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Jan
20
Website Wednesday
Filed Under (Website Wednesday) by Ann Carnevale on January 20, 2010 and tagged ela, reading, writing
Welcome to Website Wednesday, bringing you some of the best of websites I’ve looked at recently that you can really use.
ReadWriteThink’s Student Interactives are literacy tools and fun activities for all grade levels. When you first access the site you’ll see the featured activities listed in front of you. There are many more that can be accessed from the menu at the left. You can make selections by grade level, interactive type, learning objective, and theme. If you find a particular tool that you want your students to use, add a shortcut to the webpage in your grade level share folder, or ask for it to be placed on the student K-2 or 3-5 start page.
Comprehension Strategies is a section of the Busy Teacher’s Cafe. This section provides information and resources for teaching about making connections, questioning, visualizing, inferring, determining importance, and synthesizing.
The Reading Lady links to over 45 scripts for Reader’s Theater. The scripts can generally be downloaded in either .pdf or .doc format. While you’re at the site be sure to click the “home” link in the top left corner and explore the other great resources available from the Reading Lady.
Certificate Street offers a variety of certificate templates to customize and print out. Certificates aren’t just for teachers to give to students. You can integrate this resource into the curriculum by having students make a certificate for a character in a story they just read, or a famous person from history. The files download in .pdf format, but they’re created to allow the user to type in certain fields. Just click where it says, “Type Here,” and customize the template in any way you’d like.
On another note, if your students could tell you why technology is important to their learning, what would they say? I found a video on YouTube featuring third graders talking about technology:
The next time you have just a few minutes, ask your students why technology is important to their learning. I’d love to hear their answers!
January 21st, 2010 at 9:18 am
The teachers I work with are always asking for more resources for reading skills and comprehension strategies. Thanks so much for providing these great sites for me to pass along. I had not seen the Busy Teacher’s Cafe before. I will have check it out more. I would be interested in hearing what students have to say about why they thing technology is important for their learning. I might have to start stopping kids in the hallway!
January 21st, 2010 at 10:08 am
Melissa, Glad these sites might help your teachers. Would love to hear what your students had to say about tech.
January 21st, 2010 at 11:53 am
I love the resources on ReadWriteThink. The Flipbook Creator and Mystery Cube are two of my favorites.
Thanks for the Certificate Street link, and the great idea to use it as a reading activity for students to award certificates to characters. It would be a fun assessment for them to list the character traits for which the certificate was given.
January 22nd, 2010 at 12:17 pm
I had not seen several of these sites. Thanks for sharing.
January 23rd, 2010 at 8:47 pm
Hi, thank your for sharing these sites with us. I leave you other sites with certificate templates; I hope everyone can use them:
http://www.lakeshorelearning.com/general_content/free_resources/awardMaker.jsp
http://www.123certificates.com/
January 23rd, 2010 at 9:27 pm
Jesús,
Thank you so much for sharing the two additional certificate sites. I took a quick look, and they’re fabulous!
January 24th, 2010 at 12:22 pm
This video is amazing! Thank you for sharing. The students are so wise and bring up so many points.
January 24th, 2010 at 2:04 pm
Wonderful to see and hear how children view the power of technology in learning.
It seems that everyone sees the importance of using technology to bring about the best performance in students. eSchool had an article on award winning Superintendents who were trying to implement change in their schools. Social media (twitter, blogs, wikis…) are filled with teachers who are pushing the integration of technology into instruction. K-8 teachers are doing exemplary things with vodcasts, podcasts…
We have heard the voices of HighED students Michael Wesch’s Youtube videos and the voices of Mrs. Rose’s Grade 3 students. So what is holding up the integration of technology. Is it legislative will? funding? professional development? accountability? Or does change take time… How long will it take these cumulative experiences to impact or is it all ready happening!?
Ideas?
January 24th, 2010 at 3:05 pm
Leon, I’m very proud to say that in our district nothing is holding up the integration of technology, we ARE doing it, and we’re doing it quite well! The teachers and students in Plainville do amazing things with technology!
January 24th, 2010 at 7:15 pm
Hello Ann,
Great to hear that this is happening… This sounds like a case of Best Practices.
What would say would be the key drivers in implementing the change process… clear vision, adequate resources, informed teachers, administrative leadership, student voice, community involvement, digital literacy goals… I am running out of things =; )
Best, Leon