UTWCIW

Use this site to find a literacy lesson, or share a gem of your own.

This site has some really neat ideas for new and interesting ways for students to show their knowledge. It is an excellent resource for book report ideas. The site also provides links to other helpful websites. I did find the site a little strange to navigate in that the directions for creating a project are located in one place and then it directs you to another location on the site for pictures or drawings of the process, but overall it is still a good resource.

Looking for a synonym to jazz up a piece of writing? You, and students, can use visual thesaurus to find that word. The "visual" part of this online thesaurus stems from the web of words that results from a search. For example, if I was looking for a synonym for cool, I'd type the word in the search bar, and a web would be created with "cool" in the center. Stemming off the center is a color coded assortment of alternatives for "cool", and the colors are based on the meaning of "cool". What a fast and fun way to search for words!

What I really enjoyed about this website was the opportunity for incidental learning -- unexpected learning on the way. As I child, I always enjoyed the encyclopedia. As I paged to my favorite section "dogs" I would find other articles I never would searched before. With this visual thesaurus, the user can search for one word and find herself learning others.

This site provides a variety of graphic organizers and also gives useful information to students and teachers for organizing information.

This site has many great graphic organizers to use with students to help organize information.

I like that the site specifies which skills are being targeted and grade level appropriateness for each worksheet and graphic organizer.

This is a free resource for students and staff that allows them to input the bibliographic information from the resources they have used and it will create the citation for them. Users are able to choose MLA or APA styles, which will help both our students here and adults who may be taking graduate level courses.

I am personally looking forward to using this site for research papers. Thank you for sharing!

I agree with Sarah...very glad to know about this as we gear up for next year!

This site has several videos showing some different strategies from middle school writing classrooms. The strategies are valuable and range from how to create a culture of writing in the classroom to how to get student writiers to enbrace the power of revision.

This site has a bunch of different graphic organizer templates ready for downloading and printing.

A fun site for younger kids but it also has a section for older students too!

This is an AMAZING site with a ton of educational apps for iPod Touch and iPad. You can view and print a list of these apps with a description and cost of each of them. Prices for the apps range from free to quite expensive, but even some of the more costly apps have free versions available. The apps are also sorted into categories such as reading, math, art, and communication.

This is a great website where you can download audiobooks to a computer. They then can be transferred to an MP3 player for listening. I have done this for sections of books that we have read in class. All you need is a public library card

How neat! I could use this in my class listening center. It'd be especially helpful for my struggling readers. Thanks for sharing!

A great resource similar to Amazon for reading book reviews and downloading the digital version of good books.

A fun site for the little ones!

Educational games for K-5

This site has many ideas for teachers teaching anything with music. It has lesson ideas, charts, and fun activities for students to do while learning about music.

I like that this site regularly features different composers. I also found some valuable info. on this site (rhyming dictionary) that I will use in my upcoming composition unit!

Help students find music and easily find information about each song and artist.

ITunes are also very compatible with the Smartmusic software that our school uses (unlike our PC's).

A fun site for familes of 2nd graders and older children

Many special education teachers in the district use Boardmaker software to make picture schedules, social stories, flashcards, etc. This website allows parents and educators a 30 day free trial. If you like what you see, talk to a special educator in your building.

Freeplaymusic.com has a library of copyright-free music spanning all genres, available for download either on-line or through a portable hard-drive. Music is organized by style, feel, and volume and features many classical composers, indie artists, and various sound effects. If students are making a video for a project, they will definitely want to check out this site!

NoteStar works a lot like Google docs in that studetns are able to collect and organize their notes, but has an added feature of preparing the students bibliography page for them.

I do like the added feature of this site to help create the bibliography. No matter how many times you go over bibliographies, they are always a pain for students. This helps alleviate some of that pain.

Games to support learning in all subjects, mostly elementary age. I use mostly the math games. They have a few for younger students that are obviously games, but require the student to figure out the answer first and not just guess blindly. There are also a number of printable worksheets.