reading website

http://www.kimskorner4teachertalk.com/readingliterature/menu.html
I love the posters about conflict on this site. She is a middle school english teacher, but she has lots of great ideas about how to use picture books to teach literary elements such as imagery, foreshadowing, and theme.
Christine

Basic Literacy Through Picture Books

Everglades: 5th grade Trophies

The entire story, Everglades, by Jean Craighead George, is in the fifth grade Trophies anthology. I found a great Storyworks resource to accompany the story.  http://storyworks.scholastic.com/reproducible-archive/november-december-2010 The magazine article , Monsters of the Everglades, can be shown on the Smartboard. The website also has a great short video about invasive species in other places in the US. Storyworks provides worksheets and tests as well. After visiting this website, I am considering buying a subscription for the next school year.

If you don't follow Mary Blow from Scholastic Top Teaching, here is a link to her post. She has a great post on the Storyworks site.
http://blogs.scholastic.com/classroom_solutions/2010/10/magazines-an-english-teachers-best-friend-a-few-years-ago-i-discovered-the-value-of-using-magazines-in-my-classroom.html

This is a vocabulary lesson from the story, Everglades, that I like to use. These words are all synonyms used on page 257 for a large amount.  You could also use a linear array to list the words in a different way. Christine

Teacher tipster

http://www.teachertipster.com/Videos.html Here is a new website with videos on many topics that I found interesting. Most of the tips are for teachers in the primary grades. Christine

A Day at Pine Glen

What a great video to show all of the wonderful things that go on in elementary schools across the country  on a daily basis (this school is in Massachusetts). Christine

Playaways

My students really enjoy using Playaways in the classroom for silent sustained reading time. I get them from my library consortium. Each Playaway comes in a plastic case. Inside is a 2 by 3 inch "tape" of the story. You have to provide your own headsets and battery to run it. The kids like it because its individual...they have total control over the story.I have been reading recently on other blogs about classrooms using Ipods for S.S.R. This is a good alternative if you don't have any Ipods in your school. Christine

The new way vs. the old way



The NEW way (Smartboard)




The OLD way (poster and tape)

 I'm finding that a lot of my posters have become obsolete because of the Smartboard. I love the tools, especially the highlight option (so much easier than my highlighting tape!) We have been working on poetry quite a bit recently. I have found it is just so easy to quickly type a poem into Notebook and then use the tools to teach the lesson. Christine

Curate.Us.com

I used a site called curate.us to copy the Flisti poll onto my blog. I had to take the Walmart add as well. Christine

Flisti

http://lynnwoods.blogspot.com/2010/12/which-state-has-been-hit-most-by.html
I have been trying to find a way to put a poll on my classroom blog for a while now. This site, http://www.flisti.com/ allows you to make a simple poll and link it to your site. You can also embed the URL but I haven't figured that out yet! I also love that you don't have to sign up for the site.We are studying hurricanes in class this week. I made a simple poll for my fifth graders about which state gets hit the most by hurricanes, with a link to find out the correct answer. Christine

vocabulary instruction

http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/video.jsp?pID=1740031591&bcpid=82925320001&bctid=676210186001
Really cool vocabulary lesson. Christine