I know that many teachers at the elementary level are continually on the lookout for apps for reading. I came across this site called Reading Rockets and within the site I found a number of apps for reading. Click here to go to the site and check out the apps. In addition to the apps, Reading Rockets has a number of resources for teachers. One of the tabs I found interesting was the strategies tab. It includes a library of strategies, organized by category. Each strategy in the library includes:
- Instructions on how to use the strategy
- Downloadable templates
- Examples
- Recommended children's books to use with the strategy
- Differentiation for second language learners, students of varying reading skill, students with learning disabilities, and younger learners
- Supporting research
Good Websites for Teaching Reading
I came across a listing of web site that can be used to teach reading. I have shared a few that provided free resources within them.
Reading Rockets
This week I am sharing sites that are helpful in teaching reading. Please check them out. I have seen lots of good information on them. The first site is mentioned above. Here is the link to Reading Rockets. This site has a varied collection of resources for those looking to develop their bag of teaching strategies for reading. Reading Rockets is a national multimedia project that offers a wealth of research-based reading strategies, lessons, and activities designed to help young children learn how to read and read better. Our reading resources assist parents, teachers, and other educators in helping struggling readers build fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension skills.’ Found lots of free things on this site.
Read Write Think
ReadWriteThink is a great platform that provides a wide variety of educational materials covering different literacy areas including reading, writing, listening and speaking. You can use the integrated search functionality to filter resources based on criteria such as grade level, resource type, themes, learning objectives and many more. I love this site because it has a collection of resources that can easily be searched for grades K-12. Love the many free things that can be found on this site.
Reading Bear - FREE
Reading Bear, a project of WatchKnowLearn.org, is the first free program online to teach beginning readers vocabulary and concepts while systematically introducing all the main phonetic patterns of written English, all using innovative rich media. We spent an enormous amount of time developing 50 presentations, covering even more phonics principles and illustrating over 1,200 vocabulary items. There is nothing else like it, free or otherwise. Click here to go to the Reading Bear Site.
Excellent YouTube Channels for Science Teachers
The Crash Course Kids channel provides educational video content to introduce kids to key scientific concepts through the use of short and professionally animated lessons. Video content in this channel is organized along five major categories: Engineering, earth science, life science, physical science, and space science. Click on any of these categories and you will access a collection of video lessons related to the topic under study.
Life Nogin is basically an animated educational series that provides entertaining yet intellectually challenging explanations and answers to some vexing questions such as : what if the earth were twice as big? what happens inside your body? what causes cramps... and many more. There is also a section called Myths Debunked that features some very informative videos regarding popular scientific myths. Browse through the collection and see what works for you.
It's Okay To Be Smart This is a channel created by Joe Hanson, Ph.D. Joe takes you into a journey to explore the world of science and space through short informative video clips. In each of these clips, Joe tackles a challenging question or concept related to areas such as biology, physics, space, and earth. You may want to go through some of his collections and you will definitely find something interesting to share with your students. When I went to this site, I did get a pop-up asking me to subscribe, which I did. There was not cost to any of these from what I could see and all looked very informative and visually engaging.
Powerful Graphic Calculator Apps for Math Teachers and Students
 | Desmos Graphing Calculator This is one of the most popular graphic calculator out there. Students can use it to ‘plot polar, cartesian, or parametric graphs; input and plot data; find best fit lines and parabolas; Adjust values interactively to build intuition, or animate any parameter to visualize its effect on the graph; type in any equation you want to solve and Desmos will show you the answer. It can handle square roots, logs, absolute value, and more. FREE iPad and iPhone |
| Quick Graph is a powerful, high quality, graphic calculator that takes full advantage of the multi-touch display and the powerful graphic capabilities of the iPad and iPhone, both in 2D and 3D. A simple, yet intuitive interface that makes it easy to enter and/or edit equations and visualize them in mathematical notation. It's capable of displaying explicit and implicit (opt) equations as well as inequalities (opt) in both 2D and 3D, in all standard coordinate systems: cartesian, polar, spherical and cylindrical, all with amazing speed and beautiful results, which can be copied, emailed or saved to the photo library. FREE iPad and iPhone |  |
 | Good Grapher is another excellent scientific graphing calculator. Some of its features include: ‘carefully-designed graph visualization with multi-touch support; cartesian y(x) and x(y), polar r(θ) graphs (parametric x(t)y(t) and implicit in Pro version); inequalities drawing (in Pro version); function tracing and automatic min/max, zeros, intersections scanning for all function types; intersection discovering between different function types, e.g. between cartesian y=x and polar r=1; unlimited number of functions can be drawn simultaneously; standard, trigonometric and logarithmic axes; proportional and non-proportional scaling; customizable graph colors; table of graph values; copy, save, email screenshot…and many more. FREE ipad and iphone |
| Scientific Graphing Calculator 2 is an upgraded version of Scientific Graphing Calculator. It provides users with a set of powerful features including: a sophisticated keyboard with the ability to perform many functions, the ability to graph up to nine equations at once, a vector and matrix calculator, triangle and polynomial solvers, a unit converter and many more. $.99 |  |
Watch YouTube Videos without all the distractions!
I came across this cool tool that allows you to watch YouTube videos without all the distractions or the potential for an inappropriate video to be sitting elsewhere on the screen. The tool is called Watchkin and here is a link of what it looks like when you drop a YouTube URL into Watchkin. https://youtu.be/kDdrhJgtvhc It's so easy. You just create a sign in. I signed in with my Google account, which was an option, or you could create another login and not use Google. You then will be prompted to drop the URL into a field you are provided and you hit enter and that's it. It's that simple. Click here to go to the Watchkin site to sign up.
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