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”.
Literacy
There’s Blogging and There’s Blogging…
Blogging is becoming increasingly common in schools, but are all blogging programs helping to improve student learning outcomes? This is an issue I was discussing with a member of my professional learning network recently. There seems to be two main schools of thought on educational blogging programs: The unrestricted program: this may involve all students […]
Quality Blogging and Commenting Meme
If you are interested in educational blogging, Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano has written an outstanding series of posts on her Langwitches Blog. It is called Learning About Blogs FOR Your Students and covers seven areas: Part I: Reading Part II A: Writing Part II B: Student Writing Part III: Commenting Part IV: Connecting Part V: Reciprocating […]
Using an iPod Touch in the Primary Classroom
2011 is the fourth year I’ve been using an iPod Touch in my classroom. My students enjoy using these hand held devices and they can be used to enhance student learning in many different areas. In this post I will describe how we set up our iPod Touches and how we use them. Funding In […]
2011 School Year Begins
Today was the first day back at school for teachers in Victorian Government Schools. All schools are spending the first three days on professional development and planning. This year my school is focussing on in-house professional development. Each Monday night teachers will be presenting on Literacy, Numeracy and ICT. I am in charge of ICT […]
Tech Tools for Teachers #22 PrimaryPad
Each week Simon Collier and I collaborate on an email newsletter for teachers called Tech Tools for Teachers. Click here to find an archive of past newsletters and to subscribe. This week we review the site PrimaryPad http://primarypad.com/ PrimaryPad is a tool that allows students and teachers to collaborate on a word-processor style document. Despite […]
Sites for Integration Aides
Monday 9th August is a statewide curriculum day for Ultranet implementation in Victoria. For readers who are outside of Victoria, Australia, the Ultranet is a $60.5 million online portal for teachers, students and parents in Victorian government schools. Read my post on my initial thoughts on the Ultranet here. I am a Lead User at […]
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 […]
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 […]
Tech Tools for Teachers #11 VoiceThread
Each week, Simon Collier and I collaborate on a weekly email newsletter called Tech Tools for Teachers to inform teachers of useful online tools. Find out more here. This week we review the website VoiceThread http://voicethread.com VoiceThread is a popular tool that allows you to narrate images, documents and videos. Others can join in the […]
Clasroom Resources: Teachers Pet
I have been using the website SparkleBox for quite a while to find a wide range of printable resources for my primary classroom. I was therefore surprised to discover that the SparkleBox website has been been undergoing a troubled time recently with it’s creator and editor, Samuel King being imprisioned in January 2010 for child […]