Literacy

=Literacy - ESL, Printables, News and History, Games and Stories=

ESL and English Resources
English as an Additional Language/French as an Additional Language assistance

Big Huge Thesaurus - This simple-looking online thesaurus is actually MUCH more than a quick-look-up. You can find synonyms, antonyms, similar words, and rhymes for any word you enter. A click on any of the words offered provides the same information for THAT word, sending you on word-paths through the English language. Innocent-looking links at the top of the page also provide hundreds of prompts for blog posts and stories, with enough choices to inspire any writer. Don't let the boring white background and plain-text presentation fool you. This tool has magic powers to make words interesting to almost anyone.

Do2Learn - "This web site is dedicated to those individuals who see the world in different ways." Find activities, printables, and interactive games to help students with exceptionalities learn about basics, master organization, and deal with interpersonal challenges on this site. Many of the resources are useful for "regular ed" as well as special ed. Although the site includes items for sale, there are many lesson plans and interactives offered for free. See the Disabilities menu for quick explanations of various disabilities: OCD, Asperger's, Autism, PDD, Learning disabilities, and more. The Games menu offers interactives to help students learn position words (in/out/left/right, etc), facial expressions, emotions, time, first-then-next sequencing, synonyms/antonyms, and more. Check out the safety songs with animated illustrations (turn up your speakers!). The Get Organized menu has some terrific offerings, including an interactive Emotions Color Wheel.

English Central - This site teaches English pronunciation to students by showing videos and TV programs on a wide variety of subjects. Listeners then pronounce the speech selection and record it to the site. The site grades the student's pronunciation and shows where they have errors. The site also offers more practice for problem areas in students’ pronunciations. With a free registration, students practice and keep track of their problems and progress. Video categories include Business, Daily Life, Dining/Food, Environment, Movies & TV, Music, News & Politics, Shopping, Social Life, Sports, Technology, Travel, and Video Gaming. Along with the variety of topics and subjects to appeal to everyone, English Central allows students to sort listening selections into three levels of difficulty. Registration does require an email address. Students can use their school email address

Printables
[|ABCTeach] - includes booklets, coloring pages, writing prompts, flashcards and more; you can also search for acitivities and printables by holiday, season, or month

Armored Penguin - Create puzzles and other word games using this resource. Puzzle types include Word Search, Crossword, Word Scramble, Bagels (Interactive Logic Game,) and Math worksheets among others. There are also quotes, illusions, and more. Creating a log in is not required. Puzzles created remain for two months and can be saved as a pdf file on your computer. Many puzzles are already permanently archived and can be found by looking through the categories. Don’t miss many holiday and calendar-event puzzles! Search puzzles of the day to find new and interesting puzzles to use.

Comic Life Wiki - lots of ideas about how to use the Comic Life program in the classroom; it's great for students without a lot of written language ability, as well as anyone just looking for a fun way to share information

Diagrammr- Use diagrammr to make a diagram or mind map by simply typing text. Diagrammr uses your sentences to diagram the sentences into a map for you. Once created, change the layout size or embed easily into a blog, wiki, or site. Create as many diagrams as needed without needing to register.

[|Education World] - many activities available to be printed and/or downloaded; also includes large sections on lesson planning, technology integration, and professional development

[|Eduscapes: 42 Explore] - Thematic Pathfinders for all ages. Includes sections on social competencies, such as [|bullying].

[|Jan Brett] - amazing website created by childrens author Jan Brett; includes "4110 pages of free activities, coloring pages, and projects."

[|Personal Education Press] - Includes worksheets and activities in **French and Spanish**

[|Preschool Printables] - don't let the name fool you, this website has printables for all elementary grades including calendar pages, name plates, certificates, and bingo games

[|PuzzleMaker] - This online tool allows teachers to create word puzzles using vocabulary words and important concepts. Puzzle options include Cryptograms, Word Searches and Criss-Cross Puzzles.

News and History
[|American Memory Project] - A project by the Library of Congress to digitize primary sources. Includes lesson plans and very interactive activities for the classroom.

