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TeachersFirst: The Highwayman - TeachersFirst
Grades
7 to 12tag(s): poetry (190)
In the Classroom
Share the start of the poem on your projector or interactive whiteboard. Then turn students or partners loose to explore the poem and discover the details on laptops or at home. Transform classroom technology use and extend the unit by challenging groups or individual students to create their own visual interpretations of a stanza using a tool such as Poster My Wall, reviewed here.You must be registered and logged in to add items to your favorites.
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Preceden - Matt Mazur
Grades
3 to 12tag(s): timelines (51)
In the Classroom
Create an ever-growing timeline throughout the school year by adding events discussed in class so students understand where events relate to each other in history. Create a timeline with events in American History and add a layer of authors' works to connect literature's time periods to history.Have your students use Preceden to create a timeline of their life and their family's life. Then use events from their life for writing a memoir, poetry, etc. Science students could create a timeline for the stages of mitosis for a cell or the life cycle of a forest or an animal. Have students in government or history create timelines related to topics you are learning about in class.
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podomatic - podOmatic
Grades
1 to 12tag(s): communication (133), DAT device agnostic tool (144), digital storytelling (144), podcasts (81)
In the Classroom
podOmatic does not allow memberships for those under 13. Teachers using this tool with younger students should do so under supervision and with a teacher-controlled account. You will want to supervise or establish consequences so students do not spend time on the public areas of the site and instead proceed to creating their podcasts. This is an opportunity to teach about digital citizenship and safety, such as steering clear of interaction and avoiding sharing any identifiable information about yourself in a podcast. You may want to share the links to class podcasts only with your students and parents. If you have students record podcasts as assignments, you may need multiple accounts because the free accounts have limited file space. An elementary teacher might have enough space for 25 students to keep a limited number of products on his/her own account, depending upon length.Create regular or special podcasts to share on your class web page or wiki. Create a mini cast of images taken during a lab or a portfolio of images from a photography, art, or any other class. Add music and share as part of a digital portfolio. More ideas: record class assignments or directions, record story time or a reading excerpt for younger ones to listen to at a computer center AND from home, adding a touch of blended learning to your classroom! Have readers (perhaps older buddies) build fluency by recording selected passages for your non-readers. Launch a service project for your fifth or sixth graders to record stories for the kindergarten to use in their reading and listening center. Have students create "you are there" recordings as "eyewitnesses" to historical or current events, Make a weekly class podcast, with students taking turns writing and sharing the "Class News." Have students create radio advertisements for concepts studied in class (Buy Dynamic DNA!), Have students write and record their own stories or poetry in dramatic readings; language students or beginning readers could record their fluency by reading passages. Allow parents to hear their child's progress reading aloud, etc. Compare world language, speech articulation, or reading fluency at two points during the year. Have your Shakespeare students record a soliloquy. Write and record a poem for Father's or Mother's Day (or other special events) and send the URL as a gift to that special person.
If you have gifted students who lean toward the dramatic, this tool is simple enough for them to create dramatic mini casts without needing a video camera. They can collect images at Vecteezy and write a drama to accompany them, showing what they have learned in independent learning beyond the regular curriculum.
