TeachersFirst - Featured Sites: Week of Apr 27, 2014

Here are this week's features. Clicking the tags in the description area of each listing will present a list of other resources with this topic. | Click here to return to the Featured Sites Archive

 

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Free Online PDF Calendars - Kevin MacLeod

Grades
1 to 12
2 Favorites 0  Comments
Create a custom, yearly calendar quickly with the PDF Calendar creator. Choose from several sizes or insert your own size in inches. Choose from many different languages. Create your...more
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Create a custom, yearly calendar quickly with the PDF Calendar creator. Choose from several sizes or insert your own size in inches. Choose from many different languages. Create your calendar for any year from 1901 - 2038 and select Sunday or Monday as the starting day each week. Click "GET PDF" to instantly view your calendar ready to print or download.
This site includes advertising.

tag(s): calendars (40), parents (60)

In the Classroom

Use this calendar maker to create calendars throughout the year. Create a calendar from a year in history to discover days of the week that historic events took place. Include a calendar with multimedia projects for a written perspective of time and events. Create a calendar for the future to explore events such as days of the week birthdays will occur, day of the week for future holidays, or for the upcoming school year. Create calendars for upcoming years to view days of the week for annual events. Give your students calendars to highlight in different colors showing vacations, major projects, field trips, and other events. Help your "organizationally challenged" students by printing calendars they can annotate and keep inside the clear cover of their binders or in a plastic sleeve page. Have young students (or ELL students) decorate a yearly calendar as they learn the months of the year.
 This resource requires PDF reader software like Adobe Acrobat.

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Mini-Court: Mock Trial Activities - New Jersey State Bar Foundation

Grades
3 to 6
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Mini-Court offers a free mock trial teacher's guide containing a five day lesson plan for grades 3-6. Click the PDF link to view and download all lessons. Resources include mock ...more
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Mini-Court offers a free mock trial teacher's guide containing a five day lesson plan for grades 3-6. Click the PDF link to view and download all lessons. Resources include mock trials, definitions of legal terms, puppets, word searches, and more, all suited for early elementary learning. Lessons incorporate nursery rhyme characters and stuffed animals to teach students simple legal concepts about as trials and laws. Although this site is rather "plain vanilla" as a PDF, there are some great lesson ideas.

tag(s): civil rights (193), courts (19)

In the Classroom

Use Mini-Court lessons and activities as part of your government unit. Incorporate activities into a folk tales unit to "try" characters such as Goldilocks. Next time your students complain that something is "not fair," use the opportunity to learn about how the courts make things "fair." Challenge even your youngest students to come up with "court cases" about famous characters (i.e. Cinderella's stepmother held her hostage, Snow White was poisoned, and many more). Create a timeline together on your interactive whiteboard using Preceden, reviewed here, to show the sequence of events.
 This resource requires PDF reader software like Adobe Acrobat.

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Literably - Tyler Borek and Habib Moody

Grades
K to 8
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Use Literably to assess students' oral reading and comprehension. Literably will display a text, administer the reading assessment, score it, generate an audio recording, and keep a...more
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Use Literably to assess students' oral reading and comprehension. Literably will display a text, administer the reading assessment, score it, generate an audio recording, and keep a running record. It will also report words correct per minute, percentage accuracy, and a leveling recommendation. Literably also provides readers' Lexile measures, grade levels, and guided reading levels. Test comprehension levels using open response or multiple choice questions. Register with an email, and set up a class easily. Keep your username short for ease of registration by primary students. The free account allows for testing 10 students per calendar month. Student sign in is extremely easy, even for a first grader. Print results or email to parents for easy sharing. IMPORTANT Note: Results (accuracy and WPM) are not available instantly and take up to 18-24 hours to arrive via email or be posted on the site. Literably is compatible with most browsers, and there is a free iPad app.
This site includes advertising.

tag(s): assessment (147), fluency (24), literacy (106), reading comprehension (142)

