Tag: lists

5 Websites for 4th Grade Word Study

Here are a few of the popular resources teachers are using to reinforce and teach word study:

Grammar games–a collection of easy-to-use games that cover grammar, vocabulary, parts of speech, and more
Vocabulary-Spelling City–the ever-favorite word study program that lets you enter your class word lists and the site will turn them into engaging games.
Visuwords–a visual tool to see what words and concepts are related to specific words
Vocabulary Fun–use games to learn affixes, syllables, synonyms, idioms, and more
Word Central—from Merriam Webster–not only reinforces learning with games but allows students to build their own dictionary; also has a tab for educators.

Click here for more Word Study websites.

Click here for updates to this list.

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Classroom Activities for Earth Day

April 22nd is Earth Day, a day when (historically) more than 1 billion people in 192 countries put the Earth’s health ahead of convenience, habits, and cultural norms. It’s a day when teachers of all kinds encourage an understanding of how mankind’s actions affect the planet we call home. This is a time to learn how the ingrained habits of a throw-away society imperil our future. On Earth Day, we as cohabitants of this great planet evaluate how changes in our actions can improve the environment.

There are a wide variety of websites to help you in this endeavor, from analyzing what you’re doing that threatens the Earth to finding alternatives. Here are some of my favorites:

Earth Day Webquest

Online; Grades 5-12

In this Earth Day webquest, student teams vie for $1 million in funding from the fictional nonprofit, Help Our World (HOW) Foundation. Each team builds a case to address the particular environmental concern they consider to be the most critical by researching, building a convincing argument, and then presenting it to their audience. Presentations are voted on my fellow students to determine who will be awarded the grant.

The webquest includes everything you need for this activity including a list of materials required, student assignments, step-by-step and day-to-day instructions, worksheets, lots of Earth Day resources, reflections, and national standards addressed. This is a deep dive into a particular environmental concern encouraging students to investigate, support their opinions with evidence, and then share their passion with classmates.

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Need math resources? Have students try these

Struggling with helping students learn math when you can’t be at their side? Try these videos (check here for updates to links):

Bright Storm math videos
Khan Academy–online progressive math program; free
Math Class with Terry V
Math DrBob
Math Videos
Math videos–clean, nice
MathTV–videos; create playlists of topics; Spanish option
Numberphile
Origo One — one-minute math videos
Patrick JMT–math videos for lots of grade levels
WOWMath
YayMath — videos on math

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18+ Easter Websites and Apps

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Many Christians celebrate Jesus Christ’s resurrection on Easter Sunday. To non-Christians (or non-traditional Christians), that event signifies a rebirth of spring that is filled with joy and gifts — and chocolate! Overall, it is America’s most-popular holiday with Christmas a close second. The date depends on the ecclesiastical approximation of the March equinox. This year, it’s April 4, 2020.

Here’s a good mixture of games, lesson plans, stories, and songs that can be blended into many academic subjects (for updates on this Easter-themed list of websites, click here):

18+ Interactive Easter websites

Preschool-2

This website includes a colorful collection of Easter (and Spring) games and information that is visual and enticing to youngers. Games are Easter Math, Easter Egg Hunt, Easter Egg Dress-up, Easter Word hunt, complete-the-sentence, and more. Also, viewers will find websites about the history of Easter around the world.

ABCYa Easter Egg Hunt

Preschool-Kindergarten

Like all of ABCYa’s games and activities, Easter Egg Hunt is a colorful and intuitive educational game for young children. It is easy-to-understand, playful, with favorite Easter symbols and energetic music that will engage children. The five Easter-themed games are easy-to-understand (no directions required) with a countdown clock to motivate activity. Nicely, it also aligns gameplay with the national standards met.

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Great Websites for Special Needs

Here’s a great list of Special Needs websites. I’ll display it below but click the link for an updated library (check here for updates on links):

Occupational Therapy–a long list of great apps including stress, social skills building, and more
Read&Write–for students with dyslexia or English language learners who struggle with reading and writing.
Signed Stories–beautiful stories in sign language
Speech Therapy and Language Apps–apps like Conversation Builder, StoryBuilder, Tense Builder, Rainbow Sentences, designed for kids who need a different approach

So much available to differentiate for every student’s special need. Here are 50 of them:

Disabilities—Microsoft

Autism

Autism browser—Zac Browser

Blind

Dyslexia

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10 Top Tips and Click-throughs in 2020

Because AATT is a resource blog, we share lots of tips our group comes across in their daily teaching as well as materials shared by others we think you’d like. Some you agree with; others, not so much. Here’s a run-down on what you thought were the most valuable in 2020:

Top 10 Tech Tips

As a working technology teacher, I get hundreds of questions from parents about their home computers, how to do stuff, how to solve problems which I share with you. Here are the Top Ten tech tips from 2020. Between these ten, they had over 183,000 visitors during the year.

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Top 10 Reviews of 2020

Throughout the year, I post websites and apps the Ask a Tech Teacher crew’s classes found useful, instructive, helpful in integrating technology into classroom lesson plans. Some, you agreed with us about; others not so much.

Here are the reviews you-all thought were the most helpful in efforts to weave tech into the classroom experience:

Oh–would you mind adding me to your social media links? Here’s where you can find me:

Twitter: @AskaTechTeacher

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Jacqui.Murray1

Instagram: @AskaTechTeacher

Sign up for the newsletter!

Thanks! Have a wonderful 2021!

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10 Hits and 10 Misses for 2020

Since we at Ask a Tech Teacher started this blog nine years ago, we’ve had almost 5.3 million views from visitors (about 10,000 follow us) to the 2,444 articles on integrating technology into the classroom. This includes tech tips, website/app reviews, tech-in-ed pedagogy, how-tos, videos, and more. We have regular features like:

If you’ve just arrived at Ask a Tech Teacher, start here.

It always surprises us what readers find to be the most and least provocative. The latter is as likely to be a post one of us on the crew put heart and soul into, sure we were sharing Very Important Information, as the former. Talk about humility.

Here they are–my top 10 of 2020 (though I’ve skipped any that have to do with website reviews and tech tips because they’re covered in separate posts):

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19 Great Websites to Inspire 5th Graders

Here’s a great list of age-appropriate, safe websites that will inspire 5th graders whether they’re in your classroom or at home (check here for updated links):

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19 Websites and 5 Posters to Teach Mouse Skills

Many of my most popular articles are about mouse skills. Every year, tens of thousands of teachers visit Ask a Tech Teacher to find resources for teaching students how to use a mouse. No surprise because using a mouse correctly is one of the most important pre-keyboarding skills. Holding it is not intuitive and if learned wrong, becomes a habit that’s difficult to break.

The earlier posts are still active, but I’ve updated this resource with more websites and posters to assist in starting off your newest computer aficionados. Check here for updates on links.