Group items tagged

"The most dreaded word in school reading for students: book reports. Teachers assign them, viewing them as a necessary component of assessing reading comprehension. Book reports can be a contributing factor to 'readicide'. "Read-i-cide n: The systematic killing of the love of reading, often exacerbated by the inane, mind-numbing practices found in schools." http://stenhouse.com/html/readicide.htm. So, how can we as teachers continue to monitor our students understanding of reading material without killing the love of reading? Enter technology. Technology can help bring some excitement and creativity to the traditional book report while still displaying students understanding of reading."

"Select one of the passages listed below. Complete the passage by selecting the words that best fit the context of the passage. Press the 'Check My Answers!' button when you are done to see how you did!"

Many science/content area reading passages. You can even add your own passages and select the vocabulary to highlight.

The sample passages look appropriate for middle school level but would be great for learning support students and struggling readers at the high school level. I would be interested to see how you can add your own passages, which would make it great for all levels!!!

In this online activity, children first select one of nine word endings. They then begin making words by choosing beginnings, including single letters of the alphabet and letter blends like cl-. When children form a word, they get the satisfaction of seeing it deposited into the word bank. When they're finished, they can print their word bank. Adobe Flash is required. (Grade 1)

Sixteen games containing characters from the show Martha Speaks that introduce new vocabulary through play, presenting words in proper context and providing definitions. Parents and teachers can print a list of the vocabulary words used in each game for further discussion.

Great website for boys about writing haiku, enjoying nature, and letting your voice be heard. (Girls can enjoy this too! Write your own "galku")

"Award winning children's story books, children's poems with music and song parodies that are illustrated, animated and read aloud. Books and stories are educator-approved, and ideal for summer reading programs."

"Welcome to my story ideas web site. If you want to write short stories but are stuck for ideas then you've come to the right place. Here you will find various idea generators that will provide you with as much, or as little, help as you need. There are plenty of ideas for short stories - from first lines and titles, to fully outlined characters or scenarios. A new addition is the twist in the tale generator to help with those surprise endings. Novel writers will find these ideas useful as well. There's also a random generator which will give you three words to try to spark your imagination into life. If you prefer visual prompts try the image generator. In the library you'll find books to help generate story ideas, get rid of writer's block and help with the creative writing process. Have fun and get writing!"

"I've been working hard to give kids and teachers activities to use to help with creative writing. If you've been to one of my workshops, you know creativity is fantastic fun! So, here is a line-up of fun things on my site. I'm up to over 300 pages, and adding more all the time. You'll find plenty of free activities and information on all kinds of things that are meant to get creative juices flowing. I'm now also starting to offer additional creative writing helps that can be purchased. Enjoy the site! And feel free to email me with your comments!"

About five months ago, I posted about the possibility of using Goodreads.com in the classroom in a post titled Goodreads: Another Classroom Resource Possibility. Once you're on Goodreads, it's addictive, similar in social networking terms to things like Facebook and Myspace. However, Goodreads is focused solely around literature experiences. What I did was set up a private classroom group under my profile, and set up accounts for my students. I monitor their accounts closely because they're registered under e-mail accounts that I control in the classroom (I did this through epals.com, they offer free e-mail for classrooms that can be teacher monitored).

"With this interactive tool, teens can create printed social networking or magazine/newspaper profiles for themselves, peers or family members whom they have interviewed, or fictional characters from books they have read. Featuring components of popular online social networking applications, this tool engages teens and provides a means for adults to talk about safe, responsible online behavior, such as having an awareness of who could be seeing online profiles and limiting highly personal information."

Love the active participation video with Anita Archer. I used to do "SLANT" when I taught middle school!!

This is a great site to show new teachers. The video that shows an alternative to Round Robin reading is worth showing our teachers. Although it is a bit more structured than I like, it is definitely a great start for a conversation about how to avoid Round Robin.