Five for Friday – Five Ways to Use Technology in your classroom

Technology is big in schools (at least around here it is).  I'm sure your principal, superintendent, and community would be pleased as punch to see your utilizing all those expensive technological things your classroom (in my old classroom we had 2 of them... perhaps you've heard of them - computers).  So, here are 5 ways to use those computers to your (and your students) advantage.

So, once again I'm linking up with Doodlebugs Teaching for another Five for Friday post. 

1.

CNN Student News

Be sure to review the news program before you show it and then give them a sheet to record some summaries and thoughts on.

2.

Kidblog

Have students create their own personal blogs.  You can make it so they can comment on each others too.  This way they are writing AND reading.  You might want to make sure you have it so that you review the posts and comments before they get published to eliminate any inappropriate comments/posts or plagiarism.

I briefly talk about Kidblog here

3.

Go Noodle

Use it in an early years classroom for brain breaks or for something to do during indoor recess or as something to do to calm the students down after recess.  I’ve been using this quite a bit while subbing – I recently had a busy class of grade 2 students that we would “play a game” after each recess to get them quieted down after recess.

4.

Sumdog

Set each of them up with an account (you might want to send home a letter before doing this to give the parents the option for using their child’s first and last name on the site or if they would rather you make up a name like “batman” for them to use on it.

5.

Spelling City

I wouldn’t use this beyond grade 6 (even then it may be stretching it a little).  But if you register for the site you are given your own home page and you can put your students spelling words on there for every week.  If you have your students in different spelling groups you can give them each a colour (or animal, or number, or whatever you want) and all they have to do is find their groups words.  Then they get to play games that help them practice their spelling words and do practice tests with them to get them ready!  There is a letter you can print off to send home so that they can do this at home (and not just at school).

My lasat Five for Friday post was a couple weeks ago on  teacher organization for substitutes.