Over 60 Websites for Your Classroom

It’s time for this week’s Wednesday Website suggestion, but this week instead of one website, I have over 60 for you.  I actually compiled these suggestions into an E-Book that is available to you completely free!  This E-Book is a compilation of my “tried and true” favorite websites to use in an elementary classroom.  It has two sections, one sorted by grade level and one sorted by subject.  I hope that this compilation will be of benefit to those teachers who truly want to use websites as teaching tools, but are just not sure what sites to use.

You can download your free copy as a PDF file from Teachers Pay Teacher, or in the format that is best for your e-reader (Kindle, Nook, etc.) at Smashwords.  Either way, feel free to use and share this resource, and don’t forget to come back for next week’s Wednesday Website Suggestion!

Free Grammar Quizzes

For my English Language Learners, understanding parts of speech and how they are used in English help them to create better sentences, both spoken and written.  Because of this, I spend a lot of time working on parts of speech.  I created some simple review sheets and assessments for my students and decided to share them via my Teachers Pay Teachers store for free.  Feel free to grab your copy of these 3 review sheets with accompanying quizzes.

Halloween Happenings

This Wednesday I will have some extra visitors to my class from Grade 2, so I decided I wanted to have some cool Halloween activities for the students to work on in mixed age groups.  Normally, I would turn around and put together some sort of packet, but I was super busy this weekend with a surprise for my wonderful followers.  (Don’t forget to stop by on Wednesday to get your copy!)  However, with a few quick surfs of the web, I found some great Halloween stuff, so luckily fellow teachers have saved the day for me!

Here are some of the things I found:

Halloween Mystery Math

Halloween Multiplication Maze

Mystery Mansion Multiplication

Spooky Writing Stationary

Halloween Editing Sentences

A Spooky MadLib Story

 

Research the Presidents

It’s time for the Wednesday Website suggestion!! For two years, I was the Technology Specialist at a school in Georgia. During that time, I amassed a large collection of websites that I use with my students. If you want to search through some of them, you can check out my IKeepBookmarks site. Or, you can check back here each week for the Wednesday Website suggestion.

***Sorry our Wednesday Website suggestion is a day late.  We are preparing for Eid al Adha around here and I somehow missed posting this yesterday.  If you’d like to teach your kids about Eid al Adha, feel free to download my free Muslim Holiday Packet. ***

Now, on to this week’s suggestion -
With the US election coming soon, this is a great time to research past presidents.  Here are some great websites for kids to use when conducting their research.


This great website, the National Portrait Gallery, is run by the Smithsonian and provides good quality information on each president from George Washington to William Clinton.


On the White House’s Website, there is a page devoted solely to biographies of all of the presidents up to and including the current president, Barrak Obama.  The biographies on this site are very complete, but they are also quite long and can be complicated for younger students and weaker readers.



The Miller Center, a part of the University of Virginia, runs this great site that has a Reference page covering all of the presidents from George Washington to our current president, Barrak Obama.  The biographies give quick fast and are short and sweet, which is easier for younger students and weaker readers when they are doing research.

Feel free to grab this project matrix for your students to work on while using these websites.  It is free from Google Docs.
Enjoy the rest of your week and Eid Mubarak to those who celebrate!

Real Life Graphing Survey

Last week was Heritage Week for my school.  We spent the week learning about where the students in our schools come from.  We were also learning about graphing.  I decided to integrate the two topics by having my students survey the students in the school and graph the information.  They asked the students the following four questions:

1.)  What country are you from?

2.)  What languages do you speak?

3.)  How many kids are in your family?

4.)  What month were you born in?

While the students were surveying the school, they created a tally chart.  Then, the students created frequency charts, bar graphs and picto-graphs with the information they collected.  If you would like to do this activity with your kids, feel free to grab a free copy of my Heritage Week Graph Packet for free from Google Docs.

Age Limit on Dramatic Play?

The majority of my teaching experience has been in intermediate grades, specifically 3rd grade.  In intermediate, we have a tendency to focus on learning, learning, learning, with no time for play, and if we do play, it’s a game or a puzzle.  We definitely don’t take the time for dramatic play.  However, this year I am trying to change that some.  I have a third grader at home and he still spend about half of his playtime in dramatic play.  On the playground, I have watched my students (3rd and 4th graders) play out slumber parties, knights and princesses and a variety of other “dramatic play” situations.  So, I’ve decided to try to use dramatic play anywhere appropriate in my classroom.  Here are some ideas I have for integrating dramatic play into the intermediate classroom:

1.) Acting Out Stories – I regularly use reader’s theaters, but I also plan to have my students act out other stories we have read, as well the fiction stories they are beginning to write themselves.