In the Classroom

After creating a class list, either choose readings based on your estimate for each student or let Literably choose them. You will need to demonstrate on a projector or whiteboard where to click to Allow the mike to work. Set up a center (or several) in your classroom and rotate students through it. The free account allows your to test five students, but there is a work around. If you have Gmail, you can use the subaccounts feature to create "new email addresses." See how to do this here. This tells how to set up Gmail subaccounts to use for any online membership service. Using Gmail subaccounts will allow you to test more than five students. The Literably results and ability to give parents expert feed back on their students literacy skills make creating Gmail subaccounts well worth your time! You will probably want to use headsets with microphones to limit distractions when using Literably. However, the built in microphone on the computer will work just fine. This tool is perfect for reporting to parents and administrators. It's also great for resource teachers to share during IEP meetings. Turn this assessment tool into a teaching tool by having students listen to their recordings and follow the text to pause the incorrect recording and read it correctly. Have them try the same reading again to see if they can improve their score.

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Carlisle Indian Industrial School - Dickinson College

Grades
6 to 12
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Discover the controversial legacy of the Indian School. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the US Government encouraged the establishment of so-called Industrial Schools...more
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Discover the controversial legacy of the Indian School. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the US Government encouraged the establishment of so-called Industrial Schools designed to "civilize" Native American children and prepare them for careers outside the reservations and within white society. Today the legacy of these schools remains controversial: did they provide children with useful skills, or were they a form of ethnic cleansing that robbed them of their culture, self identity, and heritage? The Carlisle Indian Industrial School is probably best known for being the home of internationally renowned athlete Jim Thorpe, but it is also part of the family history of many Native Americans today whose ancestors attended the Pennsylvania school. Dickinson College maintains this digital archive of student records, images and special collections for use by relatives of former students and by scholars doing research on the legacy of the Indian Industrial Schools. Search by student name, by nation, or within collections of school publications and other documents. The archive is an ongoing project and will continue to grow.

tag(s): colonial america (95), cross cultural understanding (156), difficult conversations (58), diversity (38), history day (40), identity (28), native americans (91), westward expansion (38)

In the Classroom

Too often US history survey classes broadly consider Native Americans and their role in the original colonization of North America, or their role in Westward Expansion, without taking the time to understand the differences among nations, or the impact of European settlement on these pre-existing societies. Even if there isn't time for in depth study, consider asking students to study the individual record of one young man or woman approximately their own age who attended the Carlisle Indian School. How old was he when he left home? What skill was she trained in? What happened to him after he left Carlisle? Enhance student learning by having students use Fakebook, reviewed here, to create a "fake" page similar in style to Facebook about the individual they researched. This personal contact with the real life of another student from another time and another culture will reduce the tendency to stereotype Native Americans as they so often are during the study of US History. Of course, the site is also a wonderful resource for in depth research such as a National History Day project. Were the identities of these people stolen? Use the resources Analyzing Before and After Photographs... and the Telling Lives: The Lost Ones Documentary Film to discuss identity and whether or not that was taken from these students.
 This resource requires PDF reader software like Adobe Acrobat.

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Noodle - Noodle

Grades
9 to 12
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Combine an intangible product like a college education, an overload of data, and anxiety about choice, and you have the perfect niche for a website which claims to simplify it ...more
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Combine an intangible product like a college education, an overload of data, and anxiety about choice, and you have the perfect niche for a website which claims to simplify it all for you. Noodle is one of the newest websites of this kind. But Noodle's difference is that it is a hybrid: part search engine and part college curating platform. Rather than creating its own content about each of the more than 3000 post secondary institutions in the US, Noodle pulls its content from a collection of existing sources: the colleges' own websites, general education sites, and other college search sites. It's no coincidence that Noodle's CEO is also the founder of The Princeton Review. The beauty of Noodle's platform is that it collects information from the student who has set up a personal profile, and then tailors the search based on the student profile. Profiles can be established using Facebook login information, which is often problematic for in-school use. It can also be established using an email address. Once the student has entered his or her personal information, (including test scores, GPA, and family income information), Noodle suggests the student's chances of admission to a given college and has tailored information about college costs taking into consideration the likelihood of receiving available financial aid.
This site includes advertising.

tag(s): college (45)

In the Classroom

Noodle certainly deserves to be among the college search sites bookmarked on any high school college counseling center's resource list. Other educators who focus on college and career readiness will also find Noodle a good resource to recommend. Noodle works best when combined with an individual student profile, so students will need to establish their own accounts and then come back to that account for ongoing research. Noodle promises that it will not sell student information from those individual profiles. However, Noodle can also provide a quick overview of any college simply by searching on the college name or from preset categories without establishing an individual account.

