Once Upon a Digital Time

I had the opportunity to present at the ISTE conference last month and share my Once Upon a Digital Time symbaloo. It has several websites and apps bookmarked for digital storytelling and interactive writing. I will be presenting an overview of some of them this week at the Lone Star TIA conference. Some of the apps are paid but often go on sale or free; that's when I download them. However, most all the websites are free and have education versions. The symbaloo has something for all grade levels. If you get a chance, take a look and explore a few of them. Let me know your favorites!

https://edu.symbaloo.com/mix/onceuponadigitaltime2

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A Technology Blog Hop

Spring into Technology with Classroom Freebies!

Several phenomenal teachers, Technology Tailgate Coaches and bloggers are joining forces for an amazing classroom technology blog hop!  As you hop from blog to blog, you will visit some of your favorite blogs and discover a few new blogs too!  Each with a fabulous freebie just for you!

Thank you for hopping over!

I love when I get an opportunity to share great technology resources with other educators. I have had a fascination with QR Codes for a couple of years now. Thus, I like to implement them into the classroom any way I can. I have created a freebie specifically for the technology blog hop that I hope you will enjoy! These are fun writing prompts in the form of QR codes. It is a great way for students to be surprised by picking a writing prompt. To download a copy, just click on the image below. Happy Hopping!

Thank you so much for stopping by and visiting!  If you are new to my blog and like what you see, don't forget to follow me!  The next stop on the path is  Kristen at Teacher Playground

In case you didn't start from the beginning, here is an ordered list of all participating blogs!

The Technology Tailgate

Kate from EduKate and Inspire

Kristin from iTeach 1:1

Heidi from Rakis Rad Resources

Leah from Learn With Leah

Amanda and Aylin from Learning to the Core

Nikki from An Uncommon to the Core Teacher

Karla at The Connected Teacher

Shana at Enchanted with Technology

Kristen at Teacher Playground

Jen at Tech with Jen

Kay at A Little Tech

Melanie at I Luv Twek

Carrie and Caitlin at Table Talk with C & C

Lauren at iWonder

Jan at The Science Vault

A special thank you to Jen at Tech with Jen for designing the blog hop button!

Interested in joining our next blog hop?  Join here! 

Poetry Interactives

April is National Poetry Month so I have been looking for some great poetry interactive activities to share with everyone. My favorite go-to book of poems is Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. To make reading fun, I would let my students choose a poem they liked and they would be encouraged to practice reading it with intonation, expression, inflection, and fluency throughout the week. At the end of the week students would take turns presenting their chosen poem to the rest of the class. Students fell in love with the poems and from then on would always be looking for poetry books during library time. Here are a few interactive resources that I found that would be wonderful to implement into some of your poetry lessons.

Shel Silverstein's Official Site -  you can download a Poetry Workshop Kit or browse for lessons, activities, and games.

I used the poem Hector the Collector by Shel Silverstein to create the word clouds below.

Tagxedo - this is an excellent way for students to create shape poems. You can select from their shape menu or upload your own. There is also the option to customize the font and color scheme.

Wordle - is another great website where students can create word clouds and customize the layout, font, and colors scheme.

ReadWriteThink - there are several fun poem interactive activities students can complete. You can click on the images below to be taken directly to them.

RIF Reading Planet - Poetry Splatter is fun for all ages. Just choose a poem from the list and start filling in the poem with words splattered on the screen.

 

Rhyme Zone - Perfect for helping you create your own poem. You can search for rhyming words, synonyms, antonyms, homophones, similar sounding words, and a lot more options! I wish I was using this website a long time ago.

 

Giggle Poetry - Who doesn't love funny poems? This site has lots of funny poems for children to giggle away! You can explore Poetry Theater, Poetry Class, Poetry Fun, or even play word games. There are many things to check out on here.

And last but not least... Kenn Nesbitt's Poetry4kids website that has a plethora of poetry fun and information.

