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.
literacy
Blogging and the Literacy Curriculum
To realise the many educational benefits of blogging and ensure your program has an extended life-span, blogging needs to be prioritised and planned for. It should to be integrated into the curriculum; busy classrooms rarely have time for “add ons”.
Integrating Blogging into the Curriculum
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been speaking to many teachers about educational blogging. Sometimes I feel like I live, breathe and dream blogging, so talking on this topic isn’t hard! Kelly Jordan and I were so pleased with the feedback from our DEECD Innovations Showcase and ICTEV Conference presentations. This has led to many […]
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 […]
StoryIt: Word Games
StoryIt is a website that doesn’t look amazing with its simple layout and advertisements but has some great resources for the junior primary classroom. While there are stories to read and print, seasonal resources, printable shapes and more – the resources I’ve found most useful are the word games. There are about fifteen word games […]
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 […]
Smories: Stories for Children
Smories is a website with short videos of children reading original stories for kids. There are 50 new Smories added every month. Writers are encouraged to submit their original children’s stories to be featured on the website. The stories are advertised as being suitable for children aged three to eight although there are many stories […]
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 […]
Sentence Activities for Lower Primary
This week, I have been reinforcing to my Grade Two students the importance of correctly using full stops and capital letters to form sentences. I have found that primary students of all age groups tend to need constant reinforcement of these concepts. My students defined a sentence as “a piece of writing that makes sense […]
Two Reading Sites for Younger Students
I recently came across two sites that would be useful in the lower primary classrooms for reading lessons. SIGNED STORIES This British site contains a collection of free animated stories. Each story is read, signed and also has the words down the bottom of the page for students to follow along. There are hundreds of […]
Speechable
Speechable is a cool website I found out about from David Kapuler’s blog. It is simply an easy way to add a speech bubble to an image. You can upload an image from your computer or a URL and photos can be shared with friends via email or on Facebook®, MySpace®, Orkut, blogs, and message […]
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 […]