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LITERACY |  |
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Writing
"It was a dark and stormy night. . . "
Good writing takes enormous concentration.
--Snoopy/C. Schulz
Books, I don't know what you see in them. . . I can understand a person reading them, but I can't for the life of me see why people have to write them.
--Peter Ustinov
Hard writing makes easy reading. Easy writing makes hard reading.
--William Zinsser
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| Handwriting and Letter Recognition | |
| Watch "Spinner", the writing spider, draw the letters of the alphabet. Use your mouse (or graphics tablet) to practice writing your own letters. | |
| Generate practice paper and custom worksheets for kids. Both manuscript and cursive. | |
| Refrigerator magnets. . . email the message you create! | |
| Writing Ideas & Helpers | |
| Can't come up with a topic worth writing about? Try these! Ideas for kids in grades 1 through 5 and different types of writing. | |
| Story starters for the youngest story teller. Let your child tell YOU a story and you write it down for them! | |
| A step by step comic generator for kids. Students choose backgrounds, plots, characters, and dialogue in word balloons. Can be used for reports, book reports, story starters, and with students of all ages. Fun, too! | |
| Can be used as a post-reading activity or a pre-writing activity to identify main elements of a story. | |
| Topics, more topics, tips-o-matic (rules of grammar, spelling, punctuation) and more. | |
| Writing prompts encourage the integration of spelling, proofreading, and writing. Use these writing prompts for additional ideas for writing and spelling practice. Grades 1 & 2, 3-5, and 6-8. | |
| Flash simulation asking students to help fix TV scripts and memos at a local TV station. | |
| Tool to help write and format friendly and business letters. | |
| Generate a drawing about a book or story using online drawing tools, write about it, and print it in color or in black and white. | |
| Asks students to fill in story elements on a cube. Can be used after reading or before writing. | |
| An interactive language arts site for middle school students focusing on journalism and writing for newspapers. | |
| What is a biography? A step-by-step guide to researching and writing a biography. A nice companion to Biography (A&E Network) website where you can read biographies of the famous and infamous. | |
| Book reports, letters, poems, forms for different kinds of writing. | |
| An environment to explore the classic mythical story structure and to create your own stories. New stories submitted everyday for you to preview and watch develop; then write your own. | |
| More student tools and lesson plans to help students read, write and think! | |
| Links to writing tools and tutorials including some for PowerPoint and FrontPage. | |
| Ecards
to Write & Send |
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| Reviews parts of a postcard and lets students create their own. | |
| More cards to write and send via email. MyPostcards.com links to hundreds of postcard generating sites. Evaluate them before allowing students to use them. (Caution: sponsored sites may display ads or cards not always appropriate for K-12.) | |
| Animated Cards | Cards created especially for kids up to 10 years of age to send and receive. Requires Flash player. (Animated Cards site displays ads.) Kard Kastle contains some familiar characters: Blue from Blue's Clues, the Muppets, Pooh and more. |
| And even MORE cards...multiple languages and cards for multicultural holidays included. May be good research starter: January 26, 2004, is Vas ant Panchami! Who celebrates this holiday and why? (Site displays ads.) | |
| Writing
Guides |
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| Confused about when to use adapt or adopt? advice or advise? altogether or all all together? emigrate or immigrate? grisly or grizzly? acceed or excede? This site will help you write (or say) the correct word. | |
| The steps of the writing process for any task: prewriting, writing, revising, editing, publishing. Includes tips and links to other writing helpers for each step. | |
| Purdue University's Online Writing Lab. Tutorials, links, presentations about writing. | |
| A comprehensive guide to writing effectively "for anyone who wants to write better. It's intended mainly for college students, but it has also helped lots of other people around the world learn how to write more clearly, gracefully, and effectively." | |
| From discovering what to write to citing your sources and all types of writing in-between. | |
| Step by step from "Quick Tips from the Panic Stricken," to a "Quick Course in Research" to writing a research paper. See more like this under Information Literacy. | |
| Desktop Publishing | |
| Ideas for writing and creating brochures, resumes, business cards and greeting cards in all areas of the curriculum. For example, design and create the business card of an historical figure. Brevity is key! | |
| Weblogs
& Wikis |
See also this article on journal writing and why you might want to include it in the curriculum and ideas for using journaling in the curriculum from California. |
| Weblogs and wikis defined. With links to sites and articles about blogging and wikis. | |
| Free blogging for teachers, library media specialists, education professionals and students. EduBlogs includes a multimedia tutorial to teach you how to post. | |
Teacher monitored blogs for students. Class Blogmeister is free from the Landmark Project. GaggleBlogs is free from Gaggle.net, the classroom email people. If you are already using Gaggle email, it's even easier! |
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BlogHarbor,
iBloggers,
Blogger,
Wordpress,
TypePad
(many more available) |
Blog creation software and guides. Some are free, some are not. Some must be hosted on your own server; others providing hosting. Some are more suitable for adults than students. Also DiaryLand (if Diary is a more friendly term.) |
| A former high school teacher's (Will Richardson, a well known name in educational blogging) guide for other teachers who are interested in using weblogs in education. Includes links to current and archived resources on blogging. An article by Richardson in Multimedia Schools, January/February 2004 give other ideas and examples. | |
