fun creation tool, students are going to love directing their own 3-d comic plays. Stage’d makes a great digital story telling tool.

Students can:

Publish their own fiction (or non-fiction) writing pieces as a 3-d play
Re-tell a story to demonstrate comprehension
Illustrate vocabulary words
Illustrate historical events
Create mock public service announcements
Create mocumentaries
“Interview” an important person of interest
Create short persuasive video commercials
Illustrate story problems in math
Practice a foreign language dialogue and vocabulary

Stage’d is very easy to use and the results are absolutely fantastic. Create your own Stage’d creations to introduce a new topic or concept to your students. This is a fun introduction that will grab their attention in a hurry.

Tips: The creators of Stage’d are constantly adding new features and options so check back often.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Stage’d in your classroom.

The Zimmer Twins

March 25, 2010Kelly Tenkely1 Comment5445 views

What it is: 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. Zimmer Twins runs well in Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari making it easy to get to and use in any classroom setting. You will need Flash 8 (or higher) installed for the Zimmer Twins to work properly.

How to integrate Zimmer Twins 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: Students can create a movie on Zimmer Twins without registering; however, they will not be able to save their creation. Creating an account requires an email address. If this presents a problem in your classroom you can do a few things: 1. create a classroom account that every student logs into and saves their videos on. Students will need to include their first name or a class number in the title of their video to differentiate it from others in the class. 2. Set up an account for each student using your email account. You will have to check this email account to provide your students with their passwords. 3. Ask parents to set up accounts for their kids to use at school.

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

Fotobabble

March 23, 2010Kelly Tenkely10 Comments6205 views

What it is: Fotobabble seems to be everywhere I am lately, and now that I have had a minute to play with it, I can see why. Just upload a photo, record your voice, and send or embed away. It is very simple to use and has really fun results! The only downside for use in education are: 1. on the home page of Fotobabble you can see other members creations, at the time of writing they are all clean but I would hate to send my kids here without knowing exactly what content they would run into; 2. To use Fotobabble as a student, you must first sign up. This requires an email address 🙁 Which means that under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, that children under the age of 13 cannot sign up for an account on the site for their own creations. I would love to see Fotobabble create an education version that can be used by students under 13 if monitored and signed up by an adult, and without the other user generated content on the home page. That being said, Fotobabble is a fantastic tool for the classroom.

How to integrate Fotobabble into the classroom: Fotobabble can be used in a variety of ways in the classroom. For students over 13, it is a great creation tool. Students could take pictures, or find creative commons images that illustrate vocabulary that they are learning and record themselves saying the definition and using the word in a sentence. Students could collect and trade Fotobabble vocabulary with other students in the class and embed them in a blog or wiki to create their own visual talking dictionary. If you teach students younger than 13, have teachers or parent helpers build audio visual dictionaries that can be added to throughout the year. How neat would it be to have a talking, visual word wall?! This would be helpful for math, science, social studies, history, and regular vocabulary words that students learn. The format will be so valuable to your audio and visual learners. Did you take pictures of that field trip? Upload them to Fotobabble and students can record thoughts, observations, and lessons they learned on the field trip. Consider creating a class Fotobabble account that you (the teacher) are in charge of. Upload student illustrations and record a story that they have written using their own voice. This is the perfect type of project to share at parent teacher conference time. Parents can get a good idea of their child’s writing, reading, and fine motor skills all in one spot. If you complete a similar project several times through the year, both students and parents can see the growth and progress that has been made during the school year. Fotobabbles are an outstanding way to send your young students on an Internet scavenger hunt. Along the way, record directions with Fotobabble and embed on your class website, wiki, or blog. Non-readers will be able to listen to, and follow directions for any assignment. Upload a picture of a landmark or map and have students record fun facts that they have learned about the place. Send special messages from your class home to parents in the weekly newsletter. Take a picture of a project that the class has done, or of a fun activity from the week. Students can record a message about upcoming events, fun highlights of the week in learning, and a list of helpers who have signed up for the week. Parents will love hearing their kids give the news updates for the week! Are you wracking your brain for a fun Mother’s/Father’s day activity? Why not record the kids leaving a special message to their parent with a special picture made just for them? Now that is a keepsake!

Tips: Because younger students can’t sign up for their own Fotobabble account, consider creating a class account that you can be in control of. For younger students, having a Fotobabble recording center set up on one of the classroom computers might be appropriate. Since you will control the account, you will be in charge of what content is added by students.

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

Weboword

March 9, 2010March 16, 2010Kelly Tenkely6 Comments3344 views

What it is: It can be really difficult for visual learners to get a good handle on vocabulary. Without good visual aids, the definitions behind words can feel abstract and hard to grasp. Weboword is a fantastic visual vocabulary site that offers students illustrations that help students understand vocabulary. I believe that everyone remembers concepts better when they are surrounded by story. Think about a tsunami. What comes to mind is probably not a word for word definition of the word but images, and stories about tsunamis. You probably think about the destruction that they cause, a story you heard from someone affected by a tsunami. Because we make deeper connections with stories, it only makes sense to offer students vocabulary words with a visual aid that will help them create story references and pictures. Each vocabulary word is accompanied by a sketch of the word, a definition of the word, a history of the word, the pronunciation, and situational uses of the word. There is a limited number of words pictured, but it should help students to build up a stronger vocabulary and word fluency. Each day a new vocabulary word is featured on the Weboword home page. Students can also review past vocabulary words on the “vocabulary” page. Students can complete crossword puzzles based on the Weboword vocabulary.

