October 8, 2013Using Technology to Make Writing

Fun!

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Scholastic Story Starters

Younger students can complete as a whole class. Older students can complete on own. Great for a center in your class. You cannot save your work so once students have their Story Starter, I would have them type their response in a WORD document. They can then go back to the site and select the format they want and paste what they typed in WORD. You can also just use Story Starter to generate starters.

Scholastic Story Starters

Vokihttp://www.voki.com/

Vokihttp://www.voki.com/

Voki creates talking avatars. You can have students type or speak (with a microphone) what they want the Voki to say. Voki.com is free but their is a paid "classroom" edition that gives you more features.

Students can use Vokis in any subject area.

Math - Writing and sharing word problems, telling how they solved a problem, addition songs or poems. Literacy - great for retelling a story, have students read a story and have a character from the book tell what happened, character traits, proofreading, fluency Science/Social Studies - there are historical figure Vokis - have them retell a point in history, use a Voki to explain a science concept or to show what you know.

***Not just for students – Use Voki to introduce your do-now, or your webpagehttp://macconnell.wikispaces.com/

Postcard Creator

http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/student-interactives/postcard-creator-30061.html

Postcard Creator

http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/student-interactives/postcard-creator-30061.html

Use as a center or whole class in the lab - Students can "send" a postcard to thank a student for doing something nice. Students can "send" a postcard from the view of a character in a book.Valentines Day, Halloween, Class Thank You to parent or speaker

Build Your Wild Self http://www.buildyourwildself.com/

Build Your Wild Self http://www.buildyourwildself.com/

Have students create, print out, and write a story about their "Wild Self“

Have students write similes/metaphors/adjectives about the picture

StoryBird http://storybird.com/teachers/

StoryBird is a website where students get their inspiration from beautiful pictures. Storybirds can be created by individual students or as a whole class.

For younger students, you may want to select pictures beforehand and print them out so they can compose their story before going to Storybird.

Stories can be embedded into your website. The teacher account allows you to make assignments and to select pictures before your students begin. This may be helpful since students can get overwhelmed by all the pictures. Example - https://sites.google.com/a/holmdelschools.org/mshapter/Home/student-work

Padlet http://padlet.com/

CLICK HERE FOR AN EXAMPLE OF PADLET. ADD YOUR OWN IDEA TO MY BOARD!