Wednesday Website: Cool Tool for Word Study

Online Etymology Dictionary is an online source for looking up words and their origins.  There is a page orienting you to what information you will find there.  Then you are invited to search for words and scroll through alphabetically.  There are so many ways you could use this.  Here are just a few:

1) Have students look up the origins and meanings of content vocabulary with Greek or Latin roots.
2) Have students create words maps for vocabulary with a section for etymology.
3) Have students create a dictionary of made up words using real word parts.

My New Favorite App

Auto Rap is a fun new app that you can download for free.  You record yourself reading something (such as a poem) and it automatically synchs the syllables to a beat and turns it into a rap in your own voice.  I wish I knew about this when I was teaching high school.  It would have been so much fun to play around with when I was teaching poetry.

Here are a few ways I think you could use it:

1) Have students read poetry and listen to it as a rap for the fun of it.

2) Have students read information they are trying to memorize into the app to help your musical students remember it.  (Besides, chants and songs help everyone's memory.)

3) Use it to introduce meter since it uses the rhythm in the language to synch the text to beats.

Happy rapping!

Wednesday Websites: Using Technology to Teach Writing or Spelling

Looking for fun ways to get students to practice writing their letters or spelling words?  Here are four apps that you can download for free and start using today...

Chalk Draw is an application that lets students write in chalk and then shake the ipad to erase the writing and start over.

Bubble Snap is an application that lets students write letters in bubble wrap, popping the bubbles as they run their fingers over them to make the words.

Art of Glow is an application that allows students to write letters and/or draw on a black screen in a glowing rainbow of colors.

Sand Draw has students write in the sand.  They press a button to have a wave wash over their writing and erase it when they are done.  There are versions of this for $1.99 and versions of this for free.

Wednesday Websites: Five Favorites

Following up on last week's blog post, here are five more websites I like to use...

The first one is a website that helps you create Jeopardy and other games using Power Point.

Grammar Bytes is a website with tons of free grammar lessons.

Wordle is a fun website to use.  You copy and paste in a text and it generates word clouds.  The words are sized according to their frequency in the text, so it is a fun way to pull out important vocabulary words and ideas. Students can do this with a text they are studying or writing.  It also makes fun cover pages.

The English Companion is a site with a lot of great resources for teaching novels.  The materials are free and easy to use with a variety of texts.

Animoto is a website that allows you to sign up for a free basic account.  You upload pictures and it automatically makes a digital movie for you.  Very easy to use.


For more ideas, follow my board of websites useful to teachers on Pinterest.

Wednesday's Wonderful Websites: Online Databases of Children's Literature

It isn't hard to find children's literature, but it can be hard to find children's literature that is high quality and diverse.  When I took a graduate class in children's literature, these were some of the online databases that were recommended:


1) Children’s Literature Guide: http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown/index.html

2) Kay Vandergrift’s Special Interest Page: http://comminfo.rutgers.edu/professional-development/childlit/

3) Links to websites of Children’s Book Awards and Notables: http://www.ala.org/alsc/awardsgrants/notalists/ncb

4) Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children: http://www.ncte.org/awards/orbispictus

5) Recommended Literature for Kindergarten Through Grade Twelve: http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/cr/rl/  This one is probably my favorite.  When you go, in you can customize your search so that you it will show you all of the books that talk about homelessness in a certain age range, for example.  It is definitely worth bookmarking!

6) Awards and Best-of-the-year Lists from Cooperative Children’s Book Center School of Education University of Wisconsin https://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/links/links.asp?idLinksCategory=2

7) 50 Multicultural Books Every Child Should Know: https://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/books/detailListBooks.asp?idBookLists=42

As you look for some fun new books for the upcoming school year, I hope that these resources will be as helpful for you as they've been for me.

Super-Sized Friday Freebies

The Fourth of July is almost upon us.  So, this week I'm rolling the Wednesday Website and Friday Freebies post into one super sized post on free apps to check out.  Most of them are geared towards elementary students, but don't click off just yet if you teach older students.  Numbers 2, 6, 7 and 8 are really for everyone! Here they are:

1) Rhyming Bee is great for having students work on rhyme.  There is a cute little bee holding a word.  The child has to decide which flower has petals with rhyming words that match the bee's word.

2) Sleep Pillow plays loops of soothing sounds like rain and crackling fires for rest time in Kindergarten or background white noise while they work independently.

3) I Say helps students with their listening skills and auditory memory.  It looks a lot like the old game, Simon Says.

4) Simoo is a lot like I Say, but with cows.

5) Spelling City is a free app that allows teachers to create assignments for students based on customized spelling lists.  Students enjoy playing games with the word and completing the assignments online.

