I am changing grade levels starting in a couple of weeks. I am going from teaching second grade for twelve years to teaching fifth grade for the first time. I am very excited about this change. I will be able to use a lot more technology with my older students this year.

One piece of software I am really looking forward to using this next year is Voicethread for Educators. I know that our technology department will provide support. It will be very nice to get my students feedback in a variety of ways. Students can make a comment in these ways:  by phone, webcam, microphone, keyboard or upload. I plan to use the Voicethread 4 Education wiki site.  I have found wikispaces to be very educational. Check out this Page of Examples of additional Voicethreads to give you ideas. Unfortunately, if you want to have more than 3 Voicethreads or you want your students to be able to individually comment with their screen buttons this is not free. Read this article from Edutopia to learn more.

I had created a wikispace page for my second graders. Obviously I have to change it for my fifth graders. I learned a new trick. I went to the second grade sites I had been using. I slowly shortened the URL until I found the part where I could search for fifth grade. This worked on several sites. I am not quite ready to complete my fifth grade wikispace but I would like to share some of the sites I have found.

Sheppard Software – The Dallas Children’s Museum commented, “Terrific online educational games, especially geography.”  NASA –.This has very interesting content for educators and students. World Book at NASA for Students page that has some good information for research projects and things students wonder about. NASA’s Space Place is where the engaging games are found.  

PBS is another trusted source in my book. Check out this Storm Chasers site. For my students we would use this site for both science and language arts. Cyberchase is a very engaging math site designed for kids from 8-12 years of age.   I have been to COSI (Center of

Science and Industry) in

Ohio. COSI has some very good online activities.  After looking through and reading about Internet 4 Classrooms I am ready to recommend it to my students. If you want a grade other than fifth this is a link to the home page.    Mrs. Bogucki’s Teacher and Classroom Resources was created by a fifth grade teacher. There are a lot of interactive quizzes and activities on this site to explore.  

A fifth grade class at McKinley Elementary School has a website that I want to check out for the students’ podcasts. This is something I really want to pursue with my students this year.  Another fifth grade class website is by Mr. Drum. His site is a wealth of information on language arts, math, science and more. This site will definitely help me my first year teaching fifth grade.  The last two web sites I will recommend today are from schools in

California, Murrieta and Santa Maria-Bonita School District. Both sites are a wealth of language arts information for many different grade levels.

 Well that is my list for now. I hope you find it interesting. If you check any of these sites out I would be interested in your reaction. If you have any suggestions for other sites that should really be on this list, please share