Say what?

Have you ever wondered where some of our figures of speech come from?  I actually do all the time!  I mean, if you really think about it, some of them sound pretty silly; Why would you bury a hatchet in the literal sense?  What does that have to do with ending an argument?

Well, today's website, The Phrase Finder has many of the answers you might be looking for!  The site is a searchable collection of proverbs, American phrases, phrases coined by Shakespeare, nautical phrases, and phrases from the Bible.  Search or browse for any idiom or expression and find the historical origins of the common saying.

And by the way, "burying the hatchet" comes form a Native American custom of literally burying a hatchet as a way to make peace.  It was a symbolic motion that removed a symbol of war so it would never be seen again, hence promising peaceful relations.

Storyline Online, stories from the stars!

Looking for an extra addition to that book you're reading to your K-2 students? Check out Storyline Online! This site is offered by the Screen Actors Guild Foundation and brings video of your favorite actors reading childrens' books for free!

Check out Ernest Borgnine (The Dirty Dozen ....or to the kids, the voice of Mermaid Man on Spongebob Squarepants) reading Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister, or watch Sean Astin (Lord of the Rings) read A Bad Case of the Stripes by David Shannon, or watch my personal favorite, Harry the Dirty Dog by Gene Zion, read by Betty White!

The stories also show the illustrations in the books that are accompanied by some animation.  You can also look for suggested activities to go with each book.

Check out the site today to see if the book you are reading is in the list!

Sheppard Software - Educational games and review online

Today's site is Sheppard Software, a collection of fun online games that helps students review, learn, and progress in several subjects.  The site can be used K-12 and beyond.  They even recommend the best games and activities to use based on grade level (seen by scrolling down to the bottom of the home page). 

Some of my favorites are:
Geography - Practice at different  levels of difficulty; explore, learn, and test yourself in identifying capitals and countries for all the countries of the world.

Science (Animals) - Learn more about the food chain, and producer/consumer relationships in these fun games!

Grammar - Practice parts of speech and punctuation placement!  Or, for higher level students, check out SAT and GRE vocab!

 The site also offers free software downloads of some of their games for teachers!  Have fun and check it out!



**NOTE: I found that this site is best used with internet explorer.

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.

Project Gutenberg - Free eBooks and audio books online

I would like to share the Project Gutenberg site today.  This is a site where you can download thousands of free eBooks, and some audiobooks.  While the site does not house the most recent, NY Times bestsellers, there are thousands of classics for your perusal. 

Some examples of the content that I found on the site are:
The works of authors such as; William Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe, Dostoevsky, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, and Mark Twain.  There are also such classics as; The Odyssey, The Scarlet Letter, Turn of the Screw, The Bible, Wuthering Heights, Heart of Darkness, The Sherlock Holmes tales, Beowulf, Frankenstein, Jane Eyre,and hundreds more.

Project Gutenberg is also available to download the books to your PC, iPad, Kindle, Sony Reader, iPhone, Android, iPod, or other portable device!  Read them at home or on the go!  I'll be starting Jane Eyre soon!

My Fake Wall - A compromise?

Today's site is My Fake Wall.  I'm really excited about this site because I think it will get your students excited.  Basically, My Fake Wall is a site that imitates a Facebook wall.  There are no ties to Facebook and the "social interaction" like that of a real Facebook wall is removed.

The site can be used to create personalized Facebook walls for literary characters, historical figures, or even elements, scientists, inventors, mathematicians, and more!  Just use your imagination!  Believe me, this is more work than it sounds like.  Students who are tasked with creating a Fake Wall have to find pictures, think of the appropriate friends to add, find pictures for the friends, and then make comments and posts that would be relevant to the person and their friends.  I truly believe that this would be a worthwhile project....and one that the students would enjoy!

I spent a little time creating the beginning of a wall for one of my favorite characters: here.  Also, here are some other examples: Hermes, Ben Franklin, Cinderella.  Check it out and leave any comments telling me about any ideas you are having for how to use this with your students!

