April 11

Storytelling Comes Alive

When children learn to read, they are simply speaking the words on the page. Throughout the elementary years, they are told to put more feeling into their words-become more expressive. The question is…How can a child learn to do this without examples?

Storyline Online is a fabulous site that has well known actors read children’s books aloud. The viewer will watch and listen to a video of various stories. This can be used as a teaching tool discussing intonations used for different words as well as voices for the characters in the stories. Additional activities for each story are also offered.

To extend this one step further, after you have watched the videos, have the students create their own video library. Select a story that you are currently working on in class. The student can practice reading the story to a friend, small group or the whole class. Use a webcam or a handheld video recorder to tape the story. From here, save it to your local server or external device to share with the class.

Another idea is to partner with a younger class to record a story. Choose a story they will be reading and the recording can be used as a listening center. Partner an older child with a younger child to read the story together.

February 15

Digital Scrapbooking

Whether you are studying famous Americans, characters in a book or a location, Scholastic’s Scrapbook is perfect.

Upon entering the site, the student will be asked to type the title of the book and the character. If you were studying a famous American, you would type in the time period he/she was alive or the name of a battle that he was a leader in.

The next screen will have two sides. On the left is a drawing area. It offers options for humans and animals. The animal options are dogs, pigs, mice, a cricket, fish, a mole, horses, cats, a dragon, a monkey, a bull, a rabbit, a giraffe, an owl, a dinosaur, a turtle, or a gorilla. These images are as is and do not offer an option for additional accessories.

The human images offer more variability. You can change skin color, hair, eyes, nose, mouth and clothes. The completed picture is of the shoulders and head.

On the right side of the screen is a table where students can type in various things regarding this person. Using the arrows, you can scroll through the options that are 10 Words to describe the character, details about their appearance, facts about their personality, challenges faced and accomplishments. Each line holds 60 characters where the students can type ideas or complete sentences.

There is also an option to print out a blank scrapbook page if you want them to draw their own picture. Scholastic has created a teacher guide with lesson plans and ideas for use of the scrapbook with various grade levels that can be found in the lower right hand corner of the screen.

How can you use this in a classroom?

  • character study in different forms of media
  • famous Americans, artists, historians
  • analyzing historical and current structures
  • whole group or on an interactive white board
  • independently on student computers

 

December 15

Chatting in the Classroom

Social networking and online chatting are part of our everyday lives. It is our responsibility to teach our children how to use these tools responsibly and respectfully. The challenge falls when the well known social networking sites are blocked in schools, which is done with the best interest of the child in mind.

How do we overcome this hurdle? http://todaysmeet.com allows this to happen. The students are able to create a room in 30 seconds and share it with one, or more, members of the class. From here, all members will join the room and begin chatting. Once the students are comfortable doing this in one location, consider chatting with another classroom, local school or across borders.

Possible uses in the classroom:

  • digital citizenship
  • book reviews/group
  • historical decisions that affected countries
  • discussion on solving Math problems
  • impact of online chatting
  • proper use of grammatical skills through conversation
  • proper use of written tone

There is the concern of keeping a record of this type of conversation. TodaysMeet offers the ability for all transcripts to be printed. Simply scroll to the bottom of the screen and select Transcript. A new window will open where a document will display the entire conversation. (It may be on more than one page.)

Below is a list of ways that this site was used in the classroom:

 

October 14

Become an Author

Are you ready for a change when teaching the writing skills? Storymaker walks the student through the process of writing a book with various characters and props to help them create.
It begins with having the child choose a main character, a second character and a setting. There is always a way to go back and change it if need be. There is a quick and easy tutorial to guide the student that is available at any point during the process.
The child can:

  • Add characters, setting and objects
  • Add feelings, inter-actions and actions
  • Change characters and objects
  • Type their own story
  • View all com-pleted pages at the top of the screen
  • Preview the book

This is a one period activity as it can not be saved and returned to, however, if the students are given certain parameters in which to write the story, they can complete it and print it out to share with others.