Group items tagged

Graphite site offers Reviews and Ratings for educational websites, games, and apps. Can search by Subject and Grade.

"Merriam-Webster's website has a neat feature called Trend Watch that highlights words that are trending in news and popular culture. Trend Watch includes an explanation of why each word is trending, a definition for the word, and a picture that is representative of either the word or the cause of the trend." Plenty of interesting applications for teaching new vocabulary.

"Basically Rewordify takes a block of text or website and replaces difficult words and phrases with text that is easier to understand. The site claims that this helps students read more, understand difficult English faster, and learn words in new ways. I'd throw in that the site can help you and your students break down difficult primary documents." Rewordify tool as primary document decoder

Do you teach struggling readers? No matter the content area that you teach, student success is often defined by literacy. Reading comprehension and vocabulary frequently act as roadblocks that prevent students from grasping difficult concepts. Rewordify is a tool that will help you ignore this roadblock, and even teach reading comprehension and vocabulary when used appropriately. I initially read about the tool from this blog post (http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2013/08/rewordify-helps-students-read-complex.html#.UhuJ79KsiSp). If you don't have time to check out that entire post, here is a brief summary of the tool and a few possible uses for it: Tool Description: This online tool allows the user to input a chunk of text and replaces all the "hard words" with synonyms. This seems like a spectacular tool to promote reading comprehension across the content areas. Here a just a couple ways you could use this tool. * Have you found a website with incredible information, but the reading level is way too high for your students? Have the students use Rewordify and make the reading level more appropriate for your students. * This could be a great tool to teach new vocabulary and reading comprehension. Here's one idea on how to do this: o Have students read a passage and highlight/underline/annotate the passage, including making notes of the words that they don't understand. Then, have the students summarize what they have read. Input the same text into rewordify and have the students read and summarize what they have read a second time. Compare the two summaries and discuss any similarities/differences. Now, have the students create definitions for the words that were highlighted (Students cannot use the provided synonym when completing this portion of the activity). William Berry Dept. of Organizational Development, Quality and Innovation Moody Middle School ITRT - (804) 261-5015 http://blogs.henrico.k12.va.us/techtips/ http://blogs.henrico.k12.v

Lesson objective: In this lesson, students use coordinates to compute perimeters of polygons and areas of triangles and rectangles, e.g., using the distance formula. Pretty much all the steps to this lesson are on the website, which also includes a download link with all the materials that you will need. Something to think about if you plan on completing this lesson: When you first pose the problem to the students - Have the students discuss how they could represent the location of the different vertices for the Bermuda triangle. Give the students time to research/explore and find the latitude/longitude on their own rather than giving it to them directly. There are plenty of tools out there that can help the students complete this task, the most common being Google Earth and Google Maps

This seems like a fun and interesting way to discuss/learn several different math topics. Here's a sample lesson plan that popped into my head when I saw this post: 1. Show to students a GoogleMap/GoogleEarth image similar to the one on the website, but more meaningful to you/them. For example, several different grocery stores around your house. 2. Ask the students, "Which one should I go to?" Have the students justify their answers using the image and mathematical topics that they have learned up to this point. 3. With appropriate questioning you could work in several mathematical topics here (I know I'm missing others as well…) a. Overlay a grid on the GoogleMaps and have the students give each of the locations points on an x,y axis. Use this information to determine distance. Have a conversation if this is the best way to determine which location is easiest to access. When students start to bring up the fact that even though some points are technically closer, but could be slower to get to, bring in… b. Rates, ratios, etc. Discuss how fast you could possibly travel on each route according to number of stop signs, streetlights, speed limit etc. Have students use this information to calculate the appropriate answer.

Are we questioning the status quo? An interesting innovation website focused more on the business community, but the concepts can be applied in education. Site contains innovation model and pyramid: Question >Observe>Network>Experiment>Associate>Innovate

ThatQuiz is a free testing service for teachers to use with their classes. Multiple choice tests and math tests can be administered to students using this website. All grades are immediately reported to the students. Teachers receive complete record keeping of test results, including all grades and wrong answers. Teachers can create math assessments with images and video. Students login with a username & password and a code for each assessment. There are some ready-made activities as well.

ThatQuiz is a free testing service for teachers to use with their classes. Multiple choice tests and math tests can be administered to students using this website. All grades are immediately reported to the students. Teachers receive complete record keeping of test results, including all grades and wrong answers. Teachers can create math assessments with images and video. Students login with a username & password and a code for each assessment. There are some ready-made activities as well.

Digital History is a database of primary sources from America's past. The website contains images, videos, and written word that are easily searchable by era. In addition, there are pre-made lesson plans and activities that could be used or modified in order to meet your specific instructional goals.

"This could be an interesting tool for creative writing prompts and/or vocabulary work. Here are a couple thoughts on how you could use Endless Interestingness in the classroom: Challenge the students to find a "string" of 5-10 photos in a row and connect those images by writing a creative story that incorporates the subjects, themes, moods, etc. of those photos. Provide the students with a vocabulary word. Have the students go to the website and choose one photo that best represents that word. Students could explain and justify their choice to the rest of the class. A Padlet wall would be a great tool for this assignment, so that all students could quickly share their work and view their classmates' ideas."

Interesting video on the water cycle Interesting video on the water cycle Made me stumble on this science website as well, which seems promising: http://www.untamedscience.com/science-videos