Story Creator is a fantastic tool for younger students. #elemchat #spedchat #1stchat #literacy #storycreator First students create a picture using characters and objects provided (totally cute). Then they can add words to their picture from the word bank. Finally they can write their own story and print. *You will want the students to watch the tutorial so that they can use this tool independently.  This is one of the best story creating tools that I have seen for primary students. I have written about Story Creator before but it is such a wonderful, easy to use writing tool I thought I would share it again for any new readers. Included in Write On! for Kids Screenshot
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Story Creator is a fantastic tool for younger students.

#elemchat #spedchat #1stchat #literacy #storycreator

First students create a picture using characters and objects provided (totally cute). Then they can add words to their picture from the word bank. Finally they can write their own story and print.

*You will want the students to watch the tutorial so that they can use this tool independently. 

This is one of the best story creating tools that I have seen for primary students.

I have written about Story Creator before but it is such a wonderful, easy to use writing tool I thought I would share it again for any new readers.

Included in Write On! for Kids

Screenshot

75+ Educational Games GUDLI is a fantastic website for primary students offering 75+ educational games. #elemchat #spedchat #kinderchat #1stchat #games #Gudli GUDLI’s games are excellent for teaching and reinforcing skills. They are bright, colorful and include sound. Advertisements do not appear on the site. Game categories include… Math Language Arts Science Puzzle Fun
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75+ Educational Games

GUDLI is a fantastic website for primary students offering 75+ educational games.

#elemchat #spedchat #kinderchat #1stchat #games #Gudli

GUDLI’s games are excellent for teaching and reinforcing skills. They are bright, colorful and include sound. Advertisements do not appear on the site.

Game categories include…

  • Math
  • Language Arts
  • Science
  • Puzzle
  • Fun
I just downloaded KidZui’s free browser tonight and am pretty impressed. The interface is great and most of the educational game sites came up ad free. I don’t know how they achieved this but I liked that alot. The only ad was one advertising a kid’s movie. Not too bad. The browser is easy for younger kids to navigate. I found the sites that were gathered from my search very kid-friendly and engaging. Kids can play games, access educational sites through searches and watch videos. To be honest I found a couple of interesting sites that I had never seen before (upcoming posts). The browser can be monitored by a parent or teacher. You do have to create an account to download the Kidzui Browser. I do recommend looking into the Kidzui browser especially for primary students. I am planning to recommend this to the primary teachers at my school and hope they try it out. Check it out and let me know what you think. Screenshot             Screenshot Check out Ijaar to learn about 6 more great browsers for kids. I didn’t even know kid browsers existed. Wait till you see these…and they’re all free!
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I just downloaded KidZui’s free browser tonight and am pretty impressed. The interface is great and most of the educational game sites came up ad free. I don’t know how they achieved this but I liked that alot. The only ad was one advertising a kid’s movie. Not too bad.

The browser is easy for younger kids to navigate. I found the sites that were gathered from my search very kid-friendly and engaging. Kids can play games, access educational sites through searches and watch videos. To be honest I found a couple of interesting sites that I had never seen before (upcoming posts).

The browser can be monitored by a parent or teacher. You do have to create an account to download the Kidzui Browser. I do recommend looking into the Kidzui browser especially for primary students. I am planning to recommend this to the primary teachers at my school and hope they try it out.

Check it out and let me know what you think.

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Check out Ijaar to learn about 6 more great browsers for kids. I didn’t even know kid browsers existed. Wait till you see these…and they’re all free!

TES iboard is now free.  It has an incredible amount of literary materials for a free sight.  There are over a hundred read and listen books with nice graphics that young students will enjoy. They also have interactives based on children’s literature. Numeracy, phonics, science, history, geography, are some of the other subjects covered.  The Interactives open up in a new window, full screen, bright and colorful, with no ads. This site is fabulous and of course, now it’s free. Check it out.                                      Screenshot
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TES iboard is now free.  It has an incredible amount of literary materials for a free sight.  There are over a hundred read and listen books with nice graphics that young students will enjoy. They also have interactives based on children’s literature.

Numeracy, phonics, science, history, geography, are some of the other subjects covered.  The Interactives open up in a new window, full screen, bright and colorful, with no ads. This site is fabulous and of course, now it’s free. Check it out. 

                

                   Screenshot

Chateau MeddyBumps Story Starters from their Young Writers Workshop is something that I am using today with my primary reading group.  They love to create stories and Chateau MeddyBumps offers great story starters for primary students.  They have a collection that you can pay for but their free collection is great for me. Below is a sample of one of their colorful “Story Starters”.
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Chateau MeddyBumps Story Starters from their Young Writers Workshop is something that I am using today with my primary reading group.  They love to create stories and Chateau MeddyBumps offers great story starters for primary students.  They have a collection that you can pay for but their free collection is great for me. Below is a sample of one of their colorful “Story Starters”.

