Minchau School

operations/basic facts, not graded

logic games, ungraded, challenging

Create a floating timeline. Tell a story, map a historical event, or review a science experiment...

 Quicklyst is a great addition to any student (or teacher) tool box. It makes note taking a breeze, quickly importing definitions and search information into the notes. In a one to one setting (where every student has access to a computer) Quicklyst could be used by students to take notes during discussion, lecture, or any type of whole class learning activity.  In the one or two computer classroom, Quicklyst could be assigned as a student job in your classroom. During the class, the student assigned can take notes that can later be downloaded and sent to students, or printed as a study guide.  The class job should be rotated so that each student has an opportunity to be class recorder. Quicklyst is also excellent for teachers taking notes in staff meetings, professional development, or conferences.  It is such a simple tool to use and has just the right amount of extras (instant definitions) to make it really useful!

What it is: Mr. Thorne Does Phonics is a website and YouTube channel dedicated to teaching kids phonics through videos.  The site has a great tag line, "Where learning to read becomes reading to learn." The videos are divided up by categories which include: Introduction to PhonicsGeraldine the Giraffe VideosAlphabet Letters and SoundsMore Alphabet Letters and SoundsConsonant DigraphsLong Vowel SoundsConsonant BlendsAlternative SoundsAlternative Spellings200 High Frequency WordsGrammarChristopher Thorne hosts all of the phonics videos with occasional guest appearances from his friend Geraldine the Giraffe (who has her own book!).  The videos are engaging, help students listen for phoneme segmentation, and give them encouragement to replicate the phoneme sounds themselves.  This library of phonics videos is wonderfully comprehensive! How to integrate Mr. Thorne Does Phonics into the classroom: Mr. Thorne Does Phonics is a fantastic introduction to phonics, phonemes, and decoding words. Students can practice word recognition, pronunciation, and phonics rules with fun videos that can be played, paused, and rewound.  The Mr. Thorne Does Phonics site would be a wonderful site to have available for students on classroom computers as a reading center. Students can visit the reading center and pull up the video of the exact phonics skill that they need to practice.  Mr. Thorne Does Phonics would also be a wonderful way to introduce your whole class to a new phonics skill by playing the videos for them using a projector-connected computer or interactive whiteboard. If you have access to a built-in webcam or portable video camera, encourage students to create their own Mr. Thorne inspired phonics videos.  These can be shared with other students in the class, parents, and younger grade levels.  The videos also make a great record of progress throughout the school year. Tips: You can also find Mr. Thorne's phonics videos on YouTube. Can't access YouTube at school?

Site with videos for students with a phonic alphabet. 

A site where you upload a picture, record yourself and then make the mouth move to appear as if the picture was talking. Good for storytelling or making reports. Visual podcasting....

A free site to upload Youtube videos in a variety of formats: MP3, AVI, WMV. 

Great site for grade 5 Social Studies; Canada unit

A tech tool that's great for younger students as well as older ones. Storybird is an online collaborative storytelling tool, and the best part about it is that kids really enjoy Storybird and it can be meshed into nearly any curriculum.

Activities and Lesson Plans from Saskatchewan Schools on the Needs/Wants unit for Social. 

the Amazing Web Projects Book. 

A video and activities for Phases of the Moon. A username and profile must be created before logging in. 

A unit for The Mitten by Jan Brett

A video outlining a proposal to create solar roadways to solve our  energy needs. 

Today in Canadian History, a resource site for students of Canadian history.  Click on any date and it will tell you everything that happened in Canadian history on that date. 

A massive list of TEDTalks in a Google Spreadsheet.  URL/Speaker/Talk Name/Summary/Duration/Publish Date are all laid out for you to search, organize, list and browse for some inspiration for your classroom!

World Vision's website to encourage global citizenship

This is a great site that is basically a giant FAQ database on everything tech. There are topics on the Internet, Hardware, Files and Sharing, Email, Images, Chat and Classroom Management. When you choose your topic there is a list of common questions that teachers or other tech users might ask. For example in the hardware section there are questions like what is a flash drive, or how do I burn a CD in Windows XP? The questions are basic for those of us who work in tech everyday but very common for those that don't. Each section also provide additional links to other resources that users can consult when they have questions.