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Vocabulary Web Games - Sheppard Software
Grades
2 to 12This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
Create links to games and practice vocabulary on classroom computers for students to practice language arts skills. Have students preparing for the SAT/ACT or GRE take vocabulary quizzes to find unknown words. Complement this site by creating your own vocabulary flash cards using an online flashcard maker, like Flashcard Stash, reviewed here.You must be registered and logged in to add items to your favorites.
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Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek - John Branch, New York Times
Grades
8 to 12This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
Include this story (or portions of it) during your science study of motion, gravity, or weather with secondary students. (Our check of reading level found it to be approximately 8th grade). Experience the text on a projector or interactive whiteboard to annotate figures of speech that tell us even more than some of the images. Read and analyze it as an informational text in English class. (it's viewable on tablets, too!). Discuss how the author uses media as part of the writing instead of as an add-on. For journalism and other writing classes, you may want to have your students read the accompanying article How We Made Snow Fall to analyze how the interactive and graphics departments at the New York Times worked with the text of the story to make the graphics and video a seamless part of the "reading". Challenge student groups to investigate a true story of a weather event or other actual occurrence through a combination of media and writing, explaining the science concepts along the way. Share their projects using one of the multimedia tools available from the TeachersFirst Edge. Expecting a snow day? Share this on your class web page for your literature or science class as a productive way to spend the day. Teachers of gifted can share this as an example of a project that can draw on a student's interests in science, art, and writing. Challenge students to try one. If you teach journalism, you could make the two articles an entire unit as you discuss the changing role of print vs. web-based writing in the 21st century.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Zoho Show - ZOHO Corporation
Grades
K to 12In the Classroom
To use this site, you will need to create an account. You will need to navigate using onscreen instructions. There is a video tour of the features if you would like to view it, but it is just as fun and easy to play with the tool. Slide themes are limited, but the tools are simple and it is easy to publish to a URL that can be shared with everyone.Use this tool to create presentations when students will need more than class time to finish. Have students make individual presentations. Instead of presenting on projector, have them share to the class wiki or within their zoho group to promote discussion and peer review. Assign a round-robin peer review so everyone gets some feedback.
Edge Features:
Parent permission advised before posting student work created using this tool
Requires registration/log-in (WITH email)
Products can be embedded
Products can be shared by URL
Multiple users can collaborate on the same project
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Rubrics for Assessment - Joan Vandervelde
Grades
K to 12In the Classroom
Bookmark (or mark as a favorite) and save this site as a resource for assessment of class projects. Give a copy of the rubric to students before beginning projects to define expectations.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Witty Comics - WittyComics.com
Grades
K to 12In the Classroom
Create dialogues that introduce new content topics in your classroom. Students can use this "witty" tool to introduce topics from research or to practice a speech to be given in class. Use comics to create a dialogue discussing misconceptions in the content and a discussion of the actual facts to dispel the misunderstandings. To view more comic creator tools and ideas view this collection. Some suggested comic creators are Printable Comic Strip Templates, reviewed here, ToonyTool, reviewed here, Make Beliefs Comix, reviewed here.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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The Readability Test Tool - David Simpson
Grades
1 to 12This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
Use this tool to offer differentiated resources for the different reading levels in your class. At the beginning of the year, as you learn your students' capabilities, use this tool to find reading at the appropriate level to eliminate frustration. This is perfect for finding the "just right" level for your highly advanced/gifted students and those needing extra remediation. If you do discover that a website you want to use is over your students' independent reading level, you can still use it, just use Read Ahead, reviewed here as a guided reading activity for younger students. Read Ahead is perfect for introducing any reading passage to struggling readers, special education students, and ENL/ESL learners. View readability levels of websites before sharing with students to find appropriate reading levels for differentiation. On an interactive whiteboard or with a projector, test passages of public domain texts from sites like Project Gutenberg, reviewed here, by famous authors to see how their writing ranks when discussing their writing style.Why not have students put in the URL for their blog or wiki (or simply paste in a writing sample) to see the level at which they are writing? This is one way to encourage writing as a craft and challenge students to include more varied vocabulary and sentence structure in their writing.
