Ideas from a Reading Specialist–Current blogs consist of free online sites and programs for a reading classroom.
Losing 5 minutes of instructional time a day over a 180 day school year will result in a loss 900 minutes or 15 hours. The precious minutes at the beginning and end of class add up! Sometimes your great lesson ends a few minutes before the end of the hour. This blog post gives you […]
I have jumped on the Boom™ bandwagon. I would like to encourage you to check it out! They are fun for your students and rather addictive to create. In today’s post, I would like to provide some answers to common questions to help you navigate the opportunities available in Boom™. What are Boom cards? Boom™ […]
What is it? Problem-Attic is a database of more than 200,000 questions free for teachers to select, arrange, format, and print. Search the question bank, scroll for your target question, click and add to your document. Where do the questions come from? Questions come from state assessments (more than 25 states), New York Regents Exam, […]
The website indicates DOGO Media is a “network empowering kids to engage with digitial media in a fun, safe, and social environment. It states DOGO translates to young or small in Swahili, but there is nothing small about this free website. (Note all information in this review is about their FREE resources. Check the website […]
School has only been going a few minutes, and already I have a bunch of tabs open with apps running, trying to keep my classroom organized and efficient. Laurens Koppers, a teacher in the Netherlands, solved my multi tab problem with a useful, free resource classroomscreen.com. His goal was to “use a free and simple […]
Looking for an alternative class game to increase engagement and track class data? This resource was created and maintained by a high school student from Seattle. Teachers create “kits” and students use their own devices to answer questions, earning game money for correct answers or losing money for incorrect answers. Students can spend their money […]
What’s It all About? NetSmarz is for students from kindergarten thru high school, parents, teachers, law enforcement and community leaders. It is sponsored by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. According to their website, they have three goals: educate children on how to recognize potential internet risks engage children and adults in a […]
If you haven’t used Wordle, you are missing out. What is Wordle? Wordle generates “word clouds” from the words you submit. The size of the word is determined by how important it is. Words entered into the source more times appear larger than words entered fewer times. Wordle is common in education but does require […]
Use educational online gaming to supplement your classroom instruction and provide assessment data. Review Game Zone is personalized to meet the needs of your classroom. The teacher inputs the questions, indicates the answer and presto an educational interactive game is automatically created. Create a free account at reviewgamezone.com and try one of these games. With […]
Looking for a way to build engaging and informative assessments into your lessons? Add Pear Deck you your presentations! Advantages Works with google slides Templates for bell ringers and exit slips Custom questions including text, number responses, multiple choice, drawing* and draggable* responses * available on Pear Deck Premium Student answers can be displayed with […]
I really began to use Rewordify extensively when writing passages to differentiate instruction. My Day in History units (see end of article)provide a 9-10 grade level passage, an 8 grade passage, and a 6-7 grade level passage on a topic related to something historical occurred each day. I usually begin writing the most difficult passage, […]
Kahoot is a game-based platform for teachers to review concepts and make learning fun for your students for free! Kahoot was developed by a professor at the Norwegian University of Technology and Science. To sign up for a free account, go to https://kahoot.com and sign up to use this tool. There is also an iOS […]
Quizizz allows teachers to present, review, and assess students at all grade levels in a self-paced online environment. It contains a library of teacher created public quizzes or teachers can create their own. Students enjoy and stay engaged while using Quizizz. To create a quiz, teachers select create a quiz, enter a name, language, an […]
This highly engaging tool allows you to improve instruction and student learning while assessing students with real-time results. The free version allows you one account with 50 students. (A pro version is available for up to 10 classrooms and 150 kids). To begin, click the launch and then quiz icons. You can navigate to the Socrative […]
goformative.com is a free site for teachers to get live results from formative questions from a class. Formative has pre-made questions or teachers create questions and give students the “quick code” to direct them to the specific questions for their class. The exciting part that makes this program different is the LIVE RESULTS! 1. After going […]