1) Printing Press
Through this website, students can create newspapers, brochures, flyers and signs with many realistic looking templates and designs. I think that this is a great creative writing activity that can be incorporated in a lesson, either alone or in pair work. Example:A certain event can be introduced, and students must create a front page of a newspaper discussing the event.
2) Spelling Bee and Spelling City
These two great websites, are great for practicing spelling. It is possibly harder to use them in a classroom setting, but would be great tools to use at home for students to practice.
3) Make Your Own Story
Here students are given story templates and have to fill in words that they would like to go in their stories. It's cute, but can only really be used as a one time thing as there is not much option here.
4) Story Jumper
This is a fun website that allows students,to create their own story book through adding text, pictures and more. I think this can be a task to work on over a few lessons. Students in pairs, can first brainstorm what they want their picture book to be about, and prepare outlines of the story, and then actually get to work creating it. Students should first have good knowledge about how to access pictures.
5) Class Tools
As I demonstrated above, you can go anywhere with this one. They have fake facebook pages, SMS conversations and others. This can be used very nicely in an audio-lingual class, where the focus is on teaching spoken language through conversations between two people over SMS.
1. Hi Sara
ReplyDeleteI like the tools you have chosen.
I think that Make Your Own Story site is beautiful and I agree that students don’t really create much since all they have to do is just to press on pictures in order to decide what characters they want in their story. On the other hand, I think that it's fun sometimes for students to enjoy what they study in a way that they don’t have to work hard on it and be pressured to always produce something. I think that they will be very interested to check the story that came out from the pictures they have chosen. That way, they work on their reading skills and enriching vocabulary.
I agree with Ronit that the focus should probably be primarily on the language rather than the art. I also know that while some kids love to draw and create art, some kids find it really unpleasant.
DeleteSara, your comments about Story Jumper point to the importance of making sure students are taught how to use images, both online ones and their own. Some students may know more than we do about that, but it's probably a good idea to make sure to review those skills before turning kids loose on that site. I also had fun generating a fake SMS. I tried to save it but couldn't. Do you have to sign up before you can save them?
ReplyDeleteyou do not have to- I used a tool we learnt in this course in the image week where you hit the PrtSc button on the keyboard and this copies the screen and you paste it in paint and work with it there
DeleteNewer computers have a built in tool. Look in tools, clipping tool
DeleteHi Sara.
ReplyDeleteMany ideas indeed!!
I think the same way as you do about spelling city - the students can't realy work in teh classroom with this website, but that can be a great idea for practice at home!
I also like the way you combine the SMS tool in an audio lingual kind of lesson. That can be fun!
Hi Sarah!
ReplyDeleteWow, every time I visit someone else's blog I feel like I have to go back to the course and make sure we were flipping through the same resources. There are so many tools in this unit!
I loved your idea for the "Printing Press" tool. I think it can be used for so many great purposes! Students can even make a whole research project about tourism in different cities in Israel and use the flyers to advertise their city etc. It's easy and fun! Thanks for bringing it up :)
and that's why I make you write blogs... :-)
DeleteNice cloud! :-)
ReplyDeleteI loved the storytelling tools and I think they may be used for Tanach classes as well. I want to ask my Tanach students to recreate (in a imaginatively way) dialogue from the chapter in the book of Kings we are studying.
nice sms dialogue!
ReplyDelete