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Meg Cabot - Meggin Cabot
Grades
6 to 12In the Classroom
Use this site to encourage daily writing. Help students improve their sentence structure and use grammar painlessly through frequent personal writing. ESL and ELL students will enjoy journal-writing as a safe place to practice without corrections. Some journal-writing can also take place on classroom blogs, though you may want to keep uncorrected student blogs behind passwords until students are comfortable with the more public setting.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Evernote - Evernote
Grades
9 to 12In the Classroom
Use this tool easily in your Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) classroom since all students will be able to access it for free, no matter what device they have. Consider creating a class account that can be used by all students. Spell out the use of the site and what is allowed, not allowed, and the penalties. Even though all students have the same login, create different notebooks for different tasks that students can use to upload information that can be shared by all. Create separate notebooks for student groups who can then share their notebook with other groups. Use Evernote to snapshot and share links, documents, files, and pictures for any group project or class work. Whole class accounts can be used by a class scribe during class and accessed from home for review, etc. If your students are permitted individual accounts, they can collect notes in Evernote and share their research notebooks with you as evidence of completion of that phase of long term projects. Encourage creativity with your gifted students (or any students) by having them set up individual Evernote notebooks to use as "idea bins." Idea bins are a place to collect quotes, snippets of writing or poems they have started, questions and thoughts, artistic project ideas, images they like, or even voice memos to remember creative inspirations. It is important for students to know that idea bins (by whatever name) are an important part of the creative process, even for engineers!Edge Features:
Parent permission advised before posting student work created using this tool
Includes social features, such as "friends," comments, ratings by others
Requires registration/log-in (WITH email)
Products can be embedded
Products can be shared by URL
Multiple users can collaborate on the same project
Includes teacher tools for registering and/or monitoring students
Requires download/installation of software
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Creativity Resource - Denver Art Museum
Grades
K to 12In the Classroom
Use a projector or interactive whiteboard so everyone can view the art work at once. Small groups can write down their observations about the art and then share with the whole class. From there the lesson plans can take over with loads of ideas for how to proceed. Don't forget to have students navigate and annotate artworks on interactive whiteboards. It is the ideal tool for annotating images. Older students can also annotate them using an online tool such as Annotely, reviewed here, to annotate images.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Literature Board Games - Gary Brooks
Grades
7 to 12In the Classroom
Using this idea as a "final" evaluation of text is a good way for students to remember. A more technologically advanced idea is for students to create a PowerPoint game or other multimedia presentation. Have the students share their projects on an interactive whiteboard or projector. Board games are also a more innovative way to have students do individual book reports, particularly if several students in the class are reading the same book.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Outline of the Five Paragraph Essay - Maria DeSoto
Grades
8 to 12In the Classroom
Follow this exercise together as a class on an interactive whiteboard or projector. Have the class create their own essays with this structure as you walk through the example. Peer editing at the end of the lesson the interactive whiteboard is a good reinforcement for this exercise. Ask students to find and highlight the essential elements of the essay in the student example (shared anonymously, of course). Use a consistent color-coding system for each of the elements, so you can ask students to label their own drafts in the same manner.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Common Core State Standards - Common Core State Standards Initiative Team
Grades
K to 12Visit this website to find out exactly what the national K-12 standards are for English language arts and literacy in history/social studies, science and technology, as well as mathematics, and to find out if your state is one many states (at the time of this review) that have already committed to adopt the Common Core State Standards. Watch videos and the recorded webinar, and read about the key points and rigorous curriculum standards, including the content and skills related to the use of media and technology for critical analysis and production.