Edge Features:
Parent permission advised before posting student work created using this tool
Includes Interaction w general public/ public galleries with unmoderated content
Includes social features, such as "friends," comments, ratings by others
Requires registration/log-in (WITH email)
Products can be embedded
Products can be shared by URL
Comments
I can see this resource being fun and interactive, while also offering a technology tool that does not rely on video for some of our students that struggle with that. The only thing that gives me pause is the age limit/appropriate level of other "public" pods on the site.Arielle, IN, Grades: 0 - 8
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Six Word Stories - Pete Berg
Grades
5 to 12tag(s): Teacher Utilities (150), writing (317)
In the Classroom
Have a contest and challenge your students to submit the best 6-word story after finishing a novel, play, or poem. Try creating some together on interactive whiteboard, brainstorming first to generate possible words from which to choose, then dragging to rearrange them into a meaningful story. Make a six word story "sidebar" at the side of your class where students can work together with a partner on the IWB to generate new stories as summaries for an act of a Shakespeare play or in response to a sonnet. In a journalism class, try this for a twist on headline writing. Introduce poetry writing by having your students try their hand at expressing an emotional experience in just 6 words. ESL/ELL students often create unusual combinations in writing; why not have them display their creativity here in an acceptable form? Share this site with world language teachers also.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Word Clouds for Kids - ABCya.com
Grades
K to 7tag(s): speech (66), vocabulary (236), word choice (14), word clouds (13)
In the Classroom
This is a great visual tool to use. Take a poll and have your students type their answers into the word cloud builder. Then display on an interactive whiteboard or projector and see which answer was the most popular. Use this site as a way to help students see and memorize text, especially visual learners. Use it also when writing poetry or to "see" themes of repeated words and images. Have students paste in their own writing to spot repeated (and monotonous) language when teaching lessons on word choice. Students will be surprised to see what words appear to be dominant. Have students work in groups to create word posters of vocabulary words with related meanings, such as different ways to say "walk" or "said" and decorate your classroom with these visual reminders of the richness of language.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Soar into Spring with Kites - Education World
Grades
3 to 12In the Classroom
Check out this educational page for many ideas, links, and ready to do projects. This all-encompassing lesson plan challenges students to participate in enthusiastic learning activities about why kites have often appeared in poetry, legends, and folk tales, and have led to important scientific discoveries. Invite students to try one of the many ideas to create and decorate a kite that represents flags from various countries. Ask them to label the kite with that country's word for kite, using the link provided for the Kite Translation Table. Allow your students to be adventurous with technology by providing them with the opportunity to create online posters using Animoto for Education reviewed here.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Whichbook.net - Opening the Book Ltd.
Grades
7 to 12tag(s): independent reading (86)
In the Classroom
Trying to motivate reluctant readers to pick up a book or to require independent reading is not always an easy task. Make the task more glamorous by providing your students the link to Whichbook. Demonstrate the site and invite students to try it on your whiteboard to witness the fun they will have discovering books they want and need. Then, provide a direct link on your class web page or wiki to make it easily available. Technology has built-in appeal; therefore, the idea of using it as a method to choose a book offers an imaginative way for promoting reading. As always, while in the classroom or computer lab, caution should be taken to oversee students' use of the website as it is possible to type in characteristics that may not be appropriate for the grade level. As an extension or book report alternative, challenge students to make their own simple graphics categorizing books they have read using the same system, determining where they would fall on each of the different scales. Have them explain why they would label the book that way. Share the student-made graphics and explanations on your class wiki.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Karaoke Channel Online - Stingray Music USA
Grades
2 to 12tag(s): songs (44)
In the Classroom
Create a classroom signup for students to use under your supervision. An email address is required for registration. You could create a class registration. If you plan to have students register individually, you may want to create your own Gmail account with up to 20 subaccounts for each group of students (by code name or number) within your classes. Here is a blog post that tells how to set up GMail subaccounts to use for any online membership service. Project this site on your interactive whiteboard or projector during music class. ESL/ELL students may benefit from being able to use language in song. Use the singing as an opportunity to look at song lyrics as a form of poetry. Use in world language classes or in primary grades (some song classics for kids!) and for ESL/ELL.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Poetry through the Ages: An Expressive Journey - J. Romano, R. Yehling & Curator of WebExhibit: M. Douma
Grades
8 to 12tag(s): poetry (190)
In the Classroom
Introduce this online exhibit on your classroom whiteboard to bring the love of studying and writing poetry to your students. Enable your class to research and relate history through the great poetic forms. Individual or group assignments could range from choosing any of the forms featured in Poetry through the Ages and focusing on its style, structure, era, and practicing poets. Broaden the scope by comparing and contrasting the culture, history, environment, people, and poets from different eras. Write essays, and then analyze their strengths and drawbacks. Determine which era would best suit your poetic flair, and then write poems in that form. Ask your school librarian to become involved to generate excitement by hosting an "Open Mic" or poetry slam at the culmination of this unit. Use an online tool such as Bookemon reviewed here, Or PodOMatic, (reviewed here), to create a multimedia class poetry volume and link it to your web page to show how students interpret and express their world through verse. Parents would love to receive an audio file as a gift that they can easily download.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Poet at Work: Walt Whitman Notebooks 1850s-1860s - Library of Congress
Grades
8 to 12tag(s): civil war (135), lincoln (60), literature (218)
In the Classroom
Use this online exhibit for an in-depth study of Walt Whitman. Have cooperative learning groups investigate one of the notebooks available at this site and create a multimedia presentation to share their findings. Have students create podcasts using a site such as PodOmatic (reviewed here). Or create a class wiki dedicated to the poetry of Walt Whitman. Not comfortable with wikis? Have no wiki worries - check out the TeachersFirst's Wiki Walk-Through .Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Tar Heel Reader - University of North Caroline
Grades
K to 12** This site does contain some materials NOT suitable for all classrooms. Be sure to read the "rating" system, and contribute your own opinions (as the ratings are only as reliable as the pool of contributing voters). Books rated 'E' are meant for everyone but a 'C' means to use caution as it may not be proper material for some. Determine what titles are suitable and save them to the favorites file for students to access.