2.) Problem Solving Skits – During our health and wellness unit on Mental and Emotional Health, we created skits to show how we would deal with problems we have in the classroom.

3.)  Be the Rock, or the Animal or the Electron Particle – Acting can help students make abstract concepts more concrete.  My students will be acting out the changes in rocks made with erosion, the animals in different stages of their life cycle and the electron particles in an open and a closed circuit.

4.)  Act Out History or Government – With past classes, I have acted out the election process and process it takes to turn a bill into a law.  This year, my class will study Ancient Rome and I can’t wait to act out the jobs of a Roman city.

5.)  Acting Out Solves Math Problems – We always talk about the math strategy “Act it Out”, but do we ever really act them out?  Letting students play store or bank or hardware shop or restaurant can help them to solve math problems.  Give them an actual problem to work out using dramatic play and see the real answers come to life.

6.)  Use Costumes to Work on Adjectives – Let students dress up in a costume and then have their fellow students describe them using as many adjectives as possible.  Change the costumes and talk about how the adjectives change.

Do you have a great way to integrate dramatic play into an intermediate classroom?  Please leave me a comment so we can share from each other.

 

Learning Every Second

Is it just me or is there never enough time in the day?  This year, the teachers at my school (International School of Morocco) have all decided to “buy” some more time by turning transition times into learning time.  Because we are all on board, the kids are on board, so it is easy to keep it up.  Here are the some of the things we are doing:

1.) Recite and Walk – each teacher has something that their class is working on reciting, a rhyme, a poem, their numbers etc.  So, as we transition from one place to another we recite these things.  If we are inside, we are sure to whisper these things, but outside we sing loudly and event chant.  This week the whole school is reciting a song that we will be singing to the parents.

2.)  Count On Before You Move – While the younger students are working on basic counting and counting by 10’s, grades 1-4 are working on counting in lots of different ways like counting by 10’s from random numbers (12, 24, 18 etc.) or counting backwards by 5’s.  No matter how we are counting, we have stopping points around the school and as we walk, we stop at these points, and count on.  The first student saying 14, the next 24, the next 34 and so on.

3.)  Questions Out the Door – In order to enter or exit my classroom, you must answer a question.  I generally connect these questions to what we are working on in math, but I’ve been known to throw in some grammar and science too!  I keep the questions to things I want students to be able to answer quickly, so that we aren’t standing forever.  Sometimes we work on math facts, other times we work on doubling or halving numbers (What is half of 40?), or converting within measurements (How many centimeters are in 5 meters?).  Lately my kids favorite is to give me the part of speech of a word.  I give them a sentence, (ie.  The boys ran down the hall.) and then ask for the part of speech of a specific word (What part of speech is ran?)

4.)  Talk at Meal Time – We eat both snack and lunch with our students.  During this time, we talk to our students – a lot!  Sometimes it is just general chatter, but we also talk about food names, manners, the names of food in other languages, nutrition etc.  While this doesn’t always connect to what we are learning in the classroom, we tend to use this time to build background knowledge, and morale with our students, so that makes the teaching time more efficient too.

 

Do you have any secrets to “buying” more learning time in a day?

Soaking Up Math

Here is a cool activity that my students did last week.  It combines science and math and it was a hit!  We got in all of our math and added in some great science observations all at the same time.

Step 1:  Collect a variety of items, including: rice, beans, corn and potatoes. Choose some items that will expand when soaked and some items that won’t.  (My class also did pasta, but it made for a stinky classroom – so be warned if you choose to use pasta, they look cool but they don’t smell cool.)

Step 2:  Have students weigh each item and record the weight on a table. 

Step 3:  Place each item in a bowl and cover with water.  Let the bowls sit overnight.

Step 4:  The next day, strain all of the items and and have students   re-weigh the items. 

Step 5:  Talk about why some items absorb water and others don’t.

I’ve become a collaborator to a great new collaborative blog called Tips of Teachers.  Stop by there and grab this free sheet to use with your class.

Rainbow Fish Helps Us Build a Caring Community

This past Wednesday, my school – the International School of Morocco – hosted it’s first parent workshop on character and learner traits.  While the parents and a few of our teachers were busy, myself and another teacher brought all of the kids in the school together to learn about caring, using Rainbow Fish. 

First, we read Rainbow Fish in 3 languages.  I read it in English.  A lovely 4th grade student read it in French, and thanks to an IPad and YouTube, we also watched it in Spanish.  This multilingual approach meant that every student in the school was clear on the message of the story.

After reading the story, we talked about the ways that Rainbow Fish was caring and the ways that we can and should be caring in our school.