How to integrate Weboword into the classroom: Vocabulary and word fluency is an important ingredient for strong readers. Begin each day with the newest Weboword vocabulary on your projector or interactive whiteboard. You can subscribe to Webowords free daily updates to get a word each day delivered to you. Because the vocabulary on Weboword is limited, you may not find the specific vocabulary you are looking for. Encourage your students to create their own visualizations and cartoon sketches for the vocabulary they are studying. Weboword is excellent preparation for the SAT’s but can also be used with younger students to build vocabulary. My elementary students really enjoy learning “big kid” words. The advanced vocabulary can make them feel empowered. Webowords is also a great way to spice up student writing, when they have a greater vocabulary base to pull from, their writing will become richer.

Tips: Embed the Weboword widget in your classroom website. Students can get the vocabulary word for the day with one stop.

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

Treasures Reading Supplement

February 16, 2010Kelly Tenkely26 Comments6038 views

What it is: We use the Treasures Reading curriculum (Macmillan McGraw Hill) at the school where I teach. Although there are things I like about this curriculum, one thing that is in need of improvement are the activities provided for students to practice the skills that they are learning. The activities don’t change from 1st-5th grade, are very repetitive, and do not encourage any sort of deeper thinking skills. In an attempt to remedy this for our students, I went through each unit for 1st through 5th grade and pulled out the essential learning components. I found activities that were engaging and required some deeper thinking to supplement what was currently in the curriculum. As I worked to supplement the activities, I looked for a few things: 1. The activity could be completed with the whole class, using an interactive whiteboard or projector, or could be completed as a computer center (for the classroom with 2 or 3 computers). 2. The activities had to meet and reinforce the essential learning. 3. The activities had to be more engaging than what was already suggested.

How to integrate Treasures Reading Supplement into the classroom: These guides are meant to be a supplement for the Treasures Reading Curriculum. They are designed to offer some extra ideas for helping students to practice and solidify learning. You will find a few activities that are meant for offline use such as a whole class bingo game or partner matching games. You will also notice some suggestions for Promethean activities. I created some supplemental flipcharts for our teachers to use that I am happy to share if you can use them. (I hope to have these up on Promethean Planet soon). Many of these activities can be completed as a center activity in the classroom. We don’t always have access to a computer lab of computers. In the classroom with a few computers, set up a weekly rotation so that your students can complete some of the online activities. Some of the games and activities are also appropriate for whole class participation.

In my classroom, I like to play games with my students. I will often split students into teams where the teams will take turns working through a game. Students love the extra layer of competition being timed.

In my reading classroom, I had literacy groups that I met with every day. Each day I met with a new group (those students who were in need of remedial reading met each day of the week). During literacy group time, the group that I was working with read the story for the week, learned and practiced key essential learning together (phonics, grammar, vocabulary) , and worked on building comprehension strategies. While I worked with my smaller literacy groups, the rest of the class worked through independent literacy centers. At the beginning of the week I explained all of the centers for the week. Because my classroom had limited space, I put my centers into colored tubs that rotated around the classroom. Each day a small group of students received a center tub. The tub has all of the necessary supplies and directions for that center. One of my centers always involved the classroom computers. Sometimes the centers were inquiry based, sometimes games, and sometimes additional reading practice. Every week, each student completed each center activity. In the meantime, I was able to work one on one with my literacy groups. This worked really well in my classroom and technology made it easy for students to work at their own level independently.

The guides are below in ebook format using Issuu, they have been separated by grade. Even if you don’t teach the Treasures Curriculum, everything has been arranged by the learning focus, these overlap in most curricula. You may find some great activities that meet your classroom need here:

First Grade:

Second Grade:

Third Grade:

Fourth Grade:

Fifth Grade:

*Note: The fourth and fifth grade spelling lists on Spelling City do not come from the Treasures curriculum. The fourth grade uses Houghton Mifflin and the fifth grade has generated their own lists.

For a list of all of my publications check out my library on Issuu.

Leave a comment and share how you are using the Treasures Reading Supplement in your classroom.

Spelling City: Update

January 29, 2010Kelly Tenkely4 Comments4098 views

What it is: Spelling City is a fabulous site for practicing spelling, I have written about its uses in the classroom before (here and here). Spelling City has just added a new feature that teachers are going to love, the ability to add your own sentences on Spelling City! Now you can customize your spelling lists to fit your needs. For example, if you are studying fish and one of your spelling words is “scales”, the default sentence that Spelling City might offer is “The scales were not giving the weights accurately.” Now as you create a list, you can click on “add” and type a new sentence to fit your classroom needs. The feature is also extremely useful for homonyms (our fifth graders are using this feature this week!). For the teacher created sentences, the audio read of the sentence will be done by a sophisticated voice synthesis.

How to integrate Spelling City into the classroom: Now that Spelling City allows teacher generated sentences, you can customize your lists for students even more. Have students generate sentences for the weeks spelling words and vote on which sentence should be included on Spelling City. This is a great way to involve your students in thinking about word meanings and uses.

Tips: Spelling City has a premium membership that has been approved for funding by Adopt-a-Classroom.org. You can use the Adopt-A-Classroom service to ask for donations to cover premium membership.

Leave a comment and share how you are using Spelling City in your classroom.