Group items tagged

"Kidblog.org is designed for elementary and middle school teachers who want to provide each student with their own, unique blog. Kidblog's simple, yet powerful tools allow students to publish posts and participate in discussions within a secure classroom blogging community. Teachers maintain complete control over student blogs. Set up your class with no student email addresses. Provide your students with an authentic, engaging, and interactive learning experience with Kidblog." Looks like a safe environment for elementary/middle school kids.

"You can listen to all the podcasts for free, but in order to download the worksheets and transcripts (except for the ones on this page) you must become a member." For elementary students. Also has worksheets, webquests, vocabulary exercises, transcripts for members.

" I rarely say that any site or app is "the best" because what's best for my students may not be the best for another teacher's students. That said, I'm putting together a response to the question in the form of four lists of sites and apps for elementary school. There will be a list for math, science, social studies, and language arts." Visit this blog page to link to the subject areas you wish. T/H R. Byrne

Bring Your Own Device movement described in an elementary school. Their school uses a Moodle and has students take the lead and share with parents, teachers, and other students using Google.

"Whether you are looking for teaching activities, worksheets, lessons, games, ideas or articles, you've certainly come to the right place. The pages at Teach-This.com are designed to direct you quickly and easily to the ESL/EFL teaching resource you are looking for. You will find lots of new teaching ideas and activities to keep your classes imaginative and interesting." Created by Paul Adams, this crowd-sourcing site collects lesson plans and activities from teachers and lets other teachers download pdfs and use them. Categorized roughly by themes and grammar structures, there is a lot of helpful cross-referencing. Each lesson has a designated level (intermediate, elementary, etc.) and a brief abstract. Most lessons are for teens/adult learners. It's up to you what pedagogy or approach is going to work with your students. It's free -- add your own lesson!

"In the month of March 2012, an International team of 4 elementary school classrooms are conducting Action Research about quality writing through blogging. You can support them by giving them an authentic global audience and modeling quality commenting on their posts. " A great way to collaborate internationally with blogs.

Worksheets for a variety of academic essay types as well as graphic organizers to help with pre-writing, and some short elementary writing activities. Recommended by Nancy Overman.

This is super cool -- kindergartners use primary resources, such as old movies and photos, from the Library of Congress to explore and analyze how the mail was delivered in the old days and compare it to present work practices and jobs. I really got a kick out of the kids' comments about the mail train and sorting mail. Great example of how content-based, authentic materials can inspire even very young learners.

"The purpose of this site is to take an extensive list of websites that are considered high quality, reliable, and valuable and organize them in a way that even "non-techy" teachers can utilize them. It took around 10 years to collect these resources, but new ones are found every day. All of these websites have been recommended by other teachers and educational organizations and qualify as "the best". You'll find support for all core curriculum areas. In addition, you will find lesson plans, multimedia, and primary sources to enhance your students' learning environment." by Nadine Norris, a tech specialist for elementary schools near Chicago, IL. Has a wide variety of explanatory pages: tools to use with core content areas, project-based units, rethinking Powerpoint and classroom presentations, a blog highlighting social media, and advice about using digital literacy skills and research skills on the Internet.

Interactive tutoring and learning tools and exercises for maths, US grades 3-12 (late elementary through high school). ALso sponsors teacher development courses (fee-based). --Elizabeth Hanson-Smith

"Thinking Blocks is a nice site for elementary and middle school mathematics teachers. Thinking Blocks provides interactive templates in which students use brightly colored blocks to model and solve problems. As students work through the problems they are provided with feedback as to whether or not they are using the correct sequence to solve each problem. There are templates and problems for addition, multiplication, fractions, and ratios. You can also develop your own problems using the modeling tool." T/H to R. Byrne

An excellent video of the teacher and students using the lesson plan, this lesson from the Teaching Channel walks you through preparation for a writing assignment. It was developed through an EQuIP Peer Review Panel to ensure alignment with the Common Core standards, and was created by teachers and administrators working with the Massachusetts Dept of Elementary and Secondary Ed Model Curriculum Project. It uses a "Smart Chart" to deepen student understanding of rhetorical devices and has students collaborate in a ranking activity. Has links to a place where you can submit your own lessons for a free EQuIP panel review, and links to other related lesson plans.

"Essay Map is a handy tool from the folks at Read Write Think. Essay Map provides students with step by step guidance in the construction of an informational essay. Some of my students seem to struggle most with constructing an introduction and conclusion to their essays. Essay Map is particularly good for helping students visualize the steps needed to construct good introductory and conclusion paragraphs." R. Byrne's description of this tool includes some applications. He suggests Essay Map may be too basic for most high school students, but might be a good tool for middle school or high elementary. However, ESL students of any age might benefit.

"Bookcase for Young Writers is a free web companion to our book Kids Have All the Write Stuff: Revised and Updated for a Digital Age to be published by the University of Massachusetts Press in Fall 2019. "This online bookcase features virtual shelves filled with literature, apps, and interactive digital tools to inspire children from preschool and kindergarten through the upper elementary grades to become confident, expressive, creative young writers. "It includes fiction, nonfiction and poetry as well as picture books, chapter books, and e-books. It has links to child-engaging information and topics related to the all writing ideas in the Bookcase. "This bookcase is intended as a starting point for children, teachers, families, librarians and other adults who want to read books that will inspire writing. T/h B. Maloy

Third-graders built a Lego-Space. The various steps to creating the budget, presenting a proposal, etc., are outlined in detail in this article. A practical example as an intro to the Maker concept. "The impact the students have had within the school is real. They identified a need for a makerspace and took the steps to make it a reality. The countless lessons learned throughout the process and the life experiences the students gained are certain be ones the kids will never forget."

"Series Five Essential Practices for the Teaching of ELLs - Elementary : Using Technology to Collect Classroom Data" - Video page includes discussion questions and teacher comments. Lesson objective is to collect and analyze formative assessment data.

Lots of good ideas for using PowerPoint and Win MovieMaker in the classroom for student projects. Includes templates, for example, for writing story maps, timelines, and genealogy tables with PowerPoint.

Excellent explanatory article covering various options, including Cloud storage and how to get around its problems with an app or QR, creating a bookmarked Landing Page, and using features of a CMS, such as Edmodo or Schoology. Guest post from Beth Holland of EdTechTeacher.org. Comparable work-arounds would be available for non-Apple smart tablets as well.

This blog has a series of lessons using different media to help kids experiment with painting. Have students write about their work and the process afterwards. Appropriate for K-5, but lessons are adaptable to adults, who also have fun making art.