Category: 1st

Weekend Website #125: Starfall Math

Every week, I share a website that inspired my students. Here’s one you may have missed. Starfall is a lot more than reading…

startfall more

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Easter Sites For Your Students

hare-86079_640Many Christians celebrate Jesus Christ’s resurrection on Easter Sunday. The Easter date depends on the ecclesiastical approximation of the March equinox. This year, it’s March 31st. Here are some websites your students will love:

  1. Easter Color Me to print or import to drawing program
  2. Easter games II
  3. Easter games III
  4. Easter poems and songs (to play online)
  5. Easter Puppies–video
  6. Easter songs for kids
  7. Easter Word hunt (Starfall)

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Great Websites–Stories

Check out our latest addition of great websites–Stories. There are 45 websites for grades K-5, everything from audio to international to write your own. Enjoy!1282775_prince

5 Favorite Websites for K-5

One of the biggest problems I face as a technology teacher is the wealth of information out there for teachers, parents, students. I try to stay on top of it (as you who subscribe to my hook-76785_640Weekend Websites know), but there is so much more than I can cover with one-a-week.

So, this week, I’m giving you 5. You will love these. I find myself sharing them with colleagues in answer to their tech ed needs so decided it was time to share them with you also:

BrainPop Game Up

BrainPop offers a great group of games for science, math, social studies, and health–all easy to maneuver, age-appropriate and fun learning. The gamification of education is alive and well at BrainPop

Fly Across America

This is a gorgeous eight-minute tour across America via biplane. It took my classes by storm.

Knowmia

Filled with Free video tutorials and interactive materials for your students. This is a website and an app with tutorials, over 10,000 lessons, ‘knowledge maps’ for chemistry and biology, even a how-to for creating video lessons.

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Read Across America Day

stone-figure-10542_640Many people in the United States, particularly students, parents and teachers, join forces on Read Across America Day, annually held on March 2. This nationwide observance coincides with the birthday of Dr Seuss.

Here are some great reading websites for students K-5:

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Valentine Sites For Your Students

 2 Comments on Valentine Sites For Your Students

red-47950_640Here are some fun Valentine sites to fill those few minutes betwixt and between lessons, projects, bathroom breaks, lunch, and everything else:

  1. Apps
  2. Drag-and-drop
  3. Dress up the heart
  4. Google Drawings Magnetic Poetry from Ctrl Alt Achieve
  5. Games and puzzles
  6. Games and stories
  7. ‘I love you’ in languages Afrikaans to Zulu
  8. Line up the hearts
  9. Match
  10. Mouse skills
  11. Poem generator
  12. Puppy jigsaw
  13. Rebus game
  14. Sudoku
  15. Tic-tac-toe
  16. Typing
  17. Unscramble
  18. Write in a heart

Do you have any I missed?

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Now Available: K-8 Digital Citizenship Curriculum

Digital Citizenship Curriculum for K-8 (print or digital)

Why do teachers need to teach Digital Citizenship?

Education has changed. No longer is it contained within four classroom walls or the physical site of a school building. Students aren’t confined by the eight hours between the school bell’s chimes or the struggling budget of an underfunded program.

Now, education can be found anywhere, by collaborating with students in Kenya or Skyping with an author in Sweden or chatting with an astrophysicist on the International Space Station. Students can use Google Earth to take a virtual tour of a zoo or a blog to collaborate on a class project. Learning has no temporal or geographic borders, available 24/7 from wherever students and teachers find an internet connection.

This vast landscape of resources is available digitally, freely, and equitably, but before children begin the cerebral trek through the online world, they must learn to do it safely, securely, and responsibly. This conversation used to focus on limiting access to the internet, blocking websites, and layering rules upon rules hoping (vainly) that students would be discouraged from using this infinite and fascinating resource.

It didn’t work.

Best practices now suggest that instead of protecting students, we teach them to be good digital citizens, confident and competent in the use of the internet.

What’s included in K-8 Digital Citizenship Curriculum?

This 70-page text is your guide to what our children must know at what age to thrive in the community called the internet. It’s a roadmap for blending all the pieces into a cohesive, effective student-directed cyber-learning experience that accomplishes ISTE’s general goals to:

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norad santa

Weekend Website 40: NORAD Santa

It’s the time of year when inquiring young minds want to know–Where’s Santa? Here’s a great website to answer that question.

[caption id="attachment_4169" align="aligncenter" width="614"]santa site Track Santa on Xmas Eve[/caption]

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How to Thrive as a Digital Citizen

Thanks to the pervasiveness of easy-to-use technology and the accessibility of the internet, teachers are no longer lecturing from a dais as the purveyor of knowledge. Now, students are expected to take ownership of their education, participate actively in the learning process, and transfer knowledge learned in the classroom to their lives.

In days past, technology was used to find information (via the internet) and display it (often via PowerPoint). No longer.  Now, if you ask a fifth grade student to write a report on space exploration, here’s how s/he will proceed:

Understand ‘Digital Citizenship’

Before the engines of research can start, every student must understand what it means to be a citizen of the world wide web. Why? Most inquiry includes a foray into the unknown vastness of the www. Students learn early (I start kindergartners with an age-appropriate introduction) how to thrive in that virtual world. It is a pleasant surprise that digital citizenship has much the same rules as their home town:

Don’t talk to bad guys, look both ways before crossing the (virtual) street, don’t go places you know nothing about, play fair, pick carefully who you trust, don’t get distracted by bling, and sometimes stop everything and take a nap.

In internet-speak, students learn to follow good netiquette, not to plagiarize the work of others, avoid scams, stay on the website they choose, not to be a cyber-bully, and avoid the virtual ‘bad guys’. Current best practices are not to hide students from any of these, but to teach them how to manage these experiences.

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hour of code

16 Great Virtual Field Trips

walk through a forestI have searched long and hard for the type of virtual tour that immerses you in the environment. They’re harder to find than you’d think. Lots of sites promise ‘virtual tours’ and deliver pictures. Somehow, that doesn’t cut it.

Finally, I have a list I can recommend. Some covers acres of land, some a single bone, but all are amazing. See what you think (check here for updates):

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