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Timeline - ReadWriteThink

Grades
2 to 12
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Create a printed or PDF timeline using this handy tool. There is no registration required. This tool allows you to easily add, drag, and rearrange items as work progresses. Timelines...more
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Create a printed or PDF timeline using this handy tool. There is no registration required. This tool allows you to easily add, drag, and rearrange items as work progresses. Timelines can be organized by day, date, or event. Add an image for each event to make a timeline visually appealing. The event label can include an annotation for the image with short or long descriptive text. Save as a draft to make revisions later or finalize and share the timeline via email (as a pdf). You can also download and save the file. Click Get Started and begin your timeline by simply entering your name and the name of the project. Teachers will want to explore lessons that use this timeline tool. Lessons are divided up by grade level. For more explanation about saving work in progress, go to the Videos menu and click "Using RWT" to find a video about Saving Work With the Student Interactives.

tag(s): timelines (47)

In the Classroom

Demonstrate how to use this tool with your projector or interactive whiteboard. In lower grades, you could make a timeline of the months and add images of all who have birthdays each month. This tool is so versatile it can be used for a variety of topics and subjects, including autobiographical incidents, plots of a story or book, the cell cycle, stages in volcanic eruptions, any history topic, steps in a math problem, or steps in a plan to create a project. As students learn about informational texts in CCSS, they can also learn about adding (and interpreting) graphical information to accompany their words. Students who cannot complete their work during the class time can save their work in a local computer (in its own rwt file format) to finish later. Just make sure the student names it logically and knows WHERE the file is saved!!
 

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Nazi and East German Propaganda Guide Page - Randall Bytwerk

Grades
8 to 12
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The Nazi and East German Propaganda Guide Page offers a massive collection of resources demonstrating the use of propaganda leading up to and throughout World War Two. Explore categories...more
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The Nazi and East German Propaganda Guide Page offers a massive collection of resources demonstrating the use of propaganda leading up to and throughout World War Two. Explore categories such as posters, essays, and other reading materials. Each resource includes a short explanation of the source and how the material was used to promote the Nazis. For a full explanation on the background of the site and options for using materials included make sure you read the FAQ section. Although the presentation of this material is plain vanilla, the actual artifacts are powerful.

tag(s): germany (25), history day (40), holocaust (41), nazis (8), primary sources (113), propaganda (9), world war 2 (149)

In the Classroom

Bookmark and save this site for use throughout your World War Two unit. Introduce this site on your interactive whiteboard or projector. Then have students explore this site independently or in small groups. Challenge students to find examples of the Allies' use of propaganda and exchange paper and pen by using an online tool such as Canva, reviewed here, to create diagrams, mindmaps, and other visual graphic organizers comparing the uses of propaganda. Enhance learning by having students create a word cloud of the propaganda terms they learn from this site using a tool such as WordItOut, reviewed here. Save this one in your favorites to suggest if you have students who need primary sources projects for National History Day.

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Hemingway - Ben and Adam Long

Grades
5 to 12
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Make revising your writing easy and enjoyable using Hemingway. Simply copy/paste your text into this website, and receive instant feedback. The visual aspect of this program helps one...more
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Make revising your writing easy and enjoyable using Hemingway. Simply copy/paste your text into this website, and receive instant feedback. The visual aspect of this program helps one to see exactly where the errors are and where to make improvements. There are color coded suggestions for wordiness, weak adverb use, passive voice, and complicated words and phrases. Did you know that the most effective writing is at or under grade level ten? The goal of the program is to help writers make their missives concise and clear.

tag(s): editing (93), proofreading (21), writing (315)

In the Classroom

Use this highly visual revision program with your students who are ready to refine and improve their writing. This is a wonderful program to use for revision after editing of grammar and mechanics is complete. Discover what is making your writing too wordy (excessive prepositional phrases or adverbs?) Partner an advanced writer with one not so advanced and have them use Hemingway to improve their styles. Put the URL on your website for students and parents to use from home. Remind seniors to use it for their college essays. Use this tool to polish your own professional writing, parent newsletters, blog posts, and papers for grad classes!

