Favourite Language Arts Links

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

New to Blogging!

Are you new to blogging?  Here is a great video on blogging ideas which may make it less scary to take that first step! From Discovery Streaming.

Top 10 sites for 2012 including Popplet!

This last week we all enjoyed some amazing Kelowna sunshine at our staff training session.  Some days it was cooking at 39 degrees, and the plebs from Vancouver had to seek the air conditioning;)  Whilst there I shared my top sites for 2012/13 on a Popplet  If you have not heard of this great mind mapping/presentation tool please take the time to check it out.  This is a great tool for students to share multi-media presentations/collages including images and video format.  The collage can be transformed into a mind map, just by connecting one link to another.  It is so user friendly that students as young as grade 1 and 2 can use!  You can also create a presentation similar to Powerpoint very quickly.  Here is my Popplet sharing my favourites for the coming year.  P.S. if you don't have time to check them all take a few minutes to look at StudyLadder and Learnin5.
 

StudyLadder is an amazing resource for teachers with Canadian math money, (yippeee!) several subjects including resources on literacy, numeracy, art, music, science, language arts, health, etc.  You can set up a complete class plan and give your students personalized avatars.  During lessons and activities students can earn points for their character and bonus items in their rooms and gardens.  They can even help their little pet alien grow.  Homeschoolers can register one student free, and paid homeschooling families pay $88 a year for a family of 3 students. But even if you sign in on your own you can get tons of free resources at your fingertips!

Learnin5 is your closest place to professional development with tons of videos sharing all the latest techie tools, in just five minute slots!  Love that idea:)


The last shout out it is for ReadingRewards.  (thanks Jill for sharing this with us!)  This is a great way for teachers to promote literacy in the classroom by setting up a class of their own to monitor reading and reward them in the process.  Here is what Jill has to say about the site:

"I recommend setting up a new teachers account, so that you can explore all of the ways that the groups can be used. There are Youtube video's to give you overviews.

At first I thought that I would create a group for my students, but now I think that it would be more meaningful, if there were more children, and that if the children were all of a similar reading level.
I think it would work as a school wide invitation for kids to sign up by grade level. The children are invited to write book reviews and rate their books, and a visual library appears on their account, so that their friends can also see what they have been reading.

When the children sign up, they then track their reading by minutes- an online, visual, daily, reading log. They get to choose avatars, and they earn different "stickers" after reaching predetermined minutes of reading.  The different sticker levels was motivation enough for my kids. If they saw that their cousin had achieved a certain number of minutes and new sticker then they too wanted to match that. But you can also set up rewards of any kind." 

So hopefully you will share your favourite finds with us as we start the school year!  Happy trekking on the web:)

Blessings to you
Pippa and the learning commons team.










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