March 20

Website Worth Sharing: Storytime from Space

This storytime website has a different twist. The stories are read by astronauts while they are in the International Space Station. It’s especially fun to watch Kate Rubins read Rosie Revere, Engineer while her hair floats around her head. The stories are mostly space related and will fit well with the upcoming 5th grade FOSS kit.

http://storytimefromspace.com/library/

It looks like this website is a work in progress as many of the activity guide links just say “Coming Soon”.

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March 20

Website Worth Sharing: Instructables

You may already be familiar with the Instructables site http://www.instructables.com/teachers/ but I’m sharing just in case you aren’t as it’s an amazing repository of instructions for a huge variety of projects. Teachers and Students can access premium memberships for free: http://www.instructables.com/teachers/#free-premium  (kids can login with their Google accounts.)

You can use this as an instructional reading exercise and have students create something using the directions (paper crafts work well- perfect activity for right before spring break). The incorporation of images and videos along with the text make it a perfect multimedia resource. Some of the instructions include YouTube videos, which will be blocked for students, but many house their videos on Vimeo which can be viewed with the Chromebooks and most have step by step illustrated instructions in addition to or instead of videos, so most instructions are fine without them. It’s a great way to address this standard .

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.6.7
Integrate information presented in different media or formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively) as well as in words to develop a coherent understanding of a topic or issue.

Kids can even make and submit their own instructables or enter one of the contests http://www.instructables.com/contest/ . There is even an instructable on how to make an instructable. https://www.instructables.com/class/How-to-Write-an-Instructable-Class/ This is a great technical writing activity and if they submit it to the website, they are satisfying the standard that mentions publishing with technology.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.WHST.6-8.2
Write informative/explanatory texts, including the narration of historical events, scientific procedures/ experiments, or technical processes.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.WHST.6-8.6
Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and present the relationships between information and ideas clearly and efficiently.

*I found a cool example of a teacher using this site in conjuction with the book The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind if any of you read that book with your students.

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February 7

Websites Worth Sharing: Ambient Sounds

I know some of you like to play background music during reading or working time. You might want to think about experimenting with using Ambient sounds also.

Some studies have found that ambient sounds improve student concentration or mood. There are several websites that provide Ambient sound alternatives that allow you to create your own “mix” of sounds. If too many kids are taking bathroom breaks, you may want to turn down the water sounds and increase the other types of sounds ;). These also might be fun to play during certain read alouds to add “atmosphere.”

https://asoftmurmur.com/

https://www.noisli.com/

https://www.moodil.com/

http://soundrown.com/

 

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January 24

Website Worth Sharing: ReadWorks Digital

Many of you are probably familiar with the wonderful free ELA resources available at www.readworks.org . Now they have a new offering called ReadWorks Digital http://digital.readworks.org/ . Teachers can create an account, go to Class Admin and Click on the “Create a Class button”. If your students have individual Google accounts, select the Google Sign In option (see image below), which directs the kids to their website and has them enter a code specific to your class. Then you can search for and assign them leveled articles as a class or individually (allowing you to differentiate).

Those of you who use Google Classroom can post a general assignment to Classroom and use this link http://digital.readworks.org/student so they can go straight to their assignment.  When I tried it on the Chromebook, it took me straight to my “student” assignments once I created the account with my Google Account. You could also have them put a link to ReadWorks Digital on their bookmark bar in Chrome and bypass using Classroom for this. This would be a great activity to use with Chromebooks or Chromeboxes.

If your students don’t have Google accounts, there is the option to enter a roster and have the kids sign in that way (see image below).

Once the students login, they will see the articles you assign them and will be able to read the articles, review the vocabulary terms, and answer the multiple choice AND short answer questions. When they are done, you can review progress in the teacher Admin panel.

The wonderful thing about this is that it is totally FREE!

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November 8

Website Worth Sharing: #kinderchat Symbaloo Webmixes

A Symbaloo webmix is a collection of weblinks all displayed in a visual, tiled format. The user “kinderchat” has created a collection of ABC weblinks in Symbaloo that you might find useful:

http://edu.symbaloo.com/mix/abc You can post this link to an eBoard or bookmark it on your classroom Google account for easy access for your students.

If you want to see the other webmixes created by kinderchat here: http://edu.symbaloo.com/profile/kinderchat . Note that there are 3 pages of webmixes.

