literacy – Page 5 – iLearn Technology

I have/Who has Free Language Game Downloads

September 14, 2010Kelly Tenkely2 Comments7653 views

What it is: Lakeshore is an educational store here in the states. Today they posted links to some free language game downloads for 1st-6th grade. The downloads are for an I have/Who has card game. For grades 1-2 you will find a beginning sounds game, for 3-4 a fact and opinion game, and for 5-6 a parts of speech game.

How to integrate I have/ Who has into your curriculum: The I have/Who has card games are a fun way for students to practice a skill as a whole class. Students sit or stand in a circle. One student begins by reading the statement on their card. For example, one student might read “I have: Candy tastes sweet. Who has an opinion about birds.” The student whose card has an opinion statement about birds answers “I have: Flamingos are the prettiest bird. Who has a fact about exercise?” Play continues until all the cards have been matched. I like the I have/Who has games because they require every student to be actively listening and involved in game play. The game also gives opportunity for the class to discuss why an answer is correct or incorrect.

Tips: If you are looking for another I have/Who has card game, check out my Contractions game here.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using the I have/Who has Free Language Games in your classroom!

57 Ways to Celebrate National Literacy Day

September 8, 2010Kelly Tenkely8 Comments10944 views

Did you know that today is National Literacy Day? It is! I think that literacy is something to celebrate, being literate is a gift I enjoy every day but don’t stop to appreciate nearly enough. In honor of National Literacy Day, I thought I would share my favorite technology enhanced literacy tools. In no particular order, here are my favorite ways to celebrate literacy. What are your favorites?

1. Save the Words– an excellent site that values language, vocabulary, and words.

2. Grammaropolis– an enchanting site that teaches students parts of speech through character and story.

3. Signed Stories– an online story collection accompanied by British Sign Language, pictures, and sound.

4. Learn Direct– where students can be the star in their own online storybook.

5. Inkless Tales– a literacy website with a beautiful mission statement “You can do anything. Try, try again. Don’t give up. Experiment. Write, draw, explore and more.”

6. Storybird- a beautiful collaborative storytelling website.

7. My English Images– images that illustrate difficult vocabulary and language concepts.

8. Lexipedia– a visual dictionary and thesaurus.

9. Tikatok– Students become published authors with Tikatok

10. Free Reading– an open source instructional program to help you teach early literacy.

11. Word World– a great site for kindergarten and first grade letter and word recognition.

12. Reading Rockets– free reading guides for teachers to improve reading achievement of kids.

13. Super Why! – a site that helps kids gain important foundational reading skills such as alphabet, word families, spelling, comprehension, and vocabulary.

14. Get Ready to Read!– a great site that helps teachers equip children with the basic skills necessary for learning to read.

15. Roy the Zebra– Excellent site for emerging readers.

16. Fable Vision– the beautiful virtual town filled with stories and games.

17. Kidoons– brings time honored tales from the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Charles Perrault, Thorton Burgess, and more to life.

18. GameGoo– fun educational games that help students develop reading and language skills.

19. Read Write Think– a collection of online student resources that support literacy learning k-12.

20. Seussville– the wonderful world of Dr. Seuss brought to life.

21. Digital Booktalk– book trailers that will whet your students appetite for a good book.

22. Storybook Web– a website based on popular children’s stories where students can listen to author’s reading excerpts.

23. Mee Genius– where students can read books, personalize them, and share them with a friend.

24. Stage’d- a tool that helps students tell stories digitally.

25. Kerpoof– where students can create their own storybooks, comics, and movies.

26. Lightning Bug– “your writing partner, helping you write a story from beginning to THE END.”

27. ePubBud– for publishing your very own ebooks.