| A "techtorial" on blogging and using them in the classroom. | |
| An educator blogs about blogs and blogging, provides resources and rationale. | |
| One teacher's ideas for using weblogs as a substitute for journaling. | |
| Free Wiki spaces for students, teachers, classrooms and families. Alternatives include PeanutButterWiki, Jotspot, Seedwiki, Wetpaint. | |
| A wiki about wikis and using them in the classroom. | |
| A wiki full of ideas for using wikis with teachers and students. Add your own! | |
| ZohoWriter | More like online word processors than wikis, but they can be collaborative. (Some include other "office"-like tools as well.) |
| Writing
Email |
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| Free email for students with teacher controls. Pay versions with additional features available. | |
| Think.com | Free email and websites for schools and students from Oracle (leave sticky notes, collaboration tools). |
| Database of over 1,400 free email providers in 85 countries. Select the options you would like in your ideal provider and click on the "Search!" button. You will then be presented with a list of all the providers that match your criteria. | |
| Ten rules of etiquette for email. Includes a link to a netiquette quiz. | |
| Writing
and Creating Web Pages |
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| Tutorials about the Internet, graphics, animations, building web pages, javascripting from a professor of computer science. Writing for the WWW. | |
| The Internet Public Library's guide to authoring for the World Wide Web aimed at young adults. | |
Lessons and tools for building web pages. Offers a classroom planning guide for teachers. |
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| Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2003 | Sites are getting better at using minimalist design, maintaining archives, and offering comprehensive services. However, these advances entail their own usability problems, as several prominent mistakes from 2003 show. See also: The Ten Most Violated Homepage Design Guidelines, both from Jakob Nielsen. |
| Help students evaluate their own work with these rubrics. | |
| People Who Write | |
| From C-Span. Learning about our country's authors by selecting a writer, a work, period of history or a place. Video archives and portraits also available. | |
| Links to children's writers and illustrators including authors' personal websites and websites maintained by fans, scholars, and readers. From the Children's Literature Web Guide. | |
| Authors, illustrators, author birthdays, interviews online, maps and more. From the Internet School Library Media Center. Also see Literary Prizes for writing and authors--children's, young adult, adult, international, by genre and more. | |
| Learning
& Organizational Tools |
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| Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on Backpack to reveal some very helpful tools for Grades 4-6 including a web tracker to record information gathered from websites, note paper generator, a weekly organizer, a dictionary, a picture dictionary, thesaurus and more. | |
| Click on Locker to open a window with some amazing tools for Grades 7-12 including a study scheduler, web tracker, calculator, periodic table, dictionary, thesaurus, calendar, a reminder service and more. | |
Online language translator for eight languages. Translates text or web pages. |
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| Learning Objects and Evaluation Tools | |
| Resources about learning objects for novices and those with experience in creating and/or using learning objects. Includes quotes and humor. | |
| Puzzlemaker is a puzzle generation tool for teachers, students and parents. Create and print customized word search, crossword and math puzzles using your word lists. Free from Discovery Channel's DiscoverySchool.com. | |
| Free for teachers for a 30 day trial, teachers and students can create learning games, puzzles, Internet scavenger hunts, surveys and quizzes and make them accessible to others online. Generates a URL for directing others to your creating. Subscription required for long term use, assessment, tracking, and reporting tools. Hangman, Battleship, Millionaire-like, Cloze activities, matching, concentration and others. See sample activities. | |
| Web Worksheet Wizard | Create a web document to be used by your students using this friendly tool. You can add images, links, email address...you can also search for, locate and use worksheets created by others--and share yours as well. |
| QuizStar | Create online quizzes and reviews for your students to use online from home or school. Report management tools for you, too, to track and record their progress. |
| Time Line Maker | Vertical or horizontal timelines for up to 9 events. |
| Collect and annotate links. Now make a "track" for you students to follow, gathering the information you specify from websites. | |
| Designed for teachers, Filamentality is a fill-in-the-blank tool that guides you through picking a topic, searching the Web, gathering good Internet links, and turning them into learning activities. | |
| By the creators of Filamentality, a fill-in-the-blank web page builder. All you do is type in information about yourself, select a color scheme, and click a button. HomeMaker will spit out a polished personal web page for you to share with the world. It's quite simple and only takes about 30 minutes. (Note: You must store the page on your own server or other space.) Also available: Homemaker for Libraries. | |
| Add personality and creativity to your Filamentality pages with a little knowledge of HTML learned here. | |
The Teach-nology rubrics generator allows you to make grading rubrics by filling out a simple form. The materials are made instantly and can be printed directly from your computer. Your creations are exclusive to you. |
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| Select, modify and print rubrics for different projects in all curriculum areas: reading, social studies, writing, research reports, presentations, science, math, art, music. | |
| From Kathy Schrock, links to a wealth of rubrics and assessment tools. | |
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LITERACY | |
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Florida SUNLINK Project • University of Central Florida
Last updated August 2006