Next, we created our own Rainbow Fish.  It was wonderful because all of the different levels of students (from 3 years old to 4th grade) worked together to create their fish.  The younger students simply colored their fish, but 1st grade and up added caring words to each of the scales on the fish before they colored.  We also glued a silver scale, which was cut from aluminum foil. 

At the end of the day, we hung our beautiful Rainbow Fish onto the ocean scenes that my colleague so beautifully painted and hung right at the entrance to the school building.  Now every day when we walk in the door, we have a reminder to be caring and a chance to talk to our students about what that means.

Grab our Rainbow Fish Template free from Google Docs if you’d like to use it with your kiddos.

How have you used Rainbow Fish in your classroom?

Cooking in Math

This week, my class was working on measurement.  One of the things we had to work on was doubling and halving measurements – especially in regards to grams and recipes.  My students were to take a recipe and figure out how much of each ingredient was needed to make a double batch and half a batch.  So, of course this was a great time for cooking in the classroom!  There is so much vocabulary, reading, science, math, and real-life skills that can be worked into a single cooking activity.  I love to cook with my students.  Luckily, the school that I teach at – International School of Morocco – has a lot of resources on hand for projects like this.  We could have baked them in the full size oven, but it was lasagana day and I decided not to clog up the oven with our muffins.  Instead, we used my muffin-ette machine, picture above.  On Friday, my class created Carrot-Apple Muffin-ettes. (Scroll Down for the Recipe & a free, printable student sheet.) 

Here are the skills we worked on in this lesson:

Math:

- measuring using grams, milliliters and teaspoons

- doubling and halving numbers

- fractions

There’s nothing like real life math to stop the “Why do we have to learn this?” questions.

 

Language Arts:

- reading a recipe

- recipe vocabulary (ingredients, steps, food names)

- cooking vocabulary (bowl, spoon, stir, mix, grate)

For my English Language Learners, this vocabulary is priceless to them, and builds background for later literacy activities.

 

Science:

- nutrition

- chemical reactions (Why do we add baking powder?)

-  heat reactions (Why do we hear the batter sizzle?)

All of these standards will be taught later in the year, but the more background knowledge we can build, the more connections my students can make.

 

Real-Life Skills:

- cutting and preparing foods

- following step by step directions

- cleaning up after a project

Many of my students don’t work in the kitchen or clean up the table at home, so these real life skills are often very needed.

 

Here is the recipe we used – note as we use UK standards, all units of measurement are British.  Feel free to grab the sheet my students used to half and double the recipe from Google Docs.

 

Apple Carrot Muffins

Ingredients:

250g sugar

320g flour

2 tsp baking soda

1 tbsp baking powder

2 tsp cinnamon

1tsp salt

225g grated carrots

2 grated apples

2 eggs

4 tbsp vegetable oil

230ml milk

 

Preparation:

1.) Combine sugar, flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon and salt.

2.)  Add in grated carrots and apple. Mix well

3.) Add in eggs, oil and milk. Mix well

4.) Spoon batter into oiled pan.

5.) Bake until light brown.

 

I was supposed to take a picture of the finished product, but my kids gobbled them up so fast, I missed my opportunity.

How have you used cooking in your classroom?

Talk About Math with Memory

I LOVE to play board games at home, but I also enjoying using them in my classroom. In addition to encouraging cooperation, turn taking and a variety of other social skills, I find I can often use the games to work on math and literacy skills. So, every Friday, I am going to post a Friday Game Night post, giving tips on how to use a particular board game in your classroom.

 

Memory (Math) – Often in my Friday Game Night suggestions, I have ideas for how to use a game in a new and different way in order to build math and literacy skills.  For this week, however, we are using Memory, which already has so many standard math skills built into it, that I didn’t need to add anything to it.  This of course, simplifies your life, because all you need is a good old Memory game – any version works, classic, Spiderman, Princess, etc.

The first few times you play memory, play in guided groups so that you can talk through these math strategies.  Once the game is put in an independent center, make it clear that the expectation is for these skills to be discussed while playing the game.

 

1.)  Talk About Strategy:  One of the reasons students struggle with problem solving is that they are rarely taught what they should be thinking while problem solving.  We just hand them a problem and say “think it through”.  Many kids need more than that, so as teachers, we need to model, and allow other kids to model real life problem solving.  Memory is a great place to do that, because it involves real life problem solving and strategy. 

While you are playing this in a guided group, tell kids you would like to hear what they are thinking as they make their choices.  Model your own choices out loud and encourage students to do the same.  You should say things like:

“I need to find another flower.  I know that I saw the flower in this area.  It wasn’t all the way at the top.  I don’t remember exactly how far down, but I don’t think it was more than 3 rows down.  I’ll try the card 2 rows down this time, and if it’s incorrect, I’ll try 3 rows down next time.”

