TeachersFirst - Featured Sites: Week of Apr 17, 2016
Here are this week's features. Clicking the tags in the description area of each listing will present a list of other resources with this topic. | Click here to return to the Featured Sites Archive
Thrively - Thrively
Grades
1 to 12This site includes advertising.
tag(s): back to school (62), differentiation (83), multiple intelligences (7), social and emotional learning (80), Special Needs (53), Teacher Utilities (146)
In the Classroom
Begin your school year with a more personal touch, by knowing what your students' interests are. On the teacher dashboard, examine each student and match interest to activities to differentiate instruction. Students can explore careers, apps, and activities matching their profile. With interest and strengths targeted, you can sail smoothly into a highly engaged class of individualized learning. During career explorations, open up worlds of possibilities for students and families to begin planning a successful path. Add a link to this tool to your class website for possible enrichment activities for families. Offer suggestions to parents for enriching after school activities found around your area.You must be registered and logged in to add items to your favorites.
Use the form at the top of the page to log in, or click here to join TeachersFirst (it's free!).
Quizalize - Zzish
Grades
4 to 12tag(s): differentiation (83), game based learning (171), gamification (74), polls and surveys (46), quizzes (90)
In the Classroom
Make a class challenge! Create practice quizzes to review the material just learned in class. Use an interactive whiteboard or projector for students to view the "leaderboard" (teacher dashboard) as in a game. Students score more points by answering questions quickly. As with other tools with a leaderboard, it is helpful to have a collaborative environment where competition is not the goal, instead working together and improving is important. Use Quizalize as a formative assessment and to differentiate to see what material needs more review with classes (or individual students). Use this tool often to obtain a snapshot of each student's understanding of content (subtopic/standards); quickly see who understands a concept and who needs some individualized practice. Share with students as a resource for creating quizzes for studying at home. When students are using surveys and polls for reports, introduce them to Quizalize since it works on any device. Share quizzes with your fellow teachers.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Story Shares - Louise Baigelman and Gary Herman
Grades
6 to 12tag(s): book lists (159), differentiation (83), digital storytelling (142), ebooks (38), multilingual (63), reading comprehension (142)
In the Classroom
Introduce this site to your reluctant or struggling readers on your interactive whiteboard or projector. Then have students explore this site independently or in small groups to find interesting reading material. Be sure to provide a link to Story Shares on your class website or blog for students to explore at home. Use this site to differentiate for students of all levels and for use with special education or ENL/ESL students. Have students write their own comprehension questions and answers based on the book to check their own comprehension and to exchange with classmates.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Slick Write - Russ Tek, LLC
Grades
5 to 12This site includes advertising.
tag(s): editing (93), proofreading (21), writing (315)
In the Classroom
Use this program with your students who are ready to refine and improve their writing. This is a wonderful program to use for revision after editing of grammar and mechanics is complete. Discover what is making your writing too wordy (excessive prepositional phrases or adverbs?) Partner an advanced writer with one not so advanced and have them use Slick Write to improve their styles. Easily differentiate for writing pitfalls by having them "configure" the settings to focus on their greatest needs instead of overwhelming them with everything at once. Put the URL on your website for students and parents to use from home. Remind seniors to use it for their college essays. Use this tool to polish your own professional writing, parent newsletters, blog posts, and papers for grad classes!Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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MobyMax: Complete K-8 Curriculum - MobyMax.com
Grades
K to 8This site includes advertising.
tag(s): addition (128), assessment (147), classroom management (128), differentiation (83), division (98), fluency (24), game based learning (171), multiplication (122), subtraction (109), vocabulary (235), vocabulary development (90)
In the Classroom
Create a classroom account. Use MobyMax during centers, for nightly homework, or computer lab time. Share with parents as an excellent resource for practicing math, reading, writing, grammar, science, and vocabulary skills at home. Use the pre-testing features at the beginning of the school year to get students started at the correct levels. Use this tool to differentiate for all students. Your gifted students can pretest out of material already learned and receive activities and instruction at their individual level. Be sure to bookmark this site to use with all levels of students.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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noredink - Jeff Scheur
Grades
3 to 12So, what's fun about learning this type of grammar? noredink asks students to pick their interests from Sports, TV shows, Musicians, and Miscellaneous. They will also be asked if they want them to use your friends from Facebook. When students are practicing or are taking quizzes, the program will use their interests and friends, and generate the questions around their interests and friends. The hope is that the content will be more interesting by including sentences with favorite celebrities, hobbies, TV shows, or even personal friends. Be sure to watch the introductory video. The program works on iPads as well as your regular computer.
