It’s that time of the year again — Spelling Bee!

Spellingcity.com is a great site for helping students get ready for spelling tests.

Words of Arabic origin

After registering (free), teachers can enter their own spelling lists or use one of the 100+ “sample” lists (including “Words of Arabic Origin” and lists by grade level up to grade 8). There are thousands of spelling lists from grade 1 to high school (e.g. SAT prep).

Students can work with spelling lists in three ways — “teach me,” “test me,” or play a game.”  One of the best features of this site is a real human voice which pronounces the words (not your standard “computer generated” voice box!) which means extensive possibilities for using this site to differentiate instruction, teach English language learners as well as differently abled students.

Lists for handwriting practice (3 sizes of lines, capital or cursive) may be printed as well as lists of words.  Parent letters may also be printed to send home.  This site won the “Parents Choice Award” (deserving!).

Just One More Book — Children’s Book Reviews (podcasts)

Just One More Book is a sizable digital collection of podcasts

Just One More Book

reviewing children’s books, as well as author and illustrator interviews and discussions.  Parents of two young daughters, Andrea and Mark explain the purpose of their web site: “The Just One More Book!! podcast is a thrice-weekly audio-on-demand program in which we discuss the children’s books we love and why we love them – recorded in our favourite coffee shop.” 

Podcasts are searchable by authors’ or illustrators’ names and also by “categories” which include, for example, topics, subjects, genres, illustrations (further subdivided: cute, hilarious etc) and values. Sound files are usually 5-12 minutes in length, and play from the web browser without any special plugins.

 

There are literally dozens of authors and illustrators including children’s favorite’s such as Jon Scieszka and Maurice Sendak. They are arranged alphabetically by first name.  

Welcome Night of Ramadan

Reviews include links to other relevant materials such as book reviews on similar topics or by the same author. Books are tagged according to content and the values (fairness/justice, forgiveness, generosity, etc) tags are especially useful. Clicking on a tag will bring up a listing of books with similar themes.

This is a useful resource for book talks, storytelling and authors. Kids and adults will like the easy format and fun approach; the love of books and reading (combined with technology) is apparent and engaging.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Digitial Libraries — Read, Write, Think — pt. 2

Ok, so it’s not tomorrow 🙂 (please see below). This post on Read, Write, Think will focus on web resources, student materials and learning beyond the classroom.

Writing Fix

 

The Web Resources gallery is an annotated listing of “useful English language arts” resources available on the Internet.  This list contains goodies such as “Writefix” where teacher’s teach writing instead of just “assigning it.” There are writing prompts and lesson plans including the creative iPod inspired “Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow” featuring the Beatles’ song and others.

 

Other interesting resources include the “Young Writers’ Workshop” where parents and teachers can use cool writing prompts to encourage young writers who may even be published 🙂 and the National Archives video section.

National Archives VOD

An impressive strength of the Read, Write, Think site are the wide variety of  Student Resources which are essentially interactive modules to support literacy learning which make practice and producing fun for K-12 students.  There are over 50 visually rich tools for guiding students through letter recognition (ABC Match, Alphabet Organizer ) to analysis of story elements (Drama Map, Literacy Elements Map, Plot Diagram) to inquiry based research (Animal Inquiry, Read, Write Think Notetaker.  Students can create or decorate their own works using a wide variety of tools

Shrek Satire

(Book Cover Creator, Comic Creator, Profile Publisher) as well as engage in pre-writing activities using graphic organizers (Circle Plot Diagram,  Graphic Map).  Doodle Splash is a fun applet which combines drawing with writing prompts. Each tool has a descriptive page with hyperlinks to lessons that use it, for example: Exploring Satire with Shrek (suitable for grades 9-12).

Visible through the drop down site guide box, are links to podcasts and videos (the site may be searched by keyword to find these materials; a direct link is available on the “Learning Beyond the Classroom” module).

 

I really like the diversity of the students featured on this section of the web site because the inclusion of all students as potential learners.  The resources, inlcuding literacy activities, booklists, podcasts and videos, are grouped into age ranges/

Beyond the Classroom

grade levels. The focus in on family literacy and how caregivers can engage or develop these skills in their charges.

 

Read, Write, Think site is a comprehensive digital library for educators, containing tools, lesson plans, videos and interactive learning games. Most highly recommended for K-12 🙂

 

Digital Libraries — Read, Write, Think, pt. 1

Read, Write, Think is a collaborative project authored by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), and the International Reading Association (IRA). It is part of the Thinkfinity.org suite of educational sites (formerly Marco Polo). Over the years, this site has grown to incorporate some outstanding tools to support English language learning, literacy and reading in its digital library.  Because the site has so many, rich and outstanding resources, this post will focus on Lessons, Standards and Literacy Engagments sections. Tomorrow’s post will focus on web resources, student materials and learning beyond the classroom.

