The Digital Scoop

Vocab Ahead

Vocab Ahead is a wonderful resource for illustrated vocabulary words. 

The site takes difficult to understand words and adds audio and illustrations in the form of short videos.

They also have a page just for teachers where you can:

1. Create Your Personalized Lists
You can create your personalized lists with words of your choice, meeting the academic level of your students. Here is how!

2. Share Your Lists with Your Students
Here is how you can share your personalized word lists with your students and other users.

3. Embed a Customized Widget in Your Blog or Webpage
You can create a customized widget for your blog or classroom webpage. To learn more Click here.

4. Engage Your Students in the Vocabulary Building Process
You can make vocabulary building fun by assigning vocabulary video projects to your students and uploading their work to our website. Learn More!

Finally, Vocab Ahead has also create mobile apps for several devices.  They have a couple demo apps for free and several full versions for $1.99.

Story Creating App

If you have an iPad you should check out the free Scribble Press app for creating books and drawings.

Students can create original stories and drawings or use one of the many templates to get started.  The app also contains some cute clip art and a fun marker selection area.  You can read and look at the finished books on your iPad or create a free account and share.

They even have a feature where you can order hard copies of the books and other items with your drawings on them.  You do not need to make any purchases to use the app and save stories on your iPad.

I would love to hear about some of your favorite iPad apps!

Scholastic Daily Starters

Here's a handy resource to help you start the new year off right.  Scholastic's Daily Starters provide a new language problem, math problem, and fun fact for each day of the week.

Activities for Pre-K through 8th grade are provided. 

Here are some sample activities:

3-5 Language

 

1-2 Math

Each page also includes a Teacher view and Student view option.  The teacher view option includes answer reveals for the problems.

Hope your new year is off to a fabulous start!

 

Book Trailer Ideas

Lights, camera, action!  Your students will love reading and reviewing books by starring in their own book trailers.  Here are a few resources to inspire you:

Beyond Book Reports...Book Trailers- A Scholastic teacher blog post on using storyboards and iMovie to create book trailers.

Book Trailers for Readers- A site full of teacher and student made book trailers.  A great place to inspire students to read and to help inspire their own book trailer creations.

Making Book Trailers with Photostory 3- A Tech & Learning post for Window's users on creating book trailers.

Reading-Activie-and-Engaging- An informative Wiki space detailing the benefits and process of creating book trailers.

Do you have any great book trailer resources or examples?  Please leave a comment and share!  I would love to hear about them!

Interactive Daily Editing Tool

Teacher Created Resources offers a fantastic interactive sentence editing activity.  The demo for each grade level contains one level of sentences.

The sentences can be edited by dragging and dropping traditional editing marks.

Students can also switch modes and use a keyboard to edit the same sentence.

The pre-made activities are a nice start, but I really like the Instance Sentence.  Teachers can type in any sentence with mistakes they would like the students to edit and it will be turned into an activity.

This would be a fun way to have students view and edit a daily sentence.  The teacher could set the sentence up and then display it using a projector or interactive whiteboard.  I plan on using this with my second graders who are practicing computer text editing.

Colorful Primary Worksheets

School Sparks is an awesome site for colorful worksheets geared toward Kindergarten learners. 

Worksheet categories include:

• Alphabet Parade
• Fine Motor
• Auditory Processing
• Visual Discrimination
• Letter/Word Awareness
• Phonemic Awareness
• Math/Number
• Social/Emotional
• Holiday Themes
• Kindergarten Themes

I would suggest not printing the sheets, but using them with a projector or an interactive whiteboard.  Many of the sheets could be used as a quick review in a Kindergarten classroom.

Wall of Words

Place mixed up words into a sentence, add punctuation, and watch your wall grow! 

Wall of Words allows students to select five or seven word sentences.  I like the fact that students need to select punctuation for the end of each sentence.

Visualizing Words

Lexipedia is a site designed to visually show relationships between words.

Simply type in a word.  I used the word impact, which is a vocabulary word my fifth graders study.

You will then see a web of interconnected words.  The colored dots signify parts of speech.

The left side of the screen provides definitions and more information on the words in the web.

Users can also turn off different parts of speech in the web to focus on certain words.

Lexipedia would be a great way to introduce vocabulary words.  I could also see students then creating their own word webs based on what they see at Lexipedia.

 

ZooBorns

I don't know about your students, but whenever we look at pictures of baby animals the whole room says, "Awwwww!" The pictures totally capture their attention.

ZooBorns is a wonderful blog about newborn animals from zoos around the world!  What a great place for students to practice reading non-fiction articles and learn cool facts about animals.

Students can sort the blog articles by animal or by zoo.  This would make a great source for research projects or daily reading practice.

I couldn't stop myself from smiling at some of the pictures and I bet you just might say "Awwww" yourself when you visit ZooBorns!

Thanks KB...Konnected for the great resource.

 

MeeGenius!

via www.meegenius.com

MeeGenius is an online resource for free and pay children's ebooks.

The ebooks can be read on the web or on a wireless device like an iPad.  They offer free apps for several wireless devices.

There are currently seven free ebooks.

Students can choose read to me or read it myself.

I like how the words are highlighted as they are being read.  The story can be paused and resumed during reading.

The pay ebooks at MeeGenius range from $1.99 to $5.99.