6) Class Dojo allows teachers to encourage behaviors by giving students points for meeting expectations.  Parents can login to check out their child's weekly progress.

7) Remind  is an app that allows teachers to send out text reminders to parents and students.  The receiver cannot respond, so it cuts down on group messages that blossom out of control when everyone writes back.

8)  Turboscan is a free app that allows you to take a picture of a document and convert it to a pdf.  Before it converts the image, it will clean the picture up so you don't see shadows.

9) Profs' Phonics Smar-test has activities to work on the phonological skills that are the first foundations of reading.

10) Kidsdoodle  is a fun app that allows students to draw and write on a black backdrop.  What they create shows up in bright neon rainbow lights.

Stay tuned!  I will be posting the rest of my fav summer finds in the next few weeks.  If you have favorites, feel free to share them in the comments section.

Happy Fourth of July!



  

Wednesday Website: Brain Breaks with Go Noodle

GoNoOdle is a must-check-out-because-your-students-will-love-it website.  It is ideal for the primary grades where students' stamina is limited to small burst of time.  You can create an account for free and then access any number of brain break videos/exercises.  Olympians will take your students through short training sessions before leading them in a virtual athletic competition.  It is a great way to give your students a short break to get out the wiggles in the classroom before transitioning into a lesson.

For other virtual tools, check out my pinterest board of "websites useful to teachers."

Weekly Website: Newspaper Generator

If you are looking for a fun way for your students to create nonfiction pieces, check out Foley's newspaper generator. It creates a mock clip of a newspaper clip and story. I love the look of the newspaper and it's very easy to create. Students can even have fun selecting a name for their newspaper as well.

You could even alter the article to make it an opinion piece as well for a different twist.

Wednesday Websites: Ways to Recycle in Your Classroom

I have always been thrifty which has come in handy being an art teacher on a low budget. However, even I learned many new tricks with these ideas! Here are some sites with ways to help you recycle in your classroom and reuse materials you may not have even thought about keeping.



Repurpose Old Art Supplies - Reuse old art supplies that are down to the last nub or even broken! I always had a habit of keeping supplies going for a long time but these tips gave me lots of ideas so they could even have more life!


Reuse Bottle Caps to Play and Learn - I enjoyed this article geared towards early elementary students with 30 ways you can reuse bottle caps to help play and learn. I loved these ideas and they don't take up much space either which is a bonus!


Keep Kids' Artwork Safe - I have never done this before as an art teacher but after I read this tip I wish I had! I love the idea of rolling artwork and securing it with a cardboard tube! This would make it much easier for kids to take home and much less chance of damage. This would also work for posters and other large projects for other subject areas.


Reuse Your Plastic Easter Eggs - If you went to any egg hunts this year you might have a ton of plastic Easter eggs laying around. I know I do! Here are some great ways you can reuse those eggs in your classroom.


Make a Biodegradable Seed Pot - Since it is spring it's the perfect time to start growing plants and this biodegradable seed pot uses recycled materials and can be planted directly into the ground. This is a fun way to incorporate science into your classroom.


Do you recycle in your classroom? Share your ideas below!

Wednesday Websites: Site for English Teachers

I have a pinterest board dedicated to useful teaching websites.  Here is a list of my favorite ones to use with my English classes...

Poem Hunter will provide you with the poems from any number of poets.  I use it all the time.  Whenever I need to find a poem it is the first place I look.  It has short bios on a ton of well known poets along with online texts of their writings.  It is very handy.  The site is super user friendly and comprehensive.  

Prezi.com is a website that allows students to make cooler versions of power points.  It takes them a class period or so to play around with it and figure out how to use all of the tools, but once they know how, they love it.  They can add videos, pictures, objects, colors, themes and pretty much everything else that they can do with powerpoint.  But, the visual effects are unique and fun to play around with.  They can save them online and share them with anyone who has an email address.  It is definitely worth checking out.

Purdue Owl is a great resource with a wide variety of writing tips.  The material is most appropriate for  students in middle school through college age students.  I use it all the time as a reference for how to create bibliographies and citations using MLA formatting rules.  Once my students have shown me they know how to format their bibliographic entries, I let them cheat by using easybib.com.

6 + 1 Writing Traits  is a well known writing, teaching and assessment framework.  The title refers to the traits in writing that we want all of our students to develop over time: ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions and presentation.  The common language is useful in aligning teachers across contents and grade levels to provide united expectations of students.

Writing Fix and English Companion are websites that have a ton of resources for teaching writing and reading.  They include strategies, graphic organizers, etc.  They have a wealth of information and are worth perusing.

Finally, Grammar Bytes  has a wealth of grammar activities to help reinforce grammar rules with yours students.  The sentences are fun and contemporary.

