Looking for a Valentine’s Day Project?

Consider the lesson plans from Storyboardthat!  You students can create stories, spider maps, or cards!  Please click here for their suggestions.

Kittens and Dolch words

How fast can your kitten find the sight word? Find out on Kitten Hop!  The faster you respond, the quicker your kitty jumps- see if you can reach the couch first!  This would be a great game for the SMARTBoard.  You can play against others or create a private game for members only.

For the complete post on TeachersFirst, please click here.

For older learners learning English

Skillwise is a BBC site geared to older learners (grade 7 and up) to learn English.  It includes games, activities, and videos.  This is an adult learner site as well so you might want to preview the material before sharing with students.

For the complete post from TeachersFirst, please click here.

Black History Lessons

PBS has a series of lesson plans for Black History month for all grade levels.  Many of the ideas include resources as well.

For the complete post from TeachersFirst, please click here.

Make a movie with Moby!

Just when you think BrainPOP cannot get any better, they announced their new Make a Movie feature.  Here are the highlights:

• This feature is only available in BrainPOP (work is underway for Jr. and ESL but no dates yet).
• You must be signed into your My BrainPOP account (if you are using the standard district password, you will not have access to this feature). To create your own account and directions for Single Sign On for your students, please click here.
• You can add images (from BrainPOP), short animations (from BrainPOP), text, labels, drawings.
• You can record your own voice or use the text to speech feature.
• Videos can be as long as 20 scenes and change the background colors.
• Students can submit the video to the teacher. Due to privacy issues, you cannot export the video outside of BrainPOP.

There are many teacher resources here (a step by step guide as well as teaching suggestions).

How could you use it in your class?

Second grade storyboards!

Who says second graders are too young to explore Storyboardthat?  Not the students in Colleen West’s class.  Signing in with Google makes access easy for younger learners and they shared their knowledge about animal groups.  Here are some samples from the day.

Valentine’s Day Poetry

Eric Curts (you may remember him from the snowman and the winter poems) has created a Google Drawing for Valentine’s Day.  You can read his blog post here (and you will be able to make a copy of the Google Drawing).

Learn English

Learn English is a site that would work for anyone learning English.  It includes videos, audio, and activities.  It also includes grammar and reading activities.

For the complete post from TeachersFirst, please click here.

Teaching Shakespeare?

If you answered yes, be sure and check out the lesson ideas on Storyboardthat here. (You can also find then in the Teacher Guide section once you login).  I know if I had created storyboards for the plays, I bet I would have understood them better!

Black History and Storyboardthat

Here's an article from Storyboardthat with suggestions for Black History Month. There are suggestions for several grade levels.  If you have not used the District Storyboardthat account, please contact me or your Media Specialist.