28. Magic Treehouse- a wonderful website where students can engage in the popular book series.

29. The Stacks– a wonderful creation by Scholastic that excites students about reading.

30. The World of Peter Rabbit– an absolutely captivating site based on the work of Beatrix Potter.

31. My Hippo Has the Hiccups– a free poetry ebook by Kenn Nesbitt.

32. Weboword– a visual vocabulary site.

33. N ational Geographic Young Explorer– non-fiction for the primary classroom from National Geographic.

34. Online Audio Stories- an impressive collection of free audio stories.

35. Story Nory– another collection of free audio books for kids.

36. Skratch Track– a virtual bookshelf for primary students.

37. Picture Book Maker– a place for students to create picture books.

38. Story Cove– a collection of stories from around the world.

39. Skype an Author Network– connects teachers, students, and authors over Skype.

40. Word Ahead Vocabulary Videos– animated vocabulary videos.

41. My Story Maker– a website where students are in charge of the interactive story.

42. Book Wink– an incredible site that motivates students to read through podcasts and web video.

43. Scholastic Story Starters– a tool that generates writing ideas.

44. Telescopic Text– a site that expands a sentence to demonstrate descriptive writing.

45. The Tale of Despereaux Adventure- a beautiful interactive story book.

46. Literactive- leveled guided readers, comprehensive phonics activities, and supplemental reading material.

47. Pic Lits- a creative writing site based on pictures.

48. Speakaboos– a collection of online stories and ebooks.

49. Animailia– a site based on the popular book by Graeme Base.

50. Mrs. P’s Magic Library– an absolutely enchanting site that celebrates books and reading.

51. Free Rice– practice vocabulary while helping others fight hunger.

52. Shelfari– a virtual bookshelf.

53. Read to Feed- Heifer International reading project for kids.

54. Into the Book– an outstanding site that teaches reading strategies for comprehension.

55. Google Lit Trips– exploring literature using Google Earth.

56. Starfall– a must see website for phonics.

57. Book Adventure– a free reading motivation program.

But the very best way to celebrate National Literacy Day…read a book!

Save the Words

September 3, 2010September 3, 2010Kelly Tenkely4 Comments4150 views

What it is: Save the Words is a site that celebrates words by “saving” words that are becoming forgotten and left behind in the English language. I learned about the site today from @BookChook on her wonderful literacy blog. The site has a simple premise, words are displayed graphically, when your roll your mouse over them they call out to you “pick me”, clicking on a word displays the definition, part of speech, and a contextual example of the word. Signing up on the site allows you to adopt words. I love the mission of this site, on the f.a.q. page they state that “Words are the cornerstone of language. The more words we have, the richer our vocabulary. Words allow us to communicate precisely. Without the right word to describe something, well…we’d be speechless.” So true, words bring so much color to language, it is a shame to use the same words over and over. I am certainly guilty of this in my overuse of words like fantastic, outstanding, wonderful, amazing, great, nice, fun, etc. in blog posts. Surely there are many more appropriate words that describe the tool I am reviewing more precisely, but we become lazy in language and use words that are easy and we don’t have to think about.

How to integrate Save the Words into your curriculum: Save the Words is a site with a beautiful goal, preserving words to keep language rich and powerful. Most of the words on the site are new to me, but I was surprised at how many of them I could make an educated guess about meaning based on what I already know about words. Use Save the Words in your classroom (at any age) to enrich your students vocabulary, help them identify word patterns and meaning clues, and to help them appreciate words. Choose a word to adopt each day as a class using a class account (adopting a word requires an email address). Commit to using the word at some point during the day. My elementary age students loved learning new words, especially words that they found out parents and other teachers didn’t know. They become the experts. In my class, I often had a secret word of the day. I would casually mention what the secret word was at some point in the morning. Throughout the day if I needed my student’s attention I would ask for the secret word, immediately students were silent with their hands raised to give me the word. Save the Words would be the perfect place to draw those secret words from.

Students could also keep a journal or word list of all of the words they have adopted, I could see this being especially popular with the Webkins age group. The words are often difficult, but I don’t think that is any reason to exclude them from the classroom vocabulary!

Today I adopted the word antipelargy: reciprocal or mutual kindness; love and care of children.

Tips: You can sign up for a word of the day delivered directly to your email on Save the Words.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Save the Words in your classroom!

Treasures MacMillan McGraw Hill Supplement

August 3, 2010August 3, 2010Kelly Tenkely15 Comments6770 views

I am not a fan of canned curriculum. It has some benefits and is relatively easy to teach, but there is a lack of differentiation for different learners and the activities for practice are often shallow. Treasures has some fun stories and themes but they are really lacking in their activities to practice the essential learning. The activities are often shallow and don’t change from first grade to fifth grade. The same copy from the dictionary activity is suggested for learning vocabulary for every unit in every grade level. I created the Treasures supplement as a way to help teachers provide students with multiple ways of practicing the essential learnings. I just finished the supplement for unit 1. This is the supplement for first through fifth grade.

Open publication – Free publishing – More treasures

Storybook Web

August 2, 2010Kelly Tenkely3 Comments5216 views

What it is: Storybook Web is “based on popular children’s stories by authors Scoular Anderson, Debi Gliori, Mairi Hedderwick and Frank Rodgers.” There are a number of fun activities on this site including the ability to listen to the author’s reading excerpts from their stories and answering questions about how they came up with ideas for writing. Students can choose from one of eight stories, each story has a related game, word bank activity, and videos/audio for reading the story and interacting with the author.