tag(s): book lists (162), digital storytelling (144), literacy (110), writing (317)
In the Classroom
Increase your big book collection ten fold by projecting Tar Heel Readers onto an interactive whiteboard or projector. Use interactive shared reading lessons to strengthen student recognition of common sight words, concepts of print, decoding skills, and use syntax cues and unlock the meaning of text. Ask students to circle known sight words, count the number of words in a sentence, trace capital letters, or point to the first letter of a word during a choral read. Help ESL/ELL students by creating books out of photos from class field trips, events, or experiments. Integrate text that uses key vocabulary words and creates reading materials that are both relevant to grade level curricular standards and match your student's readability level. All books you publish on the web site are public domain and available to all other users. Be sure to get parent permission before publishing student books on-line. In order to create a book, users will need to register. Unfortunately, this requires users to email gb@cs.unc.edu to request of an invitation code. With this code, simply create a username, submit your name, and email address. Set up a single teacher account and have all the students use that login to avoid safety concerns. Be sure to include this site on your class web page for students to access both in and outside of class for further reading practice.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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WordArt - WordArt.com
Grades
4 to 12tag(s): images (256), vocabulary (236), word choice (14), word clouds (13)
In the Classroom
You must be able to copy and paste text or provide a url to a page of text as well as determine parameters of more advanced word clouds. Alternately, these word clouds can be kept very simple. After creating the word cloud, be sure to save the image (or use a screen capture) to share with others. Another idea, use the url of the cloud or embed into a place to share such as blog, wiki, or site.This is a terrific visual tool to share on an interactive whiteboard or projector. Help students develop creative fluency by creating their own WordArt and ideas from scratch. Paste in a passage or URL for a political speech to visualize the politician's "message." Analyze advertising propaganda by visualizing the language used in TV or print ads. Create WordArt of historical texts of inauguration speeches as time capsules of the issues of the day. Use this site as a way to help students see and memorize text, especially visual learners. Use it also when writing poetry or reading passages of great literature to "see" themes and motifs of repeated words and images. Have students paste in their own writing to spot repeated (and monotonous) language when teaching lessons on word choice. Students will be surprised to see what words appear to be dominant. ESL and ELL students will eagerly use this site since word order will no longer be a problem for them. Have students work in groups to create word posters of vocabulary words with related meanings, such as different ways to say "walk" or "said" and decorate your classroom with these visual reminders of the richness of language. Collect thoughts about the class subject at the beginning of the year and then again at the end of the year to determine changes in thoughts about the subject matter.
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Poetry Month Editor's Choice Resources - TeachersFirst
Grades
K to 12tag(s): poetry (190)
In the Classroom
Make Poetry Month a participatory experience. Have students compose a limerick explaining a science term or historic figure. Have students collect a list of words from your current unit. Then offer extra credit for a poetic interpretation to be shared as a daily "poetry break" during April. Use one of the tools featured here to share poetic visions of biology, geometry, and more during April. Cover a classroom wall with white paper for "curriculum poetry" during April. Encourage students to share poetry graffiti (classroom appropriate, of course). Or, replace the papered wall for an online bulletin board like Padlet, reviewed here. For more poetic ideas check out the "In the classroom" suggestions included in each review.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Stories Behind the Songs: Introduction - Jonathan Chase
Grades
8 to 12tag(s): lyrics (15), media literacy (103), poetry (190)
In the Classroom
Many students' favorite past time, when not texting or social networking, is listening to their music. Why not use that venue to hook them into understanding the 'music of poetry?" Stories Behind the Songs; Introduction includes the music, lyrics, song-based lessons, projects, and activities for many popular songs and ballads that express universal themes of poverty, hunger, discrimination, and hope. Students listen to the music and examine the origins and inspiration for contemporary lyrics. Popular songs can be used in a classroom setting to facilitate meaningful discussions on a particular theme or topic. Songs also create an emotional hook and may be used as a springboard to introduce poetry, literature, and historic documents. Students enter the Song Guide by clicking on the song's title to enjoy the full authentic cultural experience the music and lyrics offer. Follow up with asking students to write poems or short essays describing their feelings and impressions of the lyrics, or have them create new poetic verses and images to accompany the music. Enhance learning by challenging students to label their image by using Image Annotator, reviewed here.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Dreambeast Poems - Mark C. Bird
Grades
3 to 12tag(s): poetry (190)
In the Classroom
Select one or two poems to share with students using an interactive whiteboard or document camera. After discussing the poems, have students come up with questions for the poet. Post the questions on the blog. Or, modify classroom technology use and have students create an online poetry poster using Web Poster Wizard, reviewed here, and list their questions. Leave the URL to your poster on his blog. It is sure to get his attention!Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Poetry.com - LLEI Inc
Grades
6 to 12To enter poems, students must be registered users (email and password are required). Tip: rather than using your personal or work email, create a free Gmail account to use for memberships. If you plan to have students register individually, you may want to create your own Gmail account with up to 20 subaccounts for each group of students (by code name or number) within your classes. Here is a blog post that tells how to set up GMail subaccounts to use for any online membership service.