In the Classroom
Take a look at exemplars and sample performance tasks and students' writing to consider how you can integrate these ideas into your own planning to prepare students for the growing challenges of today's world. You can also sign up to receive updates via email. For more information about the Common Core and implementing it in your classes, see TeachersFirst's Common Core: The Fuss Over Non-Fiction, a Q/A article for elementary teachers, and TeachersFirst's resources tagged Common Core for many helpful sites.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Toasted Cheese - Stephanie
Grades
8 to 12In the Classroom
This site is worth it if only for the variety of the daily prompts; however, there is a lot here to engage students. The story examples (such as the "Pushcart Prize Nominations"), the online literary journal, and the assortment of writing exercises give teachers a smorgasbord of activities to choose from. Just be sure to preview whatever material you wish to use in class and do so on a teacher-controlled machine. Or avoid recommending the site itself and find ideas you can use by projecting a writing prompt alone on your interactive whiteboard or projector, having students brainstorm ideas and write on their own to avoid potential "public" content here. Introduce blogging using one of these prompts. If you are beginning the process of integrating technology, have students create blogs sharing their learning and understanding using Telegra.ph, reviewed here. This blog creator requires no registration!Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Room Escape Maker - doctorfou.com
Grades
8 to 12This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
Increase student engagement in any subject through this form of gameplay! Create games to introduce main concepts within the escape room. Ask students to create a game using the information they have learned to share with fellow students. Before creating a game, have students map out information and strategies they will include in a blog format using a tool like edublogs, reviewed here. Ask fellow students to share comments describing their problem-solving process as they try to escape the room.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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English literature: Lord of the Flies - BBC
Grades
9 to 12In the Classroom
This is a great supplementary site for pre-reading or for reviewing. An especially nice extra is the inclusion of a sample essay question and answer. It sets up the question to be answered in a five-paragraph theme and offers possible topic sentences as an outline for writing that theme. Using the sample on a projector or interactive whiteboard is a good way to help students learn how to structure their own essay answers. Have students share and critique essays on the projector or interactive whiteboard.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Citation Style Guides - Seattle Central Community College
Grades
8 to 12Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Draw A Stickman - drawastickman.com
Grades
1 to 10In the Classroom
Aside from just fun practice at following instructions, Draw a Stickman would be a great fictional story prompt. Students have the bones of a story and can fill in details, vivid verbs, adjectives, etc. to tell the story. This would be a good practice activity with writing sequences of "first, then, and next." Students can elaborate on their hero, the plot of the story, the details, the setting, etc. Students can write a moral for a story to add in the customized ending. These stories would be fun to share as a class...how wide a variety can come from the same basics? Share finished stories with a talking avatar using a photo or other image (legally permitted to be reproduced). The avatars can "read" the story. Use a site such as Blabberize, reviewed here. Teach story mapping easily with this activity: On an interactive whiteboard (or projector), students can go through the stick figure story together, labeling the different parts of the story (beginning, problem, climax, resolution, ending). This interactive can help students identify story elements, including setting, characters and plot. This site would also be perfect for multilingual students for practice in reading and following directions or for speech/language students to practice retelling a story from the visual prompts. Another idea: use this activity for verb/vocabulary practice in a world language class.Comments
This will be a great fill-in activity when my students finish their assignments. I can't wait to use it!Beverly, TX, Grades: 6 - 12
Love this! So creative. I know the kids will love it too and I think the learning activities sound very promising too.Jeannie, MI, Grades: 0 - 5
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Creating Fictional Characters - Jayne Karsten
Grades
9 to 12--gain insight into various methods authors use to build characterization.
--experience the creative process of developing a character.
--broaden understanding of the role of minor characters.
--explore the inferential power of images and literary allusions to enhance characterization.
--understand ways the text mirrors attitudes, values, fashions, manners, and mores of the time period.
--experience growth in the writing process, oral skills, skills of research, contextual analysis, and collaboration. Then, Students will apply methods of characterization with two quick writes.
In the Classroom
Intersperse these ideas while you are reading a piece of literature so your students are both writers and readers.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Show my street - showmystreet.com
Grades
2 to 12This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
Have students choose any place, then post the link to it on a blog, wiki, or website, and write a description of it. Describe what they would see out of their window, create a story about what they hear or see, or describe their family and what's inside of the house. Research the history of the area to determine how it may have been different in the past. Of course you will went to avoid posting personal information on the web, but students could write fictional stories or keep personal information out of their writings. Describe the wildlife (plant or animal) that exists in their area. Describe the community of people in the area or an important neighbor and why they are important. Create a persuasive essay why their house (or school) is the best, friendliest, etc. in the area. Use tools to determine the distance between houses or to local historical places, places of interest, etc. Use the image as a powerful tool for writing.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Holt Interactive Graphic Organizers - Holt
Grades
2 to 12In the Classroom
Mark this site on your class web page, put it on your task bar, and add to all student computers. Demonstrate by using and creating your customized graphic organizer. Turn it into PDF format and save or print. Get students in the habit of using graphic organizers to improve achievement, organization, and details.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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