"Poster Yourself" is their tag line but it is so much more than that! Edu.glogster offers you the ability to create an interactive, vibrant, colorful page that can hold images, podcasts, videos and text. There are multiple categories of stickers, frames, players, papers and walls (backgrounds) that you can use to personalize your glog. Think of the possibilities for your classroom: create a glog for your "star of the week," let your "star" create their own glog in class, create a glog instead of the traditional biography report or poster, use a glog instead of a newsletter and let it include video highlights of your class, the ideas are endless!
This is a fantastically easy, fun and engaging site that you will want to use right away. Easily create stories by dragging and dropping illustrations onto a page and then add text; it's that easy. There are many artists to choose from and illustrations your children will love. One thing I love is the about the illustrator inforamtion that goes along with the artist's work because as an aside you can add a little geography to your writing time by finding on the map where the artist is located.For more information see my **screencast** or go to the site for easy-to-follow tours and tutorials.
This is another great site for creating online stories with your class. One of the things I love about this site is that it does not require children to sign up with an email; it asks only for a screen name (and tells them NOT to use their real name) and a password so your class can begin to use it right away. Though not as simple as **storybird**, it does have some of the same elements like starting from scratch or from a theme. This is one I would try with whole groups first before using it individually so that your class can see how to use it.
This site is great for teachers who have weekly spelling quizzes in their classroom. Sign up for premium membership and spelling city will keep track of your students' spelling test scores. Sign up for free membership and store all of your weekly lists on this site, then have your kids go there to practice, learn and play games with their spelling words. Watch this screencast to see how easy it is. NOW Spelling City is also Vocabulary City making it even more of a resource for you and your students!
This is is by far the most amazing language arts site for your planning needs. Thousands of free lessons organized by content, grade level, literacy strand and searchable by topic. If there is one site that you bookmark for language arts planning, this is it. The wonderful thing about these teacher-made lessons is that they incorporate and list the standarrs, they tell you the duration of the lesson and the span of time, it includes the pages or charts that you will need, tells you how much time on the computer your class will need and honestly makes it a cake walk to do a lesson. Honestly, they are not paying me to sing their praises, but when I was a classroom teacher teaching LA I used this on a regular basis.
One of my all-time favorite, go-to sites is both a resource for the teacher and an interactive site for the kids. This site is grade-specific for K-!2, arranged by literacy topic and includes categories like listening and following direction for kindergarten and finding the main idea for third grade. Each topic has links to several sites where the children play games while practicing the targeted skill. There are even links for your high school junior and senior to help study for the SAT and ACT tests.
This next site is perfect for pre-k-k teachers who want a fun site for your kids to practice their phonics. It is also great for learning the letters and their sounds. Literacy Center is also a great site for English language learners or students learning French, Spanish or German.
This site is a godsend for those of you who like to use graphic organizers in your class. Use the abc word chart with your class when talking about a book. Children can come up with a word to go with each letter of the alphabet and describe how it applies to the story. Use the character analysis chart when assigning a book report so kids can keep track of the main character's traits; a word bank of adjectives is even included.
Kidderlit is a great site for opening sentences. Used in writing , this site can be used as a mini-lesson
on writing interesting or gripping topic sentences or first sentences for book reports, biographies since it has many first sentences from stories to read. Use it in reading to demonstrate going beyond the book cover when selecting an independent reading book.
Like the title implies, this is a site for comics--you can go here to creat your own 2, 3, or 4 comic slides for your class about an upcoming activity to advertise, allow your kids to go here to create a set of slides explaining a topic, use it with your language class to practice writing dialogues, your math students to explain converting improper fractions to mixed numerals; the possibilities are almost endless.
This site is arranged by grade levels as well as content. It includes online games and printable worksheets on everything from phonics to science and social studies. There are even online quizzes and handwriting pages. A must visit site for the elementary and middle school teacher. You can do a little or a lot from this one place.
This is Merriam Webster's vocabulary site. Use it to learn a word-a-day during morning meeting. Make it a job for someone to go to the site and teach the class the new word. Have kids incorporate the new word into their writing. Try having your class see how they can use the word in conversation throughout the day. Endless possibilities.
This is a FREE handwriting worksheet generator from D'Nealian style to cursive
I honestly can't say enough about Pete's Power Point Station. It has absolutely EVERYTHING you could possibly ever need on EVERY subject you teach or holiday that comes around. It is fantastic! A note of caution: clicking on a topic will lead to more clicking. In addition to what you see on the colorful quilt-like homepage, there are 1600 additional topics. You'll want to use the alphabetized index to get where you want. Click here if you need something for **Presiden't Day**