Super Teacher Worksheets

I am not a fan of worksheets by any means. However, I found the Super Teacher Worksheets site to be pretty useful. This week we are working on verbs. So I am going to take a worksheet I found online and adapt it. Sometimes I miss using the colorful sentence strips so... We will put the sentences from the worksheet on sentences strips and the students will have the determine which word is the verb in the sentence.

Cute note: We have been learning about nouns. We just finished discussing common and proper nouns. At a concert on Friday my name was printed on a piece of paper to reserve a spot for our class in the cafeteria. One of my students looked at it and then looked up and me and said, "your name is a proper noun too?" I just smiled and said "you are correct".

Northpole.com

Talk about perfect timing! Our students are learning about writing letters, why not have them write a letter to Santa on Northpole.com?

Speakaboos

Listen to fables, nursery rhymes, fairy tales, folk tales, lullabies, and more online with Speakaboos.
These stories can be downloaded and used on an iPod. You can also have your students record their own!

Send Free Brainpop E-Cards

Skip the stamps! Instead, personalize and send free BrainPOP e-cards. Choose from a variety winter- and holiday-themed designs, and send an unlimited amount of cards.

Letter Writing

Here are a few online resources help with letter writing.

Letter Generator
The Letter Generator tool from ReadWriteThink.org is designed to help students learn to identify all the essential parts of a business or friendly letter, and then generate letters by typing information into letter templates. This can be used whole class or as center.


Starfall.com
Zac Writes a letter to his grandparents for Grandparents Day. This interactive letter wrting takes you through each step as Zac writes. When Zac is done, he reads the letter to you and you can print out a copy of the letter. I have my students make print the letter and then they Whiteout Zac's name and replace it with their own name.

A Letter to a Friendly Monster
Write a friendly letter with the date, salutation, body, closing, and signature to a monster. This site has a pdf file that has a graphic organizer of a kids body to help students remember the parts of a friendly letter.

Don't forget to use Rubistar to create a grading rubric.

Online Stories and More

Many links to great Language Arts sites:

http://www.geocities.com/EnchantedForest/Tower/1217/reading.html

The Hungry Thing Goes Digital

The Hungry Thing is an monster/animal that will only eat food if it is referred to with a rhyming word. For example, if he wants noodles, he will ask for foodles. If he wants cake, he will ask for rake.

Each year I read the book, The Hungry Thing to my class. Then we use a poster of the Hungry Thing, with his mouth cut out, to slide pictures of food into his mouth. The Hungry Thing will only eat the food if the students provide a words that rhymes with the food item pictured.

Those days are over! Now the Hungry Thing activity is available online!

Add Dimension to Your Lessons

For only $9.95 you can turn ordinary pictures into three dimensional images. Through the use of 3-D Maker, by Sandy Knoll Software, story books can literally leap off of the pages, or you can add dynamic to your presentations.
Images are transformed in a click of a button, and are saved as a jpeg file. This allows for simple integration into your preferred method of presentation software.

3D Maker can be downloaded from, http://tinyurl.com/5mfpum. However, to access all of the features you must purchase the software by clicking on the payment options icons. Your purchase confirmation email will include a serial number that will allow you to fully utilize the software.
3D glasses can be purchase for relatively cheap. I was able to order 10 pairs of 3D glasses for $1.99 through ebay. There are also ways to make your own 3D glasses using a CD jewel case, a red Sharpie marker, and a blue Sharpie marker. (This really does work! I found out today because my ebay order did not arrive in time.)

So, spend the $9.95 and your students and/or audience will thank you for it.

Math and Science Newsbreaks

Here is a link to some quick video clips on various math and science topics for grades K through 2nd. The clips are "breaking news" style videos.
http://ksnn.larc.nasa.gov/k2newsbreaks.cfm

There are also numerous newsbreaks for grades 3rd through 5th in math and science. http://ksnn.larc.nasa.gov/35newsbreaks.cfm