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.

Wikibooks — Foreign Language Resources

Wikibooks is a collaborative, open content project. Authors around the world participate in creating books in many different languages and genres. For example,  there are thousands of pages written in English, French, Italian etc.

and hundreds of pages in languages such as Arabic,  Farsi, Norsk, Simple English, Tagalog and Turkish.

While there are several other sub projects of note (Wikijunior — books for children, Simple English — materials on various topics) because of the uneven level of coverage at this point, the Wikibooks is most useful for the foreign language resources.  

 

Visual Dictionary

Visual Dictionary Mainanimations (frog life cycle), pictures, topic listing, french language. Biology: animal, plants and the human body, Transportation, Clothing and MusicVisual Dictionary Plants

The Visual Dictionary is a beautifully excuted interactive resource. While the topics are very limited (Animal, Human and Plant Biology, transportation, music and clothing) they are visually rich. Each image is labelled in great detail.  For example, the plants category has 55 illustrations of plant topics such as berries, meiosis, leave shapes, nuts, seeds, growth cycle of a mushroom, stems, roots etc.

Visual Dictionary Plants

Plant Cell

Many topics, such as the Amoeba and Life Cycle of a Frog, have animations and/or photographs. The Dictionary may be browsed visually by image, by theme or alphabetically through the Lexicon, or searched by keyword.  some topics are linked to Wikipedia entries. The Dictionary is available in two languages — English and French making this a great foreign language resource.

Streaming Video — “Streaming” by Discovery Education

Video on demand is a very powerful way to introduce

Streaming through Wayne RESA

new concepts, to reinforce learning objectives and to differentiate instruction. Often it is critical for learners, especially visually oriented learners or ELL, to simply experience a place, a new idea or just to see how something works. Discovery Education’s “Streaming” product allows educators at all levels K-12 to select entire videos or segments (some less than one minute long) to deliver just-in-time, relevant instruction. This is a subscription service often made available through the local ISD, in our case, Wayne RESA.

Videos may be browsed according to appropriate state standards via a search interface on the main page (bottom, left) or by subjects or grade.  For Michigan, there are options to select from Curriculum Framework, Grade Level  or Extended Grade Content Expectations for K-12.  Videos may be previewed using the “play” option (which is live streaming), but for classroom use, I recommend downloading it in advance to minimize glitches. 

Advanced Search

Using the advanced search option allows users to locate materials by keyword, subject, grade level, media type as well as features such as closed captions or “editable” titles which are great for including in presentations. Often supporting materials such as blackline masters and teachers’ guides are available as a hyperlinked document.

Additional content is available such as speeches and other sound files, lesson plans, images and quizzes.

 

Egypt Video

Teachers may share ideas, questions and best practices by joining the DEN (Discovery Educator Newtork (free)). One hour training webinars are reguarly scheduled as well as the EdTech connect series which features movers and shakers in the ed. tech. sphere (exciting!).

 

Of special interest is the “Teacher Center”  which has classroom tools such as “assignment builder, “classroom manager” and “writing prompts,” curriculum resources, for planning such as the “lesson plan library” and “thematic focus.” Have questions? join the DEN teacher community.

Discovery Atlas -- Iraq

Much deserving of a special mention, is one of the resources available (“curriculum resources”) in the teacher center is the “Discovery education Atlas.” The interactive resource organizes country study video segments in four areas: culture, government, history and the natural world. Fun and effective!

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.

Professional Development: English Language Learners

Doing What Works is a federal initiative to disseminate research based best practices in education.  There are several parts to the resource, including a newly developed digital workshop with a focus on English Language Learners which accompanies the ELL segment on the main web site. The site provides research supporting best practices as well as the top 5 most effective instructional strategies, presented in a variety of formats with accompanying resource materials.

Each of the 5 strategies is discussed in a tri-part format: Learn What Works, See How It Works and Do What works so that educators can understand the underlying pedagogy as well as learn how it may be successfully implemented. Tools to facilitate integration of the strategies are also included.

 Resource materials for the English Language Learners digital workshop are available at: http://www.t2tweb.us/doingwhatworks/Workshop_01/resources/downloads/DWW_handouts.pdf