Wednesday Website: News ELA

News ELA is one on my new favorite websites.  If you teach grammar school it is one free subscription you should sign up for.  The website has a plethora of nonfiction articles to choose from.  There are articles on: war & peace, science, money, law, health, arts and sports.  When you go in you can search by grade level and/or reading goal.  The current events are on topics that are high interest for kids.  For example, I've recently found articles on whether or not whales held in captivity should be released, on whether or not video games are good or bad, and whether or not chimpanzees have their own language.

If you are looking for materials to supplement any unit, this is definitely a site worth mining.  Creating an account is simple and once you have it you will receive regular email updates on their most recent articles.  Check it out today!

Wednesday Website: Artsonia

This week I'm highlighting Artsonia. I've used this site multiple times for various schools I've taught at for all grade levels with success. Artsonia is an online art museum that is completely free to use. You register and assign each student a name. At most schools I've just used their first name but I've also used a private anonymous name for extra privacy as well. Each student is assigned to one of your classes.

After this initial set up you are ready to start uploading artwork! You upload a digital image of each work of art. Since I've joined they have improved their upload process so it's a lot easier than it used to be since you can upload a large amount at a time. If you want you can also add in extra information about the work like a title. You can also group it by assignment as well.

My students enjoyed the viewer count on each work since they loved seeing how many people view their work. Viewers can comment but all comments must be approved by a parent first if one chooses to register as well.

You can buy all sorts of items with your child's artwork on it at the site which my students also loved and some students at each school took advantage of that. I loved that you got 15% of the proceeds which helped me buy more supplies!

Artsonia has always been a success at every school I've taught at so I highly recommend it!

Wednesday Website: Origami Instructions

For this week's website I'm featuring Origami Instructions. First I must admit I love origami as a classroom activity since most students seem to love it and enjoy making it so it's a great high interest lesson. You can use origami for several subjects including history, math and art so it can be a nice cross curricular lesson. Also, if you have a low budget origami is wonderful since you just need a sheet of paper (usually square). I have used copy paper sometimes in simple origami and it works okay as well.

Since I love origami I'm always looking for new shapes and new ways to make it so after browsing many different websites and books Origami Instructions is my favorite. It has both written and visual images of each step that make it very clear what you need to do so you don't get lost. Most of their instructions have examples at the bottom that visitors to the site have made so you can feel confident making them. Also, there is so much variety there! You can find just about anything you want to make on the site.

If you are looking to try origami, check them out first for a successful lesson!

Wednesday's Website: Brain Breaks with Go Noodle

GoNoOdle is a must-check-out-because-your-students-will-love-it website.  It is ideal for the primary grades where students' stamina is limited to small burst of time.  You can create an account for free and then access any number of brain break videos/exercises.  Olympians will take your students through short training sessions before leading them in a virtual athletic competition.  It is a great way to give your students a short break to get out the wiggles in the classroom before transitioning into a lesson.

For other virtual tools, check out my pinterest board of "websites useful to teachers."

Wednesday's Websites: Featuring Top Sites for Teaching English

I have a pinterest board dedicated to useful teaching websites.  Here is a list of my favorite ones to use with my English classes...

Poem Hunter will provide you with the poems from any number of poets.  I use it all the time.  Whenever I need to find a poem it is the first place I look.  It has short bios on a ton of well known poets along with online texts of their writings.  It is very handy.  The site is super user friendly and comprehensive.  

Prezi.com is a website that allows students to make cooler versions of power points.  It takes them a class period or so to play around with it and figure out how to use all of the tools, but once they know how, they love it.  They can add videos, pictures, objects, colors, themes and pretty much everything else that they can do with powerpoint.  But, the visual effects are unique and fun to play around with.  They can save them online and share them with anyone who has an email address.  It is definitely worth checking out.

Purdue Owl is a great resource with a wide variety of writing tips.  The material is most appropriate for  students in middle school through college age students.  I use it all the time as a reference for how to create bibliographies and citations using MLA formatting rules.  Once my students have shown me they know how to format their bibliographic entries, I let them cheat by using easybib.com.

6 + 1 Writing Traits  is a well known writing, teaching and assessment framework.  The title refers to the traits in writing that we want all of our students to develop over time: ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions and presentation.  The common language is useful in aligning teachers across contents and grade levels to provide united expectations of students.

Writing Fix and English Companion are websites that have a ton of resources for teaching writing and reading.  They include strategies, graphic organizers, etc.  They have a wealth of information and are worth perusing.

Finally, Grammar Bytes  has a wealth of grammar activities to help reinforce grammar rules with yours students.  The sentences are fun and contemporary.