Ms. De Santis’ Blog

Having spelling issues?  Have your students try SpinandSpell . You can select from types of words (i.e., animals, around the house, etc). Select the image and then use the letter wheel to spell the word.  The site also features “show the word” feature.  This site would also help beginning readers and ELL students.

Vickie Kilpatrick (Middle School) used bighugelabs as part an English project.  “The magazine covers were part of a larger writing project in which students were asked to interview a fellow classmate and write a magazine article featuring that person.  The magazine covers were added at the end of the project to give an added visual aspect.  The students enjoyed working on this and having their pictures taken and applied to something they created.” This site presents many options for your digital images.

I love those word magnets for the refrigerator! Here’s a site that allow you to construct your own word magnets for your computer.  Visit word magnets (and after a short commercial), you can enter your text, select the background (i.e., columns, rows, both) and then click!  Your magnets are ready for action.  You can enlarge them, alter their colors, and add new ones.  Maybe you compete to see how many complete sentences your students can create- or fashion a sentence and have them color code the parts of speech!  This would work well as a station (but there is no save feature) or projected to a white/smart board.

Got writer’s block?  Spin the wheel at The Brainstormer-  it provides three elements ( a theme, venue , and location) to help you jump start the writing process.  You could use it for traditional writing assignment or a digital story (i.e., animoto, Voicethread, Xtranormal).