How to integrate Storybook Web into your curriculum: Storybook Web is a fun way for students to interact with stories, making connections to the authors of the stories and the themes that they are reading about. This site helps students think like an author. It gives them an inside look at how authors think about writing. Use this site as an introduction to a writing activity. Students can watch the author videos and get an inside look at the process that a writer goes through. This can be done using a projector connected computer or interactive whiteboard. Storybook Web would also make a nice addition to a writing center on classroom computers. When I taught second grade, I set up an “editing and publishing” center on my classroom computers. Here I gave students access to an online dictionary, thesaurus, word processor/publishing program, and Read Write Think. Storybook Web would be an excellent addition to a writing center. Students can go to be inspired, encouraged in the writing process, and given a place to practice their own writing. I like the word bank on Storybook Web, word choice is hard for beginning writers. By interacting with the word bank activity on Storybook Web, students will begin to think about their own word choice. You may want students to go through their own writing and pick out words that they would add to their word bank. I have found that activities like this make students think about the words they are using. Often, students will self-edit and find richer vocabulary to use in their writing.

Tips: This is an easy website for emergent readers and writers to navigate. Students can choose to have the site narrated for them or they can turn the audio off and read on their own.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Storybook Web in your classroom!

Hot Shot Business

June 25, 2010Kelly Tenkely5 Comments8741 views

What it is: The Disney website has a lot of engaging and fun content for kids, unfortunately, not all of it is educational. Hot Shot Business is one of the better Disney games I have seen for the classroom. It teaches kids about business and entrepreneurship through a fun simulation game. Students are introduced to the idea of entrepreneurship and franchising by their virtual business hosts, Kate and Jack. Kate and Jack offer advice and recommendations throughout the game. The decisions that students will make throughout the game will have consequences that extend beyond profits and losses alone. They will have to deal with environmental factors, as well as finding ways to provide jobs for members of the community. Students can choose to start a pet spa, a candy factory, a comic shop, custom skateboard shop, professional landscaping, or a magic shop. Kids are sure to find a business that they are interested in! The entire game is narrated which is great for all levels of readers. As students play the game, they will be exposed to the nuts and bolts of running their own business, they will have to make decisions about how to respond to market trends, how to respond to customer preferences, how to respond to fast breaking news reports that may affect their business, and how to respond to ethical dilemmas. Students even have access to a Hot Shot Business kit where they can download and print out business cards and fliers.

How to integrate Hot Shot Business into the classroom: Hot Shot Business was designed to meet national standards in both language arts and math, making it fit easily into any curriculum. The ideal setup for Hot Shot Business is a few days in the computer lab for a 1-to-1 setting where each student can work individually on setting up their own store. Game play could extend for several days depending on the unit that you are teaching. The Disney site has some excellent lesson plans and suggestions for implementation, I highly recommend them. I like the idea of connecting with entrepreneurs in the community during this unit so that as students are working through the game, they can get advice and recommendations from those who do it every day.

If you can’t make it happen in a computer lab setting over several days, choose a business to start as a class and make decisions as a team. You can do this using an interactive whiteboard or projector connected computer. In this scenario, students will have to discuss their decisions and reason with each other to decide on a course of action.

Hot Shot Business is a really well designed game, it would be a great addition for the 3rd-6th grade classroom. I suspect that it ties into several of the curricula already being used in schools, I know that Treasures (MacMillan McGraw Hill) has units that it fits nicely into. This is great hands on learning, a definite step up from Lemonade Stand. 🙂

Tips: This is a really great site, but I must warn you that it eats up the bandwidth!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Hot Shot Business in your classroom.

MeeGenius

June 17, 2010Kelly Tenkely6 Comments5012 views

What it is: MeeGenius is an outstanding site I just learned about from @NMHS_Principal on Twitter. MeeGenius is an online library of picture books that kids can read independently or as a read along. Books can be personalized with students names, just answer a few quick questions and the book is rewritten for you. Each book comes with audio playback and word highlighting, perfect for beginning or struggling readers to read along.

How to integrate MeeGenius into the classroom: MeeGenius is a nice web library of picture books that can digitally expand your classroom library. Students will love the way they can personalize books using themselves and friends as characters in the book. Personalized books can be saved and shared with friends. Set up MeeGenius on classroom computers as a listening and reading center. Students can practice their reading, vocabulary, and fluency.

Begin the school year by making personalized books that contain your students names in them. Read them throughout the first week as a class on the interactive whiteboard or projector connected computer.

