I’m sitting here in my hotel room at the end of my first ever ISTE conference. I thoroughly enjoyed the sessions I attended, as well as the networking I did through Twitter and in person while in Denver. Before I head back to Alabama tomorrow, I thought I’d share with you my thoughts about my [...]
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I love rap music. Even at 30 years old and while driving in my mini-van. I stumbled upon Mr. Duey last year and was able to introduce him to my students last quarter through his Fractions video on TeacherTube. They.loved.it. They all laughed when I showed them a preview on the SMARTboard, and even though I gave them other fraction alternatives that day, they all chose to visit Mr. Duey first. I actually had to MAKE them stop watching it, and many students had already learned most of the words after watching it a few times.
This week, one of our 4th grade teachers brought to my attention a song entitled “44 Presidents” she found on an Inaugural resources site I had e-mailed to her. This lead me to the Educational Rap website. This group offers rap songs for Math, Science, Language Arts, and Social Studies.
Here is an excerpt from the website:
Rhythm, Rhyme, Results, LLC (RRR, pronounced “Triple R”) is a production house and online media company founded in 2006 in Cambridge, MA. We currently focus on producing the most entertaining and effective educational music on the planet.
Four versions of each song!
In response to teacher feedback, our albums come with four versions of each song, each of which makes use of a different educational technique to assist the learning process:
• The Original Track presents the complete song at its normal tempo.
• The Downtempo Track presents the complete song at a reduced tempo.
• The Recall Track™ feature eliminates key words and phrases from the lyrics.
• The Instrumental Track provides a karaoke-style version without lead vocals.
As a bonus, the group offers free live streams of nearly 10 songs (lyrics included) for each subject. This is a great way to test the songs out on your students before you buy to determine if they will meet your students’ needs.There are 3 ways to purchase: Amazon, iTunes, and directly from Educational Rap.
If you have used educational rap in the classroom, I would love to hear about your experiences. I will report back with comments from the 4th grade teacher at my school who plans to use this in her classroom.
While Starfall is all well and good, there are many other wonderful interactive literacy websites out there. The younger students need a little variety too!
Here is a list I’ve compiled so far:
Literactive- A wonderful interactive website for reading materials for PreK-1 and ESL students. The Road to Reading section is especially great for centers!
Literacy Center- The Play and Learn section of this site is available in 4 different languages. Activities include uppercase, lowercase, shapes, writing, and many more.
Bembo’s Zoo- A stylish animal alphabet site with illustrations created from the letters in each animal’s name.
Roy the Zebra- Includes interactive reading games, guided reading stories, songs, and more.
Interactive Alphabet- Students can see the letters written, hear their sounds, and see a picture beginning with each letter.
I will add to this list as I find more.
I’ve been seeing “word clouds” around for the past couple of months, but wasn’t sure how I could use them until I read this blog post from Kevin Jarrett that referred to this Twitter post by @sammorra. @sammorra used Wordle.net to create holiday cards. I immediately thought about the Winter Wonderland Holiday Card page. I hadn’t planned on doing a card because we were barely able to get our monthly activities done, but I figured this would be the perfect tool to create something quick.
I went to Wordle, clicked on create, and typed in all of the 1st through 3rd grade teachers names. I also typed in my school’s name multiple times so it would show as the main word. I then changed my font, layout and colors by editing the custom color palette. I made a print screen of the image and pasted it into the Paint.net program (LOVE THIS PROGRAM!), added a title and some clip art images that I found here, and BAM- a quick and easy holiday card!
After Christmas break, I’m thinking of letting them fill out a Google Doc form telling me one thing they got for Christmas. I’ll then make a wordle out of the results to see what the most popular gift was!
