Group items tagged

These apps work for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. "As many students are ending the school year, a lot of teachers are assigning review units or lessons that capture all that they have learned throughout this past year. A top item on that review list is often vocabulary. Reviewing terms that you have learned or come across can be a very useful task. These words will often appear again in books, lessons and life in general! Also, they are a great test prep item! The iPad has many valuable free vocabulary apps available. Here are just a few of those for you to use!"

"1.Charlotte's Web by E. B. White My son's school year started off with the wonderful classic Charlotte's Web. In an era where school's budgets are being slashed and creative arts are first to land on the chopping block, it's nice to see that many of the books on this list have themes of a creative talent saving the day. In this case, it's Charlotte's artistry with web making as well as her knowledge of words! My son said, "Charlotte's Web is about how Fern's pig Wilbur was going to be killed but then Charlotte (the spider) met Wilbur the day before he was going to be killed and made a plan to save Wilbur. I liked the book and my favorite character was the Gander goose." (My son seems to love the minor characters as you'll notice in his reviews!) 2.Because of Winn Dixie by Kate DiCamillo If you ask me what my favorite childrens' book in the entire world is, I'll always say this one. It's a perfect chapter book in my mind where whole adds up to much more than the sum of the parts. Every character is memorable with a story to tell and somehow all these stories meld together into a satisfying ending with an uplifting message. My son says, "Because of Winn Dixie was a extremely good book and when we read it, had everybody in the class wrapped inside the book. (not literally). When we watched the movie, I liked the book a lot better because I got to see my own vision of the story and my favorite character was Otis from Gertrude's Pets." 3.The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate My oldest's third grade teacher flagged me down two years ago to tell me how much she loved this chapter book. It then went on to win the Newbery. She said that what stood out for her was voice. She's right. Ivan the Gorilla's voice draws you right in. He's like an old soul that you can't help but befriend. In some ways this book reminds me of Charlotte's Web so I like the pairing so kids can compare and contrast. Both books revolve

"Figment is an online community where young adults and teens come together to create, discover, and share new reading and writing. Figment is also an innovative, exciting teaching tool, already being used in classrooms, libraries, and other educational settings around the country to inspire and engage young readers and writers. And what are Figment Groups? Figment offers two types of groups-public open groups for our general users to connect over anything from poetry writing to Bieber-mania; and private closed groups for our educator community. Private groups look very similar to the public groups, but with added benefits. You can limit membership to your class, library, or organizational community, and other Figment users can't see inside your group. Through these user-friendly, intuitive virtual writers' workshops: Students can create and revise writings in the safe space of a private group, sharing their works-in-progress, as well as commenting and reviewing, only with other members and their teacher. Teachers can post and update assignments, share links to relevant materials around the web, and monitor student writing. Using the group discussion tool, students and teachers can have class discussions, ask questions, and share outside resources. Once complete, students can publish their writings to the entire Figment community, therein taking advantage of one of the largest authentic audiences for student writing on the web."

WritingFix is a teacher resource website that contains lessons and ideas for any educator to freely use in their K-12 classrooms. * Writing Prompts: WritingFix features a variety of writing prompts, all designed to quickly get a student or a whole classroom writing in their journals or writers notebooks. Hover over "Writing Prompts" in the blue menu bar (upper left corner) to see the categories of writing prompts that we feature. * Writing Lessons inspired by Mentor Texts: WritingFix features a variety of lessons, all inspired by different mentor texts. Hover over "Mentor Text Lessons " in the blue menu bar (upper left corner) to see the categories of writing prompts that we feature. * Writing Traits: WritingFix features a variety of resources that are inspired by the six writing traits. These include posters, post-its, one-page resources, and thorough lessons. Hover over "6 Trait Materials" in the blue menu bar (upper left corner) to see the specific pages dedicated to 6-trait topics. * Writing Across the Curriculum: WritingFix challenges educators to teach writing not just during language arts and reading time, but also during science, history, math, and other blocks of classroom time. When a student can write about a topic, he/she can be pushed to show deeper thinking about the topic. Hover over "Across the Curriculum" in the blue menu bar (upper left corner) to see the variety of resources we offer for writing outside of language arts. * WritingFix Inservice Classes: At present, we only offer our classes in Northern Nevada; all of the resources we post, however, come with enough explanation so that any teacher could make sense of the tool without having to attend our face-to-face version of the class. Our Northern Nevada classes are very popular and well-reviewed by participants. Hover over "WritingFix Inservices" in the blue menu bar (upper left corner) to jump directly to any of our webpages dedicated to specific inservice workshops.

SpineOut is a new exciting online magazine for Young Adults, brought to you by the Good Reading team. It's a special place for Young Adults (YA's) to express their ideas and thoughts and to share their creativity in words, art, film or music. Schools and colleges subscribe to SpineOut on behalf of their students, providing access from school or home. Students are encouraged to be part of this new fun online resource by submitting reviews of newly published YA books that we provide, book trailers, poems, short stories, music lyrics, videos and art work. It is our aim that our Young Adults take this magazine on as their own, feeling free to express themselves in whichever form they wish, and then to experience the thrill of being published.

Word Stash is a vocabulary building tool that takes flashcards to a whole new level. With interactive definitions, this web tool makes learning new words fun. Pre-set lists for exams like the SAT make it easy to get started. Users can also listen to the words pronounced, see great examples of them in real-life articles, and even share them with peers via social networks like Twitter. There are currently 200,000 words in the bank and users can add any other words they would like. This is a great tool for learning new words or creating a list of words to review for subjects ranging from English to Science.

The LHS Reading Blog is a forum for students and staff at Livingston High School (Livingston, CA) to share their literary experiences and original work.