**NOTE** - This site may be blocked in your district.  If so, I would like to inform you that it was designed to be an educational site only.  There is no inappropriate content on the site.  I think that this is a great way to meet the students halfway and it would be an excellent tool to get them to analyze the important information surrounding a real or fictitious person.  To unblock the site, simply write an email to your principal, and explain that the site is educational.  They should then be able to speak to a tech and unblock the site.

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!

Parts of Speech Fun

For a fun way to practice parts of speech as well as keep things interesting as the school year comes to a close, try out Wacky Web Tales!  For all intents and purposes, Wacky Web Tales is a spin-off of the Mad Libs games.  Have students pick a story to fill in and then fill out the form with the corresponding parts of speech.  Get stuck because you can't remember what an adjective is?  Simply click on the Parts of Speech Help box and be reminded!  Once the form is filled out, click to read your funny story!

This can present well at the SMART Board if you don't mind using the on screen keyboard.  Or, have students work in pairs to make funny stories to share with the class!  Have a blast!

Thinkfinity Has THOUSANDS of FREE Resources!

Thinkfinity is a site hosted by Verizon that is a portal for teachers to find free interactive resources and lesson plans.  It is easy to get overwhelmed by Thinkfinity and all that it has to offer, but just use the search tool to find lessons and interactives based on any one of; grade level, standards, resource type, subject, or site sponsor/partner.

Some examples of interactives I have found include poetry writing, the history of blues music, fractions illustrated, practicing area of different shapes, and many many more.  The site also has a highlights feature on the home page that focuses on certain topics each month.

I strongly encourage you to explore Thinkfinity to see what resources you can use in your classroom!

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:

60 second recap...Literature explained

Sorry I have missed the last few days...it's been very busy!  Anyways, have a happy Friday with this site:

I have found a really neat site for all you English teachers out there! 60 Second Recap breaks down and explains plot, symbolism, themes, motifs and other aspects of several pieces of literature.  The host is a fast-talking, humorous 20-something who really does a good job of bringing complex works such as Hamlet, Animal Farm, and other classics down to the level of your high school students.  What's great is that everything is described so that it can be understood by those students who may be struggling with the concepts and reading, AND it's all done in 60 seconds!

Don't see the book you want described?  Submit a request and check back each week to see if your video has been added.

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!

ABCya! (A-B-C, Yay!!)

My good friend introduced me to the site for today, and I have to say that it is, by far, one of my favorites.  ABCya! is a site that contains TONS of fun games that are truly educational.  You can choose your grade level (K-5) and then let your students choose from lots of fun activities; everything from grammar, to math, science, and technology.

The site is designed primarily for younger students, but I did find one game that could be used at the 6-12 levels.  Animation for Kids is basically an introduction to Flash animation.  Students using this game learn about the basics of using frames to create their very own animations.  The best part is that you can even save these animations to your computer (no signing into the site necessary) and play them back using Windows Media Player!  The possibilities for just this one activity are endless!  Students could create an animation to act out a scene from a book they read, or an important event in history, or the steps to do a math problem, OR what happened in an experiment in lab!!  Sorry, got a little excited there.  But just think about what they could do.  This is also great practice for learning to use Adobe Flash.

Alright, I've rambled on enough....go check out ABCya!

One more tool for finding great pictures...also really fun to play with!

Just a quick post today, I have a workshop to present in like 5 minutes!  Flickr is a site dedicated to storing and showcasing pictures uploaded by their users.  A great way to search for specific groups of photos under one tag (descriptor) is to use Tag Galaxy.  Tag Galaxy lets you search for a specific tag, say "penguin" for example, and then will show you your results in a very imaginative way....

Check it out!

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!

Make a Word Mosaic

Today I've got a site that is a combination of ELA and art!  Students could use this tool to enhance their book reports, poetry, lyrics, or speeches.  Simply put in some text, choose the shape and color of your mosaic and you have a wonderful piece of art!

Image Chef - Word Mosaic
Here's an example I did with a few ideas for what this tool could help students gain: