Websites

Some free websites that I find useful with my students are:

Reading:
 For beginning reading skills  Reading Bear is a resource that approaches reading phonetically and begins at a very basic level, with letter sounds.


StoryWeaver allows children to hear books in both English and other languages.  Text levels are not very challenging, so it's better for younger students or beginning readers.

Math:
 To work on specific lessons and skills, Splash Math allows some free accounts for teacher's to tailor and assign tasks.

Videos & Lessons:

 Khan Academy gives lessons on a multitude of topics.

 TeacherTube gives students the advantage of watching a video of a teacher teaching lessons and is searchable by content.

Bilingual Kidspot has a variety of poetry, nursery rhymes, and videos in different languages for kids to interact with.

Biography TImelines

A quick and easy way to separate main idea and details, while reading biographies and learning about the genre, is to create a timeline of a person's life.  This also solidifies the idea of chronological order, has children return to text to seek out information, and gives them the opportunity to learn about an influential person. 

Here are a few examples of timelines of Walt Disney's life, based on one particular biography, but we did additional research using other sources also.

Younger children or children with limited English can simply draw big events and perhaps label them, while older children can additionally write about the person's life, highlighting their accomplishments.

Mighty Girls Books

The website amightygirl.com offers huge amounts of resources for teachers (and parents) to empower girls.  One tool that is currently offered, is their top picks of read-alouds featuring strong women or girls.

The website itself is amazingly categorized, rich in history, contemporary women, literature and even television and movies.  Definitely worth perusing!

Below is the reading list link:

Mighty Girl reading list

Robots

This is another speaking exercise in which students work in small groups to brainstorm ideas and then execute the illustration (or build a model if you are so inclined)!
The assignment is to design a robot that helps society in some way.  You can make the assignment broad or more specific.  The last time I gave it, it was with a group of fifteen year olds and we only had a half an hour to work with, so I left the assignment open, but with a time limit.  When they had completed their work, they had to explain it to the class and be open for questions and conversation.

A fun extension to the assignment is to have the students write a (fiction) story about some of the robots that their classmates have designed.


Materials:  chart paper, markers or crayons

one example of a robot

another example from the same group of students

Personal Timelines (Vertical format)

There are so many ways to do timelines, here is one example from an ESL summer program in which I teach.  Students chose major events from their lives (birthday, a sibling's birth, entering school, etc) and recorded them on a rectangular piece of paper.  We then hung them with ribbon and the students presented their own timeline to the class.  This was primarily a speaking exercise, but can be used for developing writing skills also.  I have used this at varying grade levels, though these students are fifteen years old.

Display of class timelines.

Close up of timeline.

Another rectangle on a student's timeline.

Bio Poems

This is a great "get-to-know you" activity with a group of students.  I have used it at all levels and adapted it to the students.  There are a variety of templates available for bio poems, available on the web and in teaching resources.  I have provided a couple here.  I usually create a model with the students, especially to model it for elementary school students.  Kids can also illustrate them and I always have them share (or at least the parts they are comfortable sharing).  Fun to put up for open house or parent conferences also!  You can create your own based on a template also.

First name

Three traits to describe yourself 

Son or daughter or relative of...

Who feels...

Who fears...

Who needs...

Who gives...

Who would like to see...

Last Name 

or

First name

Three adjectives describing yourself

Who feels

Who wears

Who wonders about

Who loves

Who fears

Who wants

Who will achieve

Last name

Word Sites

Two really great sites that I showed my ESL class last night, are:


Wordsift 
www.wordsift.com
Wordsift will take entered (or cut and pasted) text and sort the words in order of frequency, which, for an ESL student (or any student), may help highlight the main idea.  If nothing else, it's fun to play with!  One example they give on the site is Martin Luther King Jr's "I Have a Dream Speech."  Here it is below.  The larger words indicate the higher usage, and vice versa for smaller words.  The words can be sorted from here, in alphabetical order, by subject area, etc.
able america american cannot check child city come daydream faith free freedom go god great hill hope hundred injustice join justice land later let life long made man mississippi mountain nation negro new person place right ring rise satisfied sing stand state time together valley walk white word year

and

Wordle
www.wordle.net

Wordle creates word "art" with the words or text that you enter.  It's also fun to play with and useful for presentations.

What Happens Next?

I've done this with almost every level of student that I have taught.  It's similar to the game telephone, in  which you start a story and pass it along, although this story is written down.  I write a story starter the first time we do the activity on the top of a piece of paper, one for each student in the class.  (Or you can write one for a center activity and leave it there throughout the week).  Each student writes a sentence or paragraph and passes the story along, until everyone has added to it.  Then the stories are shared aloud at the end.  This works really well with upper elementary and high school level students.  I use it a lot with ESL students and reading aloud at the end is fun for everyone and helps them work on pronunciation.  Kids are also not shy about sharing because the writing belongs to the group and is not solely theirs.

After you have done the activity once or twice, the kids like to start the stories themselves.

This activity can take a lot of time, if you are passing the writing around the whole class.  To shorten the amount of time, you can limit it to small groups, chart paper in which kids add when they have time, or as mentioned above, leave it at a center.