This blog will be dedicated to sharing resources that can be used to both instruct and support our students' grammar/ language and writing skills inside and outside of the classroom. There already exists fantastic resources such as grammar and spell check on Word, and "Grammarly,'' but there are other websites and apps as well that can be just as beneficial.
Brainpop
www.brainpop.com/english
Rob says: Who doesn't love Brainpop? I've used it in every classroom I've been in including 5th and 6th grade! The videos are quick and informative; they hold students' attention and get right to the point without any "fluff'' information. But I've only ever seen them used to discuss science or social studies content so the idea of using them for ELA and writing is foreign to me. I would definitely use them especially for students who struggle with simple concepts like identifying nouns or adverbs and their jobs in sentences. The activities -- including the quizzes which I usually make interactive with my students -- are GREAT!
Scholastic Story Starter
http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/story-starters/
Like reading, one of the problems we have with writing is motivation. If it's not "fun,'' students struggle to do it! The responses of "What do I need to write about?" or "I don't know what to write about'' always plague us when it comes to writing. As teachers we know that we need to provide students with authentic writing opportunities in order to build their motivation, stamina and engagement with writing as they work toward the academic/ content driven writing expected of them in 5th and 6th grade. Scholastic Story Starter is an interactive writing prompt in which the students can pull the bar and be presented with a variety of writing genres, tasks and prompts to respond to. They can alter the parts of the task as desired and then use the interactive writing template as a guide to help them write and ultimately publish and print (among other options) their stories at the end. This is a great resource to assign as a class writing project or for students to explore independently during writing time or as a center.
Rob says: I LOVE Scholastic Story Starter! I can't even remember how I first found out about it. I think I may just have Googled "Writing prompts'' for my students because I wanted them to do some writing every day and found that just giving them a worksheet with prompts was too boring and didn't really inspire true creative writing. This lead me to the website where I played around with the tool. I was eager to share it with my students whom absolutely loved it as well. They love the interactive component and there's choice as well because they can change parts that they don't like. It provides an interesting challenge as the prompts are totally random but that's the fun of it. It gets the creative juices flowing. Students often times want to take it as an independent writing task and complete additional prompts alone. I tell them to go for it!
Grammaropolis
Students across all grades struggle with the different aspects of grammar usage. Thankfully there's a fun user friendly website to help students gain a better grasp of grammar. Teachers will have to pay to use this website, but the benefits are enormous and the website does school/district bundling to help them save some money! Using Grammaropolis, students can watch videos, play games, read stories and take quizzes to help them build their skills. There are two great aspects to Grammaropolis for students, teachers and parents. One awesome thing about Grammaropolis is that each student has a progress report on the website that breaks down the student's progress into individual categories, and overall yearly progress! This is great for those times when your Principal or Super Intendant wants to make sure that Grammaropolis is helping students to actually learn, as well as to provide evidence that the website is beneficial to the students.
Lauren says, "Grammaropolis is a ton of fun! While I personally have never had the chance to use this in the classroom, one of my good friends uses it all the time with her fifth grade students that she works with and they have an absolute blast! Sometimes she says they get so into it that they ask to her the music videos over and over again, which can derail class a tiny bit, but ultimately the students are learning and having a wonderful time doing it."
Quill
Quill is a website that is similar to Grammaropolis, but will better fit the needs of students who prefer an 'older' student styled website. This website provides free writing and grammar activities for elementary, middle and high school students. Teachers can ask students to complete quizzes, lessons or review activities. Similarly to Grammaropolis, Quill provides teachers, students and parents a diagnostic review of the student's progress as they move through their lessons and quizzes. Teachers can also organize their students into class categories, to make it easier for them to quickly pull up a student's progress reports. Quill, though for older minded students, is easy to use and navigate, which is great for younger students as well! It's also a great for students to complete independent work during their free time at the end of class, or as a bellringer at the beginning of the class period.
Lauren says, "Based on the reactions of the students that I've worked with, I don't think that they've been as excited for Quill as they sound like they've been for Grammaropolis, but this website really helps students to work daily on their writing and grammar. The subject of grammar isn't always fun for students, but Quill makes the process a lot less painful by getting students onto the computer, which is something that they absolutely love to do."
If your school has the money an amazing program that helps support writing while developing language skills is ThinkCERCA. ThinkCERCA is software that can be used by your entire district. Once your school buys the software a ThinkCERCA specialist will come and train your staff. They'll then work closely with you as you use the program to find out what did and didn't work for you. The ThinkCERCA team is constantly monitoring their software and making updates to continue to make it user friendly.
You may be asking yourself, okay so what exactly is it? ThinkCERCA is a tool sort of like NewsEla but on steroids. There is an assessment program students take when they first begin to use the program. This assessment is extensive and helps the program determine their grade level reading. It also sends this information to the teacher. ThinkCerca will then assign your students articles and short stories based on their skill level. Students should never struggle to read the information in their texts. After they have completed their reading they will then answer comprehension questions. Students have the ability to go back and reread, which is a skillset we want to promote. They can annotate the reading using the highlighter and sticky note features. At the end of the comprehension questions, students will be given a writing prompt.
I think now it's time to explain what CERCA stands for. Claim Evidence Reasoning CounterClaim Argument. The program scaffolds the writing process in this way. The comprehension questions asks students questions that coincide with each of these aspects of the writing process. When they have answered all the questions they will have “notes” on their claims, evidence, reasoning, the counterclaim, and will have chosen an audience for their writing. The students can then take their notes and create an argumentative writing piece that is both logical and evidence based.
Shantelle says: I've used this program when I taught a summer reading program. The program was specifically for 8th graders coming into the high school curriculum. The 9th and 10th grade teachers use the ThinkCERCA program and it was a chance to get struggling readers as well as students preparing to go into the honors program acquainted with the software. None of the students became aware of the different passages based on reading levels and all were able to work at their own pace. It was a fun summer and the feedback from the students was positive.
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