Should you use Seesaw in your classroom? Should you use blogs in your classroom? What are the pros and cons of these digital portfolio tools? Let’s take a look!
writing
Typing Tips: The How and Why of Teaching Students Keyboarding Skills (Comparison Of Free Sites)
The ability to type with reasonable speed and accuracy helps students to better cope with the digital world they live in. This post discusses the teaching of both handwriting and typing. I share four of the best free online resources for teaching keyboarding. Check out the comparison table for a quick overview of what these sites offer!
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Comments For Kids Still Count: Teaching And Promoting Quality Commenting
A discussion about a shift in the nature of blogging has inspired me to reflect on the role blog comments still play in a classroom blogging program. I share 8 tips for teaching and promoting quality commenting with students.
Monster Project: Global Collaboration Idea For Halloween
This Halloween inspired global project idea is fun, straightforward, and rewarding. All you need is a class and a blog!
Literacy Skills and Blogging: How Far They’ve Come!
I’m always telling people how much my students’ literacy skills have improved through blogging. In my seven year teaching career, I have not come close to finding another medium that helps students to refine their reading and writing so well. Through advice from the inspirational teacher, Linda Yollis, I have been able to set very […]
Editing Students’ Blog Comments
Recently, a teacher asked my opinion about editing students’ writing on blogs She said “We are having a debate in our primary school at the moment – to what extent should we correct spelling/grammar in posts or comments by students? Our principal sees the posts as a finished product which reflect on our school, while […]
Super Teacher Worksheets
Super Teacher Worksheets is a useful site for primary school teachers if you’re looking for simple printable worksheets. Some of these worksheets are free. Membership to the whole site costs $20/year. The worksheets are divided into categories such as math, reading, writing, social studies, science etc. These are then broken down to sub categories. Super Teacher Worksheets […]
MeeGenius
MeeGenius is a new site that has been popular on Twitter recently. MeeGenius is an online library of picture books for young children. Currently there are nearly 30 books available to read, most of which are popular fairy tales. The books can be read independently or there is an option to hear the book being […]
New Blog: Teaching Literacy in the Early Years
This year I have been team teaching with Kelly Jordan. Combining our two grade two classes has so many benefits and we are finding we are really meeting the needs of our students this year. Our open plan classroom is a fantastic place to teach and learn! Kelly has recently started a blog called Teaching […]
Storytelling Tool: Five Card Flickr
Five Card Flickr is a simple yet useful tool that I found out about from a number of people on Twitter. Five Card Flickr deals you random pictures from Flickr that you put together to tell a story. From each 5 photos you are dealt, you choose one to add to your story. You then […]
Read Write Think
Read Write Think is a site from the UK that offers a collection of online Student Materials to support literacy learning in the P-12 classroom. While this site includes lesson plans and web resources, I have found the most useful aspect of the site to be the Student Materials. There are over 50 interactive resources […]
Word Magnets
Word magnets is a fantastic website for the Interactive Whiteboard or classroom computers that I read about Nik’s Learning Technology Blog. Word magnets is a tool that allows you to paste in some text and then change the text into word tiles like fridge magnets that you can drag and rearrange. Word magnets would be […]
Fun Spelling Games
GamesGames.com is a site with lots of fun and free games. Some of these games are simply “for fun” but there are some educational games which are very worthwhile for use in the classroom. My Grade Two students are enjoying the Spelling Games. There are 18 spelling games where students have to build and find words in […]