The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) has a
website that lists the best websites for teaching and learning. What a great resource!
Today I took the time to explore the website and discovered
many great tools. Because I will soon be
starting a presentation that highlights great tools to use with Literacy Work
Stations, I chose to make this the focus of my investigations. Below I will discuss the websites I
discovered…
This is a website that you must sign up for. The downfall is that teachers are only
eligible for a 14 day free trial and then must pay to use the resources. I decided to sign up to see the great
resources available to me and there were some GREAT resources. Let’s start with the main feature of the
website, which is to create a storyboard.
The program allows users to create scenes and characters. Users can use the search tool to add objects
and other pictures to their scenes.
Users can also add audio to their story board. I was able to create an all about me
storyboard that included a teaching scene, a backyard scene with myself and my
family, and a beach scene depicting my favorite vacation spot. In each scene I added avatars that I created
and copied to use the same avatar on each scene. One complete I added text to each page and
then recorded audio of me reading the text.
This program was easy to use and was saved under my classroom management
tab.
After creating my storyboard, I started to further explore
the website. There were a huge number of
great resources but I will only focus on a few of my favorite. The website has a teacher’s guides
option. Here, there are tons of premade
scenes and lesson plans. There were many
premade lesson plans that pair with common read-aloud books, such as
Charlotte’s Web, Freckle Juice, Because of Winn Dixie, and many more. Here you can also find printable or write on
graphic organizers. Users can use a very
easy search guide to find something suitable for any grade or goal. As a collaborative teacher, I was impressed
with the number of options for special needs students, such as positive
reinforcement boards, or social stories that can be customized to meet the
needs of each student.
I would like to explore this website more, but it looks like
it could be a great investment.
Another website I want to explore further is
Bookopolis. This website is considered a
social network and seems to be a great way to get students to take charge of
their own reading. According to the
tutorials, teachers can set up classes where students have their own
logins. They can add books they have
read, write reviews, and reports.
Teachers can even earn free books if their students write reports. This also seems to be a great way to
recommend readings and to find a new book to read.
I played around with the website a little, but ran into a
couple of road blocks that I will explore in more detail. The first issue is that the program does not
work with Internet Explorer, easy enough to get around. The other issue I had was the program
wouldn’t let me build my bookshelf through Google+. I will continue to work on this, as I’m sure
there is an easy way around it. I do
think I would like to implement this in my classroom this year. There is a printable Reading BINGO sheet,
which I think would be great to send home to students to encourage outside
reading. I also think it would be great
to add an incentive to having students read and review books with their family. In my classroom, reading groups work in
partners. Parent volunteers and 5th
grade volunteers could also work in the library station with students to read
books and write reviews with them. As I
teach first grade, this would not be an independent activity. I also discovered an online reading log,
which would be a great way to log reading for my students. This could link to my classroom webpage.
I will continue to play with this website to learn to make
into a social network I will be able to use in my classroom and in my future
library.
I really liked Storybook.
It had much fewer options than Storyboard that, which is great for
younger students. It takes away some of
the distractions of creating and allows them time to focus on writing a good
story. The functions are easy to
use. I teach first grade and I think
towards the middle of the school year, students could be introduced to this
website and be able to use it independently.
One thing I like to do during at my writing table is put out
a shared journal. At the end of the year
last year, we had a journal labeled “Letters to the teacher.” Each student was responsible to write on the next
page when they went to the writing station.
This would be a great way to incorporate technology into this station
and make it a bit more interactive and engaging.
The other great thing about this website is there is no sign
up, so students can work on stories at home.
What a great resource to share with parents!
I can see where a first grade teacher would want something with few distractions. I teach 6th graders, and some students want the more complicated websites while others would like something clean and easy to use. Sometimes it's nice to have similar websites for students to choose from.
ReplyDeleteAmy, I like your review of StorybookThat. I didn't spend a lot of time there, but will be taking a closer second look now that I have read your review. Students love creating storyboards and it is a great way to get them to retell something they have read. I am glad to see that there are ideas that go along with a collab setting, providing differentiation for all learners. That will be very helpful to me this upcoming year! Thanks for the review.
ReplyDeleteI didn't look at Bookopolis for very long, but I see that several people have that one as a great resource. I think I'll look at it again. I think the idea of students setting up a reading social network is pretty awesome!
ReplyDelete