April isn't over yet so there is still plenty of time to check out these great resources for National Poetry Month. If you are like me, you'll spend just as much time as the students do reading all the fun poems! Enjoy :)

Stay Calm and Rock the Test

Here in Texas we are all gearing up for the STAAR test so I thought a few encouraging posters were needed. We have all seen the Keep Calm posters everywhere, so using that as inspiration I created a few of my own to display. I couldn't make up my mind on which color I liked best for the background. Problem solved...I created them with several background colors and a couple of neon animal print! I think there is 10 in all. Thanks to my bilingual partner Christina for helping me create the Spanish ones. If you would like the freebie for your classroom, click the image to download.

Let's not forget about Dual Language classes!

 For all those testing, GOOD LUCK :)

Dr. Seuss Interactive Resources and Popular Quotes

It is that time of year again to celebrate Dr. Seuss' birthday! I thought this would be the perfect time to remind you of the entertaining online resources that your students can enjoy during computer time, centers, or free time. Many of you probably already have Seussville and PBS Kids' The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That! bookmarked on your computer; however, if you haven't had a chance to check out all the fun activities and resources here is quick snapshot of them.

Seussville

You can learn all about Theodor Seuss Geisel from the "Author" section. It gives you a detailed timeline of both personal and professional events that happened in his life. I know in our third grade classes we have been really focusing on the characteristics of the biography genre, so this would be an excellent project for them to do. Important milestones could be passed out on strips of paper and they could arrange it in chronological order and recorded on their own timeline, or they could list major events for Dr. Seuss' life by pulling out the information independently. Another option would be to do an author study compiled from information gathered reading his biography, looking at the photo gallery, or watching the short videos from the website.

The "Games & Activities" are of course the most popular spot to be! Students have tons of choices to pick from such as rhymes, word searches, matching, shapes, same or different, and a lot more.

One of my favorite Seussville activities to recommend is the Storybook Maker. This activity allows students to create a three scene story similar to creating a comic strip.  It targets reading and writing skills in a fun, interactive way. Students first start out by picking their background (setting), characters, music, and type the text or dialogue they want the characters to say. The process is repeated for each scene. When they finish they can watch each scene unfold.

Other things to explore on Seussville are the short-clip videos, learning about every character from all of Dr. Seuss' books, and the educator section for printables and classroom resources.

PBS Kids also has oodles of educational interactives to play from The Cat in the Hat Know a Lot About That!

 

http://pbskids.org/catinthehat/

Check out Snap-O-Rama for categorizing games, puzzles, and memory match!

Students can also brush up on their math and science skills by playing a few of the games below. There are way too many to highlight!

Last but not least I want to leave you with 30 of Dr. Seuss' popular quotes. It was created by Mamiverse. My favorite is #16. What is your favorite Dr. Seuss quote?

 

Pastelink an easy way to share files

Need an easy, quick way to share a file online? Then there's no reason to email it to yourself or upload to Google Docs and from there share out the link; when it can be done in less steps. Simply drag and drop (or browse) the file you want to share into Pastelink and that's it! A link will automatically be generated for you to copy to your clipboard and share out. The website is free but if you want to send files over 250 MB then you can sign up for a free account and send up to 2GB. The link is good for seven days so I would only recommend this for files you want to share out immediately. If you want to store files for people to continually access, then Google Docs or Dropbox, is still your best bet. However, this is super easy for file sharing on the go!

 

pastelink.me

Story Chimes: Interactive Book Apps

Story Chimes are one of my absolute favorite apps for reading. Story Chimes are interactive children's books that are brought to life with narration, music, and activities. They are perfect for teachers that integrate technology into their classrooms because the books can be played on an iPod Touch or iPad; they are also available on Androids. What a great idea to engage students during literacy center time! Kids have the option to read independently or read along with the narrator. Best of all they have tons of FREE full version books that you can download (with ads). If you want the ad free version then most of them are only $0.99. I think I have pretty much downloaded every interactive app they have on the App Store. Now, every time my 5 year old niece stays with me I let her choose a story for us to read at bedtime. She is always asking to go back and reread them! One of our favorites is The Princess and the Pea.

You can search "Story Chimes" in the iTunes App Store or Google Play to see all the different interactive books available for download. Here are a few titles that I took a snapshot of from the iTunes Store.

If you haven't discovered the interactive books already, I recommend checking a few of the stories out!