Older students can use MeeGenius, too! If you have students who are learning a foreign language, have them listen to or read a story and translate it into the language they are learning.

Tips: MeeGenius is also available as an app for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using MeeGenius in your classroom.

Venture into Student Blogging Risk Free!

April 29, 2010Kelly Tenkely3 Comments3292 views

My edublogger alliance friend Christopher Rogers at EdTech Swami has made an incredible offer:

“If you have students interested in blogging but for whatever reason have not set one up, or perhaps the prospect of administering a student blog seemed over whelming I have a deal for you. I already have a blog set up and running. I have quit a bit of experience blogging personally and with students. I have hard core spam protection set up. I will administer, moderate and commentate on the posts. If you have students interested in blogging they are welcome to join my students (who are desperate for other writers to interact with). Registration is open. All high school students are welcome. Just direct your browser to this address and click register. http://www.rogersenglish9.com/studentvoice”

If you have high school students who are interested in blogging, but you aren’t ready or can’t go there on you own, take Christopher up on this incredibly generous offer. Give your students access to an incredible teacher and resource for growth in writing and higher-order thinking.

Kerpoof: Make a StoryBook

April 27, 2010April 27, 2010Kelly Tenkely12 Comments21973 views

What it is: Kerpoof is a website that I use often with my students, I like it so much I have written about it a few times before here and here. Kerpoof has just added a brand new Make a StoryBook tool. Kerpoof’s Make a Storybook is an excellent addition to the already great lineup of Kerpoof tools. Here students can create their own picture and story books. They can use Kerpoof’s backgrounds, props, and characters or draw their own illustrations. Students can write their story in both text boxes and speech bubbles. The interface is extremely user friendly, kids will pick it up in no time! The sidebar has thumbnails of each page that students have created, making it easy to see their progress. Students can save their finished Story Books on their Kerpoof account to share with other students, download the finished Story Book to their computers, or print out their completed stories.

How to integrate Kerpoof’s Make a StoryBook into the classroom: Kerpoof’s Make a StoryBook is a fantastic place for students to “publish” their written work. Students can practice writing fairy tales, poetry, collaborative stories, fables, math based stories, illustrated science journals and non-fiction books. Kerpoof offers the freedom of creativity, students are only limited by their own imaginations. Set up your classroom computers as a publishing center where students can create a finished, published piece of work. Create collaborative class stories using Make a StoryBook on an interactive whiteboard or projector. Print out finished stories and add them to your classroom library for other students to “check out” and read.

Tips: In addition to the new Make a StoryBook, Kerpoof has added another fun activity called Spell a picture. Students can choose a background for their picture and use the letters below to practice spelling words. As they spell, pictures pop up that begin with those letters. As they continue spelling, Kerpoof narrows the pictures down to the one that a student has spelled. For example, when students select “c” pictures of a cow, cat, corn, car, cab, and cap pop up on the scene. As they continue selecting letters, the pictures get more specific and Kerpoof points to the suggested pictures of what has been spelled.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Kerpoof in your classroom.

Lightning Bug

April 26, 2010Kelly Tenkely9 Comments12180 views

What it is: Lightning Bug is a fantastic resource for the writing classroom. The tag-line of Lightning Bug is, “Your writing partner, helping you write a story from beginning to THE END”. That is exactly what it does. For each stage of the writing process, students have access to excellent guides and resources to aid the process. Students can get help finding a story idea, developing the idea, and finishing the story. Students can even have a look at what kind of writer they might be based on their personalities. Lightning Bug has a great collection of writing resources. Students can explore author blogs, search for character names, get some exercises in creativity, get help with grammar and spelling, and even get help for publishing their written work. The teacher resources are equally helpful for teaching writing.

How to integrate Lightening Bug into the classroom: Lightning Bug is a great resource to have going on your classroom computers as a writing/publishing center. Students can visit the site to get help with every stage of writing. This is an excellent site to send home and alert parents to, it would be enormously helpful for at-home writing projects. If you have access to a computer lab or 1 to 1 setting, allow your students to walk through this website as they work on any piece of writing. The site is organized really well and easy to navigate independently. Be sure to take a look at the teacher resources.

A few of the recommendations for the writing process include worksheets such as mind maps. Instead of using a worksheet for students to map their ideas, consider using online tools that will let students organize their thoughts and collaborate with others as they write. Try using online mind mapping tools such as Creza’s Mindomo or Comapping. Students can use tools such as Zoho, Google Docs, or Kerpoof to collaborate as they write.

Tips: Many of the ideas and resources found on Lightning Bug are useful for digital storytelling.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Lightning Bug in your classroom.