 

2.)  Count by 2’s and Introduce Multiplication:  As students collect cards in Memory, they will be collecting pairs (great time to introduce that vocabulary word!).  This is a great time to talk about counting by twos and introduce repeated addition and multiplication.  For older students, this is a great time to talk about division and percentages.  (ie.  There are 50 cards, if we break them into groups of 2, how many groups should there be?  If we have found 10 groups, what percentage of the groups have been found.)

 

3.)  Pile & Estimate:  Can you estimate how many cards are in your pile?  Can you use that estimate to estimate how many cards are in everyone else’s pile?  Can you use that estimate to estimate how many cards are left?  There are so many estimation questions that can be developed during the course of a game of Memory.

 

4.)  Comparing Numbers:  “I have 2 pairs and you have 4 pairs, who has more?”  “All together we have found 9 pairs.  Are more cards found or hidden?”  There are so many ways to compare numbers when using Memory.

 

Now, if you have time, there are tons and tons of ways to create your own memory games that work on other types of math.  For example, you could have math facts (addition, subtraction, multiplication or division) on one card and the “match” is the answer.  Or you could have shapes on one card and the “match” is the number of sides, or the name of the shape.  Or you could have a clock on one card and the “match” is the correct time shown.  Or you could have a group of money on one card and the “match” is the amount of money shown.  The possibilities are endless!  If you want to create your own memory games – feel free to grab this Template from my Teachers Pay Teachers store to help you with the process.

 

Handy Math

This week, my class is working on measurement in math.  We are measuring using centimeters, millimeters and meters, and converting between the units, including fractions of a unit.  For example, we have talked about 1/2 of a meter = 500 centimeters and 400 centimeters = 4/10 of a meter.

One of the fun activities we did was to create these cute hand measurements.  They were super simple.  Here are the steps.

1.)  Students traced their hand.

2.)  Students used a damp string to trace their drawing, and we cut off the excess string.

3.)  Students stretched out their string and measured it to the nearest centimeter.

4.)  Students wrote their measurement on their paper (the 4th graders included a conversion to meters).

5.)  Students colored their hand and glued the string back around the outside.

This could be done just as cute around the edge of any drawing, of a student’s foot, or any other “odd shaped” item.

True Facts About Native Americans and First Nations

It’s time for the Wednesday Website suggestion!! For two years, I was the Technology Specialist at a school in Georgia. During that time, I amassed a large collection of websites that I use with my students. If you want to search through some of them, you can check out my IKeepBookmarks site. Or, you can check back here each week for the Wednesday Website suggestion.

With Columbus Day and Thanksgiving, I often see and hear a lot of insensitive displays regarding Native Americans.  While it’s great (and often required via standards) to teach students how Native Americans lived during the times when settlers were just arriving in America, too often we leave students believing that this is how Native Americans live today.  We also often leave students with an inaccurate pictures of Native American cultures overall. 
When I taught this topic a few years ago, I stumbled along a wonderful website called Native Languages.org.  This site gives students (and teachers) a clear idea of good, solid facts about many, many Native American and First Nation tribes from North America (US and Canada).  It includes general questions about Native Americans, as well as specific information about over 100 specific tribes.


All of the information is written in kid-friendly paragraphs that can be easily understood by my third and fourth grade students.  In addition, there are reminders to students that although the Native American people may have lived one way at one time, that has changed now.


This site does not have many graphics, but to have all of this quality information available in one place makes this a truly wonderful resource. It was a great resource for my students when they were completing thier Native Americans Internet Scavenger Hunt.

Make Good Choices–A Free Sort for Mental and Emotional Health

My class is just wrapping up our first unit on Mental and Emotional Health.  It was so nice to start with a unit like this, because it lends itself so nicely to the things we discuss in the beginning of the year: getting along, working out your problems, being a good community etc.  For our assessment activity, we completed a sort of good and bad choices that can be made, in regards to your mental health.  You can grab this sort free from my blog – Google Docs.

 

During this Unit, we talked about how to keep ourselves Mentally and Emotionally Healthy.  Here are some of the things we talked about:

1.)  Spending time on things you enjoy.

2.)  Being unique and enjoying it.

3.)  Being kind to others.

4.)  Having a balance between work and rest.

5.)  Appreciating what you have.

6.)  Spending time with family and friends

 

Some of the books we read are:

 

 

Some of the activities we did were:

- Create skits about common problem solving issues within our class.

- Create class agreements to keep each other mentally healthy.

- Create a list of different ways to rest.

- Discuss how to find balance and appreciate what we have.