[|KidsPost from the Washington Post] - Constantly updated with new articles. Make sure to check out the extensive maps section.

[|New York Times Learning Network] - At the top of the page are news articles suited to older students. Near the bottom of a page is a News Snapshot, appropriate for the younger grades. There is also a teachers section with guiding questions and other resources.

[|Teaching with Documents] - This website contains reproducible copies of primary documents from the National Archives. It also has numerous lesson plans that contain ideas for how to use these documents in the classroom, as well as worksheets that help students analyze different types of documents.

[|Time for Kids] - Worksheets, Mini Lessons, and Graphic Organizers in addition to the news

Games
[|Academic Skill Builders] - educational video games that offer an innovative approach to teaching basic academic skills by incorporating features of arcade games and educational practices into fun online games that will motivate, intrigue, and teach your students.

[|Base Word Baseball] - Students participate as "The Chipmunk Chompers" and "The Raccoon Rangers" to compete for base word batting averages. The animals pitch the base word and students choose the correct suffix for the end of the word. This is a simple activity for beginning readers and those who need a little more practice with word endings. After 10 hits, students advance to the next level. [|Brainbox Challenge] - lots of fun brain-boggling word and letter games, based on a hit BBC television show

[|Brain Games: Logic, Strategy, Fun and More] - Brain Games offers a collection of over thirty interactive logic games, puzzles, music games, and more. Some specific topics include code breaking, coins, arithmetic, music notes, word scramble, and many others.

Grammar Ninja and Sentence Creator - This simple, interactive game practices parts of speech by asking the viewer to click and identify specific parts of speech in sentences. The options for the game itself do not last long, even though there are three levels. Teacher and students can take the game into many more levels and use students' own sentences, however, by downloading the "Grammar Ninja Sentence Creator" (GNSC). This software (available in both Mac and Windows versions) downloads as a "zipped" (compressed) file that opens to reveal a folder full of goodies. You will want to SAVE it on your desktop for easy access. There is an offline copy of the Grammar Ninja game and a separate Sentence Creator game. Open Sentence Creator and follow simple instructions to enter your own sentences and drag and drop labels onto the parts of speech. Then comes the "geek" part: the Sentence Creator has you copy and paste what appears to be scary computer code into a separate file within that folder of downloaded items. You can click for help that shows you what to do. Save the txt file you just copied and pasted, and YOUR sentence will show up when you play the Grammar Ninja game on THAT computer. Turn DOWN your speakers or the music will drive you crazy!

[|Leo Loves to Spell] - Come along with Leo to practice spelling in various locations. There are twelve locations to choose from (i.e. a firehouse, restaurant, farm, aquarium, zoo, airport, and others). Once at the location, students are provided with audio instructions to drag and drop upper and lower case letters into a box. The challenge is to drag and drop the same letters that are in the word under the box. As students drag and drop the letters, audio encouragement and information is provided. For example, they say the letter aloud and the word aloud to help students make connections.

[|The Magic Key Adventures] - This site (created by the BBC) offers nine interactive language arts activities. //HMS Sweet Tooth//discusses "full stops" also known as the ends of sentences. //Lug and the Giant Storks// talks about capital letters, and there are several other topics. Once you click on the activity you wish to teach, you are presented with a choice of "Game, Worksheet, or Teachers Resources." The //Teachers Resources// include detailed lesson plans with standards (matched to UK standards), extension activities, and other classroom ideas. [|Scrabble] - The challenge and creativity of the original board game comes alive in this virtual version. Review the available tools that can undo, redo, withdraw, sort, and even save an uncompleted game. Although this "solitaire" Scrabble game misses the group interaction of the traditional version, it provides a great opportunity for creative, independent thought related to spelling and vocabulary.

[|Wacky Web Tales] - create stories by filling in different parts of speech ahead of time (like MadLibs!). Great for helping students learn the difference between a noun and a verb, as well as the different tenses.

[|Word Games] - This interactive website provides hours of mind stretching fun. The mind challenges include cryptoquote, popword, eight letters, define time, storyman, wordsearch, and codeword.

