Tag: narrated

The Secret Annex

Kelly Tenkely6 Comments on The Secret Annex3110 views

What it is: The Secret Annex lets students travel back in time to Anne Frank’s hiding place.  Students can explore Anne’s house in a super cool 3D interactive environment.  The Secret Annex gives students an authentic feel for the place where Anne wrote her diary while listening to stories of everyone who lived in the hiding place.  In addition to the 3D hiding place, students can review historical archive material about the war and view unique TV broadcasts where memories are shared.

How to integrate The Secret Annex into the classroom: The Secret Annex is about the closest students can come to traveling through time and experiencing the hiding place.  The site is incredible in its attention to detail.  Each room can be explored with narration describing the room.  The Secret Annex is an excellent addition to any classroom studying World War II, reading the Diary of Anne Frank or studying Nazi Germany.

Explore the Secret Annex as a class using an interactive whiteboard or projector-connected computer for a virtual field trip.  After exploring as a class, allow students to dig deeper into the site learning about all of the guests of the hiding place on classroom computers or in a computer lab setting.

If you are reading the Diary of Anne Frank as a class, use the Secret Annex as a support tool and visual aid so students can picture where Anne composed her diary.  The site does a fantastic job of capturing the feelings of fear, hope, anxiety and relief.

Ask students to imagine that they were hiding in the hideaway.  Use The Secret Annex as a writing prompt for students to explore the feelings, attitudes and observations in diary or journal form.

Tips: Be sure to visit the “This Site” page where you will find more historical information about Anne Frank, a timeline of Anne’s life, student guides to help students who are learning about World War II and teaching materials from the Anne Frank House.

Thank you to Ryan for sending me to this site, I truly have the best readers!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using  The Secret Annex in your classroom!

Awesome Stories

Kelly Tenkely1 Comment on Awesome Stories3596 views

What it is:   Awesome Stories is a neat website that looks to me like it could be the future of text books.  Awesome Stories has great primary source materials separated by categories such as biographies, disasters, trials, flicks, history, inspiration, religion and sports.  Throughout the text there are hyperlinks to additional content.  The links are separated by color so you know that when you see a certain color it will open a primary source  image, video, narration, slide shows, artifact, manuscript, document, etc.  You can become a member of Awesome Stories for free, when you do you will gain access to additional features like an extensive image data base, narrated stories, lesson plans, and a free newsletter from Awesome Stories.  This is essentially an interactive textbook.  I love that the site hits different learning styles in its presentation of information.

How to integrate Awesome Stories into the classroom:    Awesome Stories would be a great supplement to traditional text books.  It makes finding primary source materials easy!  With the audio clips, narration, video, and slide shows linked right within the reading material, students are going to get a much richer understanding of a topic or material being studied.  I love that struggling readers can have all the text narrated to read along with.  Many of the videos, audio, and slide shows would be excellent to share with the whole class using a projector or interactive whiteboard.  

 

Tips:  Sign up for free to see the full scope of Awesome Stories, you will be amazed at the amount of content here!  The lesson plans to use with the site are wonderful!

 Leave a comment and share how you are using Awesome Stories in your classroom.