For example, lesson plans, arranged by grade bands (K-2, 3-5, 6-8 and high school) and by strand (“Learning language,”, “Learning About Language,” and “Learning Through Language”), are standards and researched based. They are very comprehensive, including links to resources and assessments such as instructional strategies, rubrics, as well as student learning materials such as worksheets, resources or interactive learning modules to for guided practice or to produce materials. As such, the lesson plans and supporting materials are an excellent way to meaningfully integrate technology as a pedagogical tool into the curriculum.

To find lesson plans on a topic, select a grade band, a literacy strand and a “literacy engagement” (genre study, grammar, phonics etc) from the drop down boxes:

Finding Lesson Plans

Let’s, for example,  search for a 3rd grade lesson on reading comprehension:

Lesson Search

 The results listing  of intradisciplinary lessons may

Lesson Plan -- Story Elements

be sorted by date, title, grade level or abstract. One of the lesson plans, on story elements, was developed by the IRA; it is actually a description of a unit study taking place over five, 45min. sessions. Lessons may be printed using the “Printer Friendly Option” (top right). This standards based lesson includes a description of student objectives, activities, teaching strategies and timeline of events. Supporting materials include: instructional strategies (research), student handouts (rubrics, story maps, conference guides for discussion), an overview of an instructional plan, extension activities and student assessment. Lessons, whenever possible, include engaging web based resources or interactives. This plan is no exception containing a link to Storyline Online, where actors read stories such as Stellaluna.

Stellaluna

All lessons address one or more of the 12 IRA/NCTE standards for English Language Arts. 

The idea of literacy engagements is to highlight functions of language for students during the learning process to increase awareness to ultimately impact student understanding and achievement. More specifically, “Literacy engagements simultaneously involve learning language (as students listen to it and use it with others in their everyday lives), learning about language (as students try to figure out how it works, engage with their teachers in focused instruction on how it works or in critiquing its impact), and learning through language (as students use it to learn about or do something)” (http://www.readwritethink.org/literacy/index.html).  Examples of strategies and types of learning engagements are given, which helps both educators and students to focus on the learning tasks and objectives.

Outstanding research based lesson plans and supporting materials! View next post for more details.

Calendars for Educators — September

As the school year begins, planning is key for educators 🙂 Calendars are very important in this process — here are a few ideas.

About.com’s “Fundays calendar” has lots of ideas for unusual observations. For example, who knew that Sept. 5 is “Be Late for Something Day”? A reminder that Sept. 9 is “Grandparents Day” is also timely 🙂 Other days of note in September include the Mexican Independence day (9/16),  Constitution day (9/17),  World Gratitude Day (9/21),  and author Shel Silverstein’s birthday (9/25).

The Teacher’s corner web site also has monthly calendars of interest to educators. For example, September ‘s dates of note include Citizenship day (9/17),  Good Neighbor day (9/28) and Positive Thinking day (9/13).  Monthly calendars may be printed and coordinated with daily writing prompts or theme units.

Teachervision’s calendars include trivia as well as link to month long observances. For example:  this month is National Library card sign-up month and Kid’s Good Manners month.

Sept. 2008

 Scholastic’s calendars are easy to follow, concentrating on to-do items or major observances.

For older students, the New York Times’ Learning Network site has a feature called “On This Day” with historical events occurring on the current date (archive available as well). Another interesting and informative calendar is the Read, Write, Think calendar  (authored by the National Council of Teachers of English, International Reading Association etc). 

Read, Write, Think Calendar

While the emphasis is literacy and literature (authors’ birthdays such as Roald Dahl 9/13, etc), there are also many references to other significant events and observances such as Hispanic Heritage Month (beginning 9/15) and International World Peace Day (9/21).  Events are linked to high qulaity lesson plans and activities.

Teacher Tube — Math Raps & more

Math Raps & More

Teacher tube is the educational and fun version of Youtube for use in the classroom. Video shorts, made by educators, are available in core subject areas such as math, science, social studies, reading as well as by grade range (elementary, middle school). While the quality ranges, there are many examples of useful, engaging materials that students will love.