Stories
[|1000 Images on the Tip of My Tongue] - This website presents idioms organized in categories in **English, French and Spanish**. After choosing a category, students see a list of matching expressions. They can hear the idioms pronounced and used in sentences. This site offers a new and different feature than most idiom sites: a link to an equivalent idiom in French or Spanish! The only idioms here are idioms with similar expressions in the three languages, though they are not directly translated. By clicking on Activities, students can see selected idioms in animated cartoons with sound.

[|Audio Stories for Children] - Chuck Brown, the host of //Light Up Your Brain//, takes readers on audio adventures of timeless classics such as Cinderella and Peter Rabbit, as well as other various stories. Mr. Brown records the stories and provides them on his web site for FREE! Hint: Use the stories during listening centers or as enrichment to a theme or shared/group reading during class. Play the stories on an interactive whiteboard or projector and have students draw pictures of the story. If copies of the story are available, have students follow along with a partner during the audio reading. [|Book Adventure - Book Finder] - Helps students find a new book that is on their level, appropriate, and interesting to them.

[|Book Pals Storyline] - A website created by the Screen Actors Guild, with stories read by famous actors. Can have captions.

[|Breaking News English] - A website created by a teacher in Japan; it takes news stories and makes audio recordings of them. Includes FULL lesson plans.

[|ESL Through Music] - This compilation site describes websites that use music to teach language skills. Not only useful for limited English speakers, this site offers ideas for elementary teachers, as well, with specific songs and suggestions for including music as part of a regular lesson. You will find that addressing musical/rhythmic intelligence may draw in students who otherwise struggle. And all of them will find the different approach a refreshing change.

[|Free Reading] - This collaborative, wiki-style site is full of rich literacy activities for grades K-2. There are small group and whole group activities, focusing on phonemic awareness and phonics. Topics range from sight words to letter sounds.

[|Game Goo] - Educational games focused on reading, with no ads

[|International Children's Digital Library: A Library for the World's Children] - The ICDL is a rich resource which can be used in a wonderfully wide range of situations by children, parents, teachers, librarians and others from all walks of life. Children can expand upon the stories to create games; parents can extract themes to help explain important lessons; teachers can utilize the multicultural nature of the collection to teach languages; librarians can enrich community outreach programs with tales from around the world and; of course, anyone can just open a book to read for pleasure.

[|Literactive] - Phonics reading program for early readers; story can be read aloud and students can read along.

[|Loud Lit] - offers "literature for your ears and eyes". This collaborative project with public domain offers recorded literature. You are given the options of listening to the literature, listening and reading the literature, or downloading the literature to an MP3 player.

[|Mrs.P] - This interactive site will thrill your eager readers for hours. Actress Kathy Kinney tells delightful intro stories and expertly reads the books. On the homepage, click on the various items around the warm room to find intriguing, sometimes outlandish, stories about Mrs. P. Extend the learning by clicking on the book on the stand to find a loaded dictionary. Each book is rated for age-appropriateness. Tip: check out the first link at the bottom on the homepage. Submit student stories and Mrs. P. may choose to read them on this site.

[|Owen & Mzee] - This colorful and creative website shares the beautiful true story of the friendship between Owen and Mzee (a young hippo and a 130-year old tortoise). The beauty of this website (and story) is its ability to teach acceptance, resilience, diversity, African culture, and more in a fun and engaging style.

[|PBS - Stop & Go] - Students are given a story starter and interactive writing tools with characters from Arthur on PBS

[|Puma Rosa] - audio support and activities **in Spanish**

[|Read Kiddo Read] - “Dedicated to making your kids readers for life” is the sub-heading to James Patterson’s new site //ReadKiddoRead//. This well-known author has put together a loaded site full of inspiration, book suggestions, author interviews, and more to inspire educators and parents to promote reading. The titles are divided by age (0-8, 6 & Up, 8+ & Up, or 10 & Up). Search by category (within age levels) such as Fantasy & Other Worlds, Real World Fiction, Action/Adventure/Mystery, and others. Teachers who have reluctant readers at all ages will discover ample ways to help them find exciting books. Make sure you click on the Books for Boys link at the top of the page to find targeted, page-turning books with boy protagonists.