This site includes advertising.
tag(s): assessment (147), capitalization (9), classroom management (128), differentiation (83), grammar (133), homonyms (8), homophones (6), punctuation (25), quiz (67), quizzes (90), sentences (21), Teacher Utilities (146), verbs (27)
In the Classroom
Teachers sign up and create a class. You will receive a class code for your students to use (optional). With the class code you will be able to track student's progress, differentiate, assign quizzes and assignments, and see class trends. The program has color-coded "heat maps" to track progress easily. Your assignments and quizzes will be uniquely generated according to each student's interests. Also, students don't have to wait for you to give them an assignment. With their account, they can practice at any time. A student does NOT have to provide an email address to create an account. It will work without it! Since students are providing some personal information about interests, etc., we strongly advise parent permission.Challenge (and excel) your gifted students with the concepts practiced at this site. Since student assignments are at their own level, students can find great acceleration in practicing these necessary skills. ENL/ELL students will especially benefit from the practice using correct English, in their writing, over a continuous time period. Student assignments are at their own level. You can also create your own quizzes. Use this site as part of your rotation during learning stations. Put your class' URL on your website so students can practice at home, too.
Comments
Any website that doesn't let you try it before creating an account is instantly uninteresting to me.Kristi, , Grades: 0 - 12
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The Readability Test Tool - David Simpson
Grades
1 to 12This site includes advertising.
tag(s): independent reading (85), readability (5), writing (315)
In the Classroom
Use this tool to offer differentiated resources for the different reading levels in your class. At the beginning of the year, as you learn your students' capabilities, use this tool to find reading at the appropriate level to eliminate frustration. This is perfect for finding the "just right" level for your highly advanced/gifted students and those needing extra remediation. If you do discover that a website you want to use is over your students' independent reading level, you can still use it, just use Read Ahead, reviewed here as a guided reading activity for younger students. Read Ahead is perfect for introducing any reading passage to struggling readers, special education students, and ENL/ESL learners. View readability levels of websites before sharing with students to find appropriate reading levels for differentiation. On an interactive whiteboard or with a projector, test passages of public domain texts from sites like Project Gutenberg, reviewed here, by famous authors to see how their writing ranks when discussing their writing style.Why not have students put in the URL for their blog or wiki (or simply paste in a writing sample) to see the level at which they are writing? This is one way to encourage writing as a craft and challenge students to include more varied vocabulary and sentence structure in their writing.
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The Differentiator - Ian Byrd
Grades
K to 12tag(s): blooms taxonomy (7), critical thinking (112), differentiation (83), newbies (14)
In the Classroom
As an example, use a verb from Bloom' taxonomy such as "evaluate." Click on the part of the sentence at the top, in parenthesis, to enter your content such as "patterns of environmental issues." Choose the resource you want students to use, the product you want them to make, and the number of students in a group by clicking on the tabs. Example objective: Students will evaluate the patterns of environmental issues using websites to create a news report in groups of two. Save your objective by copying and pasting it into any document or online tool. The Differentiator will give you many project ideas that you may not have thought of yourself, and serves as a welcome reminder of different activities and expectations you can use in your classroom. Take a look at this site at the beginning of the school year or when creating a new unit (or project). Find new ways to differentiate for your gifted students using this creative and powerful tool. If your gifted students test out of your current math lessons, use this site to find new material to challenge their minds. This site is deceptively quick and simple, but it could be very useful when writing detailed, powerful lesson plans.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Quizlet: The End of Flashcards - Brainflare: Andrew Sutherland
Grades
3 to 12This site includes advertising.
tag(s): DAT device agnostic tool (143), flash cards (42), Formative Assessment (70), quiz (67), spelling (95), vocabulary (235), word study (58)
In the Classroom
Membership asks for an email. Email allows you to notify others that you want to share a word list or activity with them. If students cannot have their own email accounts, consider using a "class set" of Gmail subaccounts, explained here, this tells how to configure Gmail subaccounts to use for any online membership service. This would provide anonymous interaction within your class. KEEP A LIST of students usernames (non-identifying) and passwords, incase they forget them! If you already use Google Classroom with your students, it only takes a few minutes to get them set up with a Quizlet Class.Quizlet has a very thorough "Help Center" to get the idea of how the site works. Save your "sets" and decide whether you want them to be entirely public, just for you personally, or shared with a "group." The new version of "study sets" allows you to scan your notes with your phone or tablet and create study sets designed for your specific needs. You can now highlight main ideas, underline key concepts and bold important study terms to create custom content. Create your own groups for each class or subject. Be sure to note the fact that you can upload vocabulary lists by copy/pasting from various formats--- a time real saver! Use this tool easily in your BYOD classroom since all students will be able to access it for free, no matter what device they have.
Content and English teachers may set up their personal network of users. Pretest your gifted students and allow them to "test out" of material they already know. Learning support teachers will want their students to create their own Quizlet sets and help learn them in the process! Teachers may create your own sets of words, or let students do the work for themselves and each other. Use the interactive whiteboard for quick flashcard or electronic testing using your sets. World language and ESL/ELL teachers will find many word sets already built and ready to use at this site. If you team teach with others at your grade level, take turns making the online Quizlets to accompany your science or social studies chapters. Be SURE to share this tool on your teacher web page for students to use at home.
Be sure to see the classroom quiz game for groups, Quizlet Live (from the creator of Quizlet), reviewed here.
Edge Features:
Parent permission advised before posting student work created using this tool
Includes social features, such as "friends," comments, ratings by others
Requires registration/log-in (WITH email)
Premium version (not free) includes additional features or storage
Products can be shared by URL
Multiple users can collaborate on the same project
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