     This is the best collection of stories with visuals, text, and audio that I have ever seen, all in one location.  EFL (English as a foreign language) Classroom  has compiled a directory of stories in flash, powerpoint, karaoke and video for instant playing.  These are perfect for beginning readers and there are so many to choose from.  I plan to set these up in a LiveBinder for my reading students.  This will be one of my reading centers. Some of the stories are told in song, which is great for this group because they all love music. If you have young emergent readers this will be a fabulous, free resource for you.    Sample:  Five Little Monsters Also available:  Audio Stories and here is a link to their resource collection for elementary students.  Looks like a quality collection.
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     This is the best collection of stories with visuals, text, and audio that I have ever seen, all in one location.  EFL (English as a foreign language) Classroom  has compiled a directory of stories in flash, powerpoint, karaoke and video for instant playing.  These are perfect for beginning readers and there are so many to choose from.  I plan to set these up in a LiveBinder for my reading students.  This will be one of my reading centers. Some of the stories are told in song, which is great for this group because they all love music. If you have young emergent readers this will be a fabulous, free resource for you.   

Sample:  Five Little Monsters

Also available:  Audio Stories and here is a link to their resource collection for elementary students.  Looks like a quality collection.

Progressive Phonics is a find from Kristen Swanson’s blog “Teachers as Technology Trailblazers”.   From the website: “Progressive Phonics is an all-in-one reading program that is easy, fun, and totally FREE—-that’s right, totally and completely free.      I checked it out and it looks very nice.  They have many books that you can download and print or view online.  They also have activity sheets to go with each book. I checked out a couple of the books and they are colorful and engaging, highlighting the words of the letter/sound being presented.   If you have used this in the past or are currently using it drop me a line and let me know what you think here.
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Progressive Phonics is a find from Kristen Swanson’s blog “Teachers as Technology Trailblazers”.  

From the website: “Progressive Phonics is an all-in-one reading program that is easy, fun, and totally FREE—-that’s right, totally and completely free.

     I checked it out and it looks very nice.  They have many books that you can download and print or view online.  They also have activity sheets to go with each book. I checked out a couple of the books and they are colorful and engaging, highlighting the words of the letter/sound being presented.   If you have used this in the past or are currently using it drop me a line and let me know what you think here.

Custom Bingo Cards

I was looking for a fun Friday activity for my reading group when I came across DLTK’s customizable Bingo cards.  Just the perfect thing for my emergent readers.  The cards can be easily customized and printed with just a few clicks.  There are lots of categories to choose from and you can also customize the amount of squares on a card.  Really nice and easy.  

I also noticed that they have customizable dominoes.  I may try these in a couple of weeks after we have the Bingo down pat.

Ahhh…Now to go look for some prizes.

“Making learning fun” is what I plan to do for my new reading group.  This year I have a group of four 1st-2nd graders who are well below grade level.  I have never had a group as young as this for reading.  I also teach their class of 9 art.  Last year I had a wonderful group of eighth graders so this will be a totally new experience for all of us.   I believe that these new students will benefit from project-based instruction so I have been prowling the web for different resources.  “Making Learning Fun” is one that I really like.  It has lots of engaging activities, games (offline), printables, ideas, etc., that I can use with these young students.  The site is organized well and also has many book related activities.  Jo Kramer has compiled a lot of great (quality) ideas.  It was fun looking through them and thinking of ways to incorporate them into project-based learning lessons.
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“Making learning fun” is what I plan to do for my new reading group.  This year I have a group of four 1st-2nd graders who are well below grade level.  I have never had a group as young as this for reading.  I also teach their class of 9 art.  Last year I had a wonderful group of eighth graders so this will be a totally new experience for all of us.  

I believe that these new students will benefit from project-based instruction so I have been prowling the web for different resources.  “Making Learning Fun” is one that I really like.  It has lots of engaging activities, games (offline), printables, ideas, etc., that I can use with these young students.  The site is organized well and also has many book related activities.  Jo Kramer has compiled a lot of great (quality) ideas.  It was fun looking through them and thinking of ways to incorporate them into project-based learning lessons.

I really like PoissonRouge.  They have so many neat little things for younger students to discover.  For example today I discovered a neat little color mixing page.  What I like about it is that they give you the primary colors, black, white, and a jar of water to clean your brush.  Students can make many colors while “painting the online picture.  Really cute.  Another find was a mannequin that students can easily manipulate to show human movement. Very nice.
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I really like PoissonRouge.  They have so many neat little things for younger students to discover.

 For example today I discovered a neat little color mixing page.  What I like about it is that they give you the primary colors, black, white, and a jar of water to clean your brush.  Students can make many colors while “painting the online picture.  Really cute.  Another find was a mannequin that students can easily manipulate to show human movement. Very nice.

What Makes Me!

“What Makes Me“…Another great FREE site from Australia discovered by Larry Ferlazzo.  Here you can create interactive cubes using text, images, video, audio.  You can pull content from the Internet or add your own.  I just made one (see below) and found it very easy to use.  You can make as many as you want with no registration unless you want to save it.  Then you can create your own account.  You can get the embed code and put it on your website without registration.  There are so many applications for this running through my mind.  I know this tool will be used with my students this year.  It was a lot of fun, easy to use, and a great way to share/display information you have learned.  Kids love interactive ways to display their work.  This one hits the mark!

                                   Use your mouse to rotate my cube.