Future Me - Time Traveling Through Email

Here's a really cool site: Future Me.  Use it to send an email to yourself in the future!  The time span can be days, weeks, months, even years (up to 2061)!  All you do is compose an email to your future self and the site will keep it until the the delivery date that you choose.  The only trick is to make sure that you send the email to an address that you are most likely to still have in that all-mysterious future....possibly a gmail, yahoo, or hotmail account instead of a work account.
 

Possible uses for this in your classroom?  Have your students write emails to themselves with goals for the school year.  Did they accomplish in June what they were hoping to accomplish in September?  What about freshman students writing to themselves as seniors?  What would they say to themselves?

One note: you may want to add "mailer@futureme.org" to your non-spam list since that is the address from which your email will be delivered.

Creative Writing Video Prompts

Ok, forgive me for getting into the Halloween spirit before it's even October, but I just can't help it!  I found this video today while browsing for Halloween lesson ideas to post for the month of October.  I got so excited about how you all could use this that I just could not wait for Friday.

Anyway, I found this video on the UK site, teachers.tv.  It's basically the United Kingdom's version of Teacher Tube.  The video explains it's use in the first couple minutes and then supplies seven different story starters that are dramatic and a bit creepy....but I guess that depends on where your little writers take the story!  Watch the video below and let me know what you think!  Maybe you could even come back and post a student's story!

Grabba Beast, hilarious avatars or writing prompts

Another great site for building avatars is Grabba Beast.  Here, students can design a wacky beast that can be colored however they want.  I have also seen suggestions for this site to be used as a writing prompt, in that students can give their beast a story, or practice descriptive writing by going into details about the textures, behaviors, or smells of the beast they created.  Have fun!

Meet Sven, the kung-fu viking monster:

ReadWriteThink...endless resources available to you.

 

Today, I want to show you a fantastic website called ReadWriteThink.  This is a site that is a branch of Thinkfinity.  ReadWriteThink is dedicated to ELA lesson plans, interactives, calendar activities, and printouts for K12.  The interactives work perfectly with SMART Board.  Check it out and let me know of any you find!

WritingFix

Need your students to get writing?  Sick of the "I don't know what to write about..." excuse?  Here's the answer to your problem: WritingFix.com!  Not only does this site contain great ideas for literacy lessons, it also has excellent writing prompt ideas!  Check out the Writing Prompt section (in the left blue side bar) and choose from many different types of idea catalysts.  These range from writing about photos to writing a story to match a crazy title.  Any student from elementary to secondary will benefit from this site.

One thing to keep in mind, though, is that WritingFix is a site designed for the Nevada State Curriculum.  But, the writing prompts and literacy lessons available here are still applicable to our curriculum as well!