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Frontiers for Young Minds - Frontiersin.org

Grades
2 to 10
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This tool is a neuroscience journal that includes articles reviewed by kids! Approved student scientists, ages 8-16, review the articles, and neuroscientists serve as their mentors....more
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This tool is a neuroscience journal that includes articles reviewed by kids! Approved student scientists, ages 8-16, review the articles, and neuroscientists serve as their mentors. The scientific process is followed with young scientists writing their submission specifically for the Frontiers Journal. The article is then peer reviewed. Students and scientists serve as peer reviewers. The process shows how articles are reviewed in major publications and show the scientific process.

tag(s): brain (54), child development (23), human body (93), senses (20)

In the Classroom

Use these articles in Biology or Health class to learn about the brain and factors that affect it. Students will find many articles of interest to them. Articles focus not only on learning, but games, media, emotions, and other activities. Have a bright students looking for a challenge? Encourge him/her to follow the directions to apply as a Young Mind reviewer. Challenge cooperative learning groups to read an article and create an infographic sharing the highlights of what they discovered. Use a tool such as Venngage reviewed here. If you teach gifted science students or would like to offer an advanced option to a gifted student in your regular science class while studying the brain or human body, this journal offers an outstanding opportunity for real world collaboration with scientists and very bright students in other places. Differentiate by going outside school walls! Have your student write an article and/or apply to join the team of young scientists.

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Kahoot! - Mobitroll

Grades
K to 12
9 Favorites 1  Comments
 
Ask meaningful questions and see responses in real-time while creating an exciting, game-like environment. Build instant polls, quizzes, or responses through a simple drag and drop...more
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Ask meaningful questions and see responses in real-time while creating an exciting, game-like environment. Build instant polls, quizzes, or responses through a simple drag and drop interface. Once you create your account, be sure to take the Intro Quiz to learn how to use this tool. When you start the quiz, you will be prompted to open a new tab, create a nickname, and enter the game pin. Now you will be able to take the quiz to learn how Kahoot! works AND be able to see what a teacher sees in your original tab. You will have to go to the Main tab to launch the next question in the Quiz. Find ready-made quizzes on the public Kahoot! menu by entering search terms. Create questions, quizzes, and polls with an optional uploaded image. Kahoot! also has a team option. Groups can use one computer to answer questions. The best part about the team option is it allows groups wait time to discuss their answer before submitting it. The teacher gets the data back instantly, and it is stored on the site or can be downloaded. This is superb for checking the knowledge of your audience/students or to see if they are still paying attention and understand concepts.

tag(s): assessment (147), DAT device agnostic tool (143), Formative Assessment (70), game based learning (171), gamification (74), polls and surveys (46), quizzes (90)

In the Classroom

This is a powerful formative assessment tool that is also fun! Create pretests to offer to gifted students to "test out" of already learned material. Students can easily see the choices and choose answers using a browser on a laptop or any device. Make it a class challenge! Use this tool at the start of a new chapter or unit. Project your quiz to the entire classroom using a whiteboard or projector. Students can easily see the choices and choose answers using a browser on a laptop or any device. Use the Team choice when reviewing for a unit test. Students can see who is at the top of the leaderboard during the play and can even ask questions while going through the quiz. Use this tool often to obtain a snapshot of each student's understanding of content.

Comments

What makes a good web tool? In my opinion, a web tool should be two things. They should be easy to look at, and easy to use. When you use these tools you need to be able to see clearly what a site does and the purpose it serves. Not only do you need to be able to see what you are doing, but do it easily. If it takes students more effort and energy to use a web tool or website, they will stop using it. You have to be able to keep the attention of the user. Beyond that an education tool needs a few additional items. Education tools need to be fun and interactive to continuously grab the attention of students. Students should have fun when using the site/tool.

Kahoot fits all the above criteria. Not only is it fun and easy for students to use, but easy for teachers to set up and use for students. Kahoot is a fun quiz tool that teachers can use to build discussions, polls, and quizzes for the classroom. Students can then log into the quiz using smartphones, tablets, or computers. The tool is designed for students and works for students. Kahoot is well thought out, and well executed. This tool really brings the learning experience to students who are so familiar with technology.
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