[|Read the Words] - //Read the Words// is a site that allows students to download or upload any text material in order to HEAR it. The site will read the text aloud. Languages offered include **English, Spanish, and French**. Students can select the speed at which the text will be read. You can use a wide variety of formats including Microsoft Word, PDF, a website URL, anything copied and pasted, or from RSS feeds. Likewise, students can listen to the oral text online, download it to the desktop or MP3 players, post readings online in several forms, and even create podcasts with the selected material. The site requires users to register for a free login.

[|Read Write Think] - This website is full of engaging, interactive tools for students to use as well as a HUGE amount of lesson plans focusing on literacy. The tools are primarily language arts centered and range from Poetry ([|Acrostic][|Diamante ,] and[|Shape]Poems) to Writing ([|Fairy Tales], [|Persuasive Essays], [|Concept Mapping], and [|Character Trading Card] summaries) to diverse tools such as the [|Comic Creator] and [|Doodle Splash] (which encourages students to make connections between images and text). Lesson Plans range from Letter Writing to Political Cartoons and everything in between. There are many interesting tools and ideas here, the is site definitely worth exploring!

[|Scholastic] - Teacher resources and student activities, concentrating on diverse cultures. Also have students check out [|Scholastic's Writing Workshop], which focuses on a particular type of writing every month. Students can publish their work and get feedback.

[|Sight Words with Samson] - When you arrive at the site, click //Start// to enter the world of Samson. There are four steps at this site: Learn Words, Build Words, Identify Words, and a Quiz. At the "Learn Words" step, the site includes 28 different lists of words for students to read at four levels. Mousing over the number of the list brings up the actual word list so it's easy to check if the student is working at the correct level. Students read, listen to the word, pronounce it, see the word spelled, and see the word used in a sentence. Step two has students spell the words themselves (after hearing them read audibly and being provided with several letters to choose among). Step three challenges students to click on the correct spelling of the word (several choices are presented). The final step is the quiz; students are presented with all letters and are asked to spell the word pronounced. The same list is used throughout all four steps of this activity.

[|Silly Books] - This site offers animated books with audio (some authored by children), jokes, cartoons, interactive games, and more. **Some books are in Spanish**. Hint: Have your promising writers submit books for possible publication at this site (with parent permission, of course!). SillyBooks does the illustrating and audio. [|Speakaboos] - //Speakaboos// provides an abundance of animated stories read aloud by famous people. Some are read in song! Whoever thought that “Old McDonald” could be heard as a rap song? The genres include fairy tales, fables, multicultural and holiday stories, nursery rhymes, lullabies, and children's favorites. Select an age range to differentiate for various reading levels. Many of the stories highlight the words as they are read. There is also a link to //Play//. Here you will find a few links to games, printables, e-cards, and more. Registration is required to join the site, but there is no fee to join. You do not need to register to listen to the stories.

[|Starfall] - Very interactive site that is good for beginning readers; teaches comprehension and phonics. Also includes activities sorted by holidays or major events.

[|The Story Place] - The Children's Digital Library, **in English and Spanish**. Preschool section is appropriate for grades PreK-2, elementary section is for slightly older students. Book is read aloud with accompanying actions; students can listen and read along.

[|Story Starters] - Type your name and choose your grade level (K-1, 2, 3, or 4-6). Then get ready for the wheel to spin! You can spin four wheels to get a very specific writing prompt. For example, Describe a vacation with a skinny cactus who loves country music. Each wheel produces a different part of the prompt. Each time the wheel spins, a new prompt is created. The prompts are created for the specified grade level and are highly creative. Be sure to check out the //Teacher's Guide// that offers learning objectives, specific lesson ideas, and printables.

[|Survey Monkey] - This website allows you to create surveys, **in any language**, and distribute them to anyone that has an email address (or can type in a website address). This tool could be especially useful for pre- or post-assessment of a unit.

[|Teacher Book Wizard] - Get the right book for your student!