Teachers can access videos by searching directly or browsing using the tabs. The “Video” tab provides a listing of all channels by subject along with options such as “recently added,” “most viewed,” “most discussed,” and “top rated.”  One of the most viewed videos is a middle school winner on “Class Rules”

Class Rules

 

The “Channels” tab provides subject or category access:

Channels

 There’s a wealth of teacher and performance talent. Of special note, is Mr. Duey Raps Fractions.  Mr. Duey, originally from the suburbs of Detroit, raps to teach about math, social studies and English. This video is a sure hit and testimonials attest to the improvement in student scores:

Mr. Duey Raps Fractions

Other great videos are “Abbot and Costello math” and the “50 States and Capitals” song — Keep track of newly uploaded videos using the RSS feeds (at the bottom of the main screen). Videos may be played full screen by selecting the squarish symbol near the volume on the player:

Other teacher tube strengths are tutorials on a wide variety of topics, “partner videos”, (social studies as of this writing) and student works. Teachers can make and upload their own videos. Inappropriate videos are flagged for removal to keep the environment kid-friendly. “Featured videos” showcase new and/or interesting shorts. Great resource, especially for middle and high school!

 

Math Applets & Lessons — eNLVM

Authored by Utah State University and funded by the NSF, the eNLVM (National Library of Virtual Manipulatives) is an outstanding, standards based resource for instruction and guided math practice in the NCTM core areas of geometry, measurement, number and operations, algebra and data analysis and probability. The interactive applets are divided into  grade ranges: pre-K-2, 3-5, 6-8 and 9-12 (younger students may have difficulty in reading instructions) within the 5 main areas.

Registered teachers may set up their own courses including materials to be used by their students, customized by class. Materials may be organized into “learning units” which

 

students may access for instruction and practice. Teachers may edit their course content, manage students (including keeping track of online work through the module), view all student answers at once, select applicable mathlets for practice and even edit select applets.

Courses

Students really enjoy learning using the animated, interactive modules such as spinners, ladybugs for logic and sequence, tangrams, and money. 

Examples of Mathlets

To learn more about the project, view either the Quick Start Manual or the tutorial powerpoint presentation for teachers.

More Info. & Tutorials

As an added bonus, the applets and interface are also available in Spanish and French.

MeL for Kids — Kids InfoBits

Kids InfoBits, published by Gale Cengage Learning, is a kid-friendly database available through the Michigan Electronic Library It has an easy to use graphical interface organized into subjects. It is targeted for students in grades K-5, but is most useful for independent research grades 3-5. Users may either search by keywords, or drill down through the categories using the topic tree.

A brief, helpful  (around 7 mins.)  training overview web cast describes the main features of the database, such as the sources (Blackbirch Press reference publications, Columbia encyclopedia, 75 magazines such as Highlights, Time for Kids etc), how to search for information in various formats and save them to a “backpack” feature to create a bibliography.

The Teacher Toolbox feature contains ready to use

lessons and accompanying worksheets for subjects such as “How to Write A Topic Sentence,” “Organizing a Report” and  “Creating an Outline.”

All kinds of documents except images may be listened to using the Audio Player tool:

Audio Player

While the audio file will play in real time, allowing for independent learning, downloading the file as a mp3 file makes it a bit smoother (this option is permitted).  The possibility to hear whole or partial documents read makes this resource good for use with ELL, special needs and younger students.

MeL for Kids — elibrary Elementary

The Michgian Electronic Library (MeL) is a wonderful free resource for the State’s educators and students (actually, it’s not “free” – it costs millions — but the user fees are paid for us 🙂 ).  You can access the resources through most Michigan libraries and also at home with a valid drivers’ license.

One of the most useful sections for research is the MeL database section.  There are several resources that are great for students in grades 3 through 12 (as well as professional educators).  This post will discuss eLibrary Elementary.  Although this general information database is targeted for use primarily with students in grades 4-8, a helpful reading level, expressed as a Lexile, makes it accessible and relevant even for students in high school. It’s a great way to differentiate instruction and to accommodate special needs.

Students may search for information which is delivered in a wide variety of formats including newspaper and magazine articles, maps, pictures and audio files.  Results are presented according to relevance to the keyword search terms, with an icon representing the media format. To access the information, students simply click on the link or title.

 

Elibrary Topic Tree

There are two other important ways to locate information in eLibrary Elementary. One of these is to browse the subject or topic tree. Students can drill down from broad categories such as “social studies,” “current events” or “famous people” to browse for more specific information under the main headings.

 

Lastly, the database also has a “Reference Desk” with a dictionary, thesaurus, atlas, encyclopedias and a category called “other” (containing DK publications, weekly readers, and various other non-fiction works.

Reference Desk

 

 Results lists can be sorted by media type by clicking on the appropriate icon in the top row.

This is a wonderful resource which students love when they have been taught how to use it, especially when looking for maps and media. While the magazine articles can be a bit confusing for younger students, they are always thrilled to locate an encyclopedia article, map or picture.   Once students have worked with this database, typically they only need a refresher the next time around — and that’s also a great opportunity to introduce some of the more complicated research techniques 🙂