The Youtube videos are linked through SafeshareTV which removes the ads and thumbnails of other videos, so that makes them especially nice. A few, like the National Geographic books, require logins so those won’t be useful for you. I also found some eBooks that stop a few pages in as they are “samples” and not the full books. Be sure to test the links before recommending them to your students.

kinderchat

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November 1

Website Worth Sharing: Epic Books

epicI’ve shared other eBook resources, but I think Epic www.getepic.com  has the largest selection of quality online books that I’ve seen. Educators can create accounts for free. They hope you will recommend this to parents (they have to pay) in order to support at home reading and keep them afloat, but that part’s up to you. You can browse for books, add them to your favorites and create collections that you can share with your students. You can use this as a projected “Big Book” that you read together, or give students access using iPads (there’s an app) or a web browser on a Chrome device or PC.

 

There is a Teacher Certification tutorial on the righthand side of the page that I’d encourage you to try out. It walks you through several good features. Once you create a teacher account, you can click on the dashboard and add student accounts. There is a link to importing your students from Google Classroom, but I couldn’t get it to work. Maybe you’ll have more luck! This site handles “student logins” a little bit differently. Instead of students logging into their own accounts, you login with the teacher account and then “switch profiles” and choose which student is reading on that device. Your password has to be entered in order to get back to the teacher’s account. Here’s a video that shows you how it works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3Tfn7Dw5PA   The books don’t have quizzes attached, but there is the option to create quizzes and some of the books are AR books. They also have Spanish books and “Read to Me” audiobooks.

Update (April 2018): Epic has added a new way for students to login. If they start out on this site https://www.getepic.com/sign-in-student they can enter your teacher code (available on your dashboard) and select their name to sign in. Post this code in your classroom or as a sticker on the Chromebooks for easy access.

Overall, this is a very nice collection of eBooks, audiobooks and videos. To learn more about how to utilize this service, check out their YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbxoydvorrmdzTxYGqCM4iQ . They have a collection of short, to the point, videos.

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October 18

Website Worth Sharing: Unite for Literacy

Primary and World Language Teachers: I found a cool website that will support early readers and those learning a new language. Unite for Literacy http://www.uniteforliteracy.com/ has a collection of picture books that can be read aloud if students opt to click on the link underneath the book (it has to be done for each page). The default offers book narration in English- which is perfect for primary readers-, but by clicking on the Narration option in the upper lefthand corner, users can expand the option to include a variety of other languages (including ASL Megan!). Once a language is selected, the users have the option of hearing the narration in English or the other language. The screenshot below has Spanish selected. The text will always be in English. This is a great way to support our ELL population as well as emergent readers and those learning a new language.
uniteforliteracy

 

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October 6

Website Worth Sharing: ReadTheory

readtheoryI’ve discovered a new website that helps students develop reading comprehension skills while at the same time allowing you to monitor their progress. In addition, it provides that much needed practice of reading online texts and navigating between passages and questions that is needed in order for students to be successful on the SBA.

ReadTheory requires about a 30 minute setup time on the teacher’s part and after that the program does all of the work. Once student accounts are created and login information is shared, students login to the site and take a placement quiz. Once that is done, the program places the students in a certain lexile level and provides reading passages and questions for them to complete. If they get a question wrong, it provides an explanation as to why they got it wrong.

Teachers are able to monitor the progress in the teacher portal. They even provide a sampler of printable assessments  that teachers can use. (If you like them, more can be purchased through their site-that is how they fund their work.)

The best part of this site is that it is FREE and they promise to remain that way.

Want to try it out? Login with my sample student account: username: StudentF141  password: kelsotech1

It will give you the placement quiz and then give you a sample assignment.

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March 15

Website Worth Sharing: DKFindout

dkDK is known for publishing kid friendly informational books, but they also have a nice website for research called http://www.dkfindout.com/us/

Students can use the search tool or preselected categories to learn more about a topic of their choice. Many of the articles are kid friendly and interactive.

Teachers can login and add “lesson plans” to their accounts. There are videos that would be good for whole class instruction (students can’t see them since they are housed on YouTube).

Here is an example of an interactive page on insects that has multiple opportunities for students to read for information: http://www.dkfindout.com/us/animals-and-nature/insects/what-is-an-insect/ This would be a good center activity, especially if you had the students complete a “something I learned” statement on a note card or in Google Drive.

 

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