tag(s): biographies (95), poetry (190)
In the Classroom
Students can use a rhyming dictionary such as Rhyme Zone, reviewed here, when writing poems. Poetry.com would also be a great site to discuss the idea of great poetry. The site lists great poets and poems, which would help incite a discussion on what makes a great poet or poem. Have students select one of the best poems and present it to the class using an interactive whiteboard or document camera. Students can share why they agree or disagree with its status as a great poem. Why not have students read their favorite poem (and offer their own opinions) on a podcast using a site such as podOmatic, reviewed here.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Poetry Everywhere - WGBH and David Grubin Productions
Grades
3 to 12tag(s): poetry (190)
In the Classroom
Share several poems with students and then have them create similar poet and poem podcasts. Enhance student learning and augment classroom technology use by using a site such as podOmatic, reviewed here, to present to their classmates. Post the podcasts to a class wiki or website. Not familiar with wikis? Have no wiki worries - check out the TeachersFirst's Wiki Walk-Through.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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DigiPoem - Jon Elliott
Grades
4 to 12There is an option to email your digipoem, but first remember to check your school's policy or have students email their poems to your school email address. There is also a link to convert the text to an XML file that can be saved. JavaScript must be enabled in your browser for anything to work. The best feature of this site: no registration required!
tag(s): poetry (190)
In the Classroom
Delight your students by projecting digipoemon your classroom projector or interactive whiteboard to demonstrate how the words in poems create visual images. Then, be amazed at how quickly this will motivate them to write poetry. Take them to the computer lab or use a class set of lap tops, and put a link to this site on your class web page. Younger students should first type their poems into a Word document with a built in spell check, and then copy and paste them into the website's text box.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Rhyme Brain - Steve Hanov
Grades
4 to 12In the Classroom
Demonstrate how simple it is to find a word that rhymes on your projector or interactive whiteboard and then, provide a link to Rhyme Brain on your class web page for your students to have easy access to this tool. Transform classroom technology use and have your students share their created poems on an interactive online poster using Lucidpress, reviewed here, or Canva, reviewed here.This resource is a real time saver! Use it to fascinate elementary students with the numerous single and multi-syllabic rhyming words and various spelling combinations that are generated. Older students will enjoy the play on words that it quickly reveals, saving them time to do the higher level thinking that the figurative language of poetry requires.
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For Better for Verse - Herbert Tucker, John C. Coleman: Professor of English
Grades
10 to 12In the Classroom
Plotting the patterns of poetic meter and rhyme can be as hard to study as learning a foreign language. It takes long hours of practice to develop an ear and a feel for the kind of verse that was standard during Chaucer's time. At For Better for Verse poetry enthusiasts practice by trial and error opportunities, and receive instant feedback as they analyze the syllables' stress, without becoming too stressed, themselves. How do you know where the slacks and stresses fall? You listen; so instead of relying on repeating the verse out loud, click on the audio to hear it read. Listening to a vocal performance is helpful in the early stages of the tutorial. Students build confidence as they turn their stride into a gallop and waltz across the poem with their mouse and curser. Soon they will progress to using their eyes, rather than their ears to "listen" to the poem.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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