Website Review: Share My Lesson

SHARE MY LESSON is a free lesson sharing site from the American Federation of Teachers.

Containing hundreds of thousands of lessons, this website is intended to provide high-quality teaching materials for free. Users can access lessons by grade level or by subject area. In addition, standards connections and professional teaching resources are also available. A “top resources” area provides access to popular documents. Educators can also contribute content and share their lessons and ideas.

Librarians will find this website contains a wealth of resources across grade levels and subject areas. Of particular note are the sections focusing on social emotional learning and special needs students.

To visit the resource, go to https://sharemylesson.com.

Technology Review: DOGOnews

DOGOnews is a website and app resource focusing on current events, news, and nonfiction articles for students and teachers.

The website consists of short articles. Most of these informational stories contain numerous images. Vocabulary words that may be unfamiliar to youth are highlighted and link to pop-up definitions and examples. Each article ends with reading comprehension questions, a critical thinking challenge, and vocabulary. A game helps readers review the vocabulary. While the website contains limited, education related advertising, it’s not distracting to readers.

Tabs lead users to articles about news, books, or movies. Within the news category, students can choose from science, sports, social studies, world, green, entertainment, fun, and other categories. They can also narrow by grade levels including K-3, 3-5, 3-8, and 3-5. This is useful when accessing articles that are appropriate for particular reading and interest levels. Within the book category, students can choose clubs, series, freebies, or seasonal works. Books are also organized by genre and reading level. Within the movie category, children can browse by categories such as mystery or animation.

The website also offers special features for students and teachers. Students can create their own avatar, earn badges, share articles, and write articles. Teachers can set up classroom accounts and make assignments.

The app works much the same way as the website. The easy-to-navigate app contains access to over 3,000 articles across the curriculum. Articles are categorized by grade level. Clicking on highlighted works leads to definitions and places are linked maps. Lesson plans are connected to national standards.

Librarians will find this easy-to-use resource is useful in reading activities. It’s also valuable for informational reading in the subject areas such as social studies and science.

To visit the website, go to http://www.dogonews.com/.

To download the app, go tohttps://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dogonews/id740364862.

Website Review: BAM! Body and Mind

BAM! BODY AND MIND from the Center for Disease Control provides information and activities aimed at helping young people make healthy lifestyle choices.

Designed for children 9 to 13 years old, the website contains six sections: Diseases, Food and Nutrition, Physical Activity, Your Safety, Your Life, and Your Body; all are packed with information and activities. For example, the Disease section includes the Disease Detectives and Immune Platoon activities and more. Information about Asthma is found within Disease Detectives and more details are added in Meeting the Challenge in the Physical Activity Section. Acne and its treatment are explained in the Under the Microscope section of Your Body.

In the Teachers Corner, educators can quickly view lessons and activities, handouts, and recommended related materials. Teachers can use BAM! to provide interactive, informative and fun activities in their classrooms; activities that are linked to the national standards for science and health.

Librarians can partner with teachers to plan and deliver a healthy food activity. Setup a blender with needed ingredients and have students try the recipes for drinks and smoothies found in the Food & Nutrition section. Lots of other recipes are provided in Cool Treats. Pair this activity with a cookbook display featuring healthy recipes.

Visit and learn more about BAM! at http://www.cdc.gov/bam/

Book Review: Bookopolis

BOOKOPOLIS is a website designed to ignite a passion for reading in children ages 7-12.

Intended to build a community of readers, this social network provides a safe environment for elementary and middle school youth to connect with other book lovers. Youth can find books to read as well as share their book reviews.

Students can explore new books, create a bookshelf, share with friends, and earn points. The website also offers book suggestions and features new releases.

In addition to being a resource for children, the website also provides resources for teachers and librarians including lesson ideas, book recommendations, and standards connections. Educators can sign up for a teacher account to set up classes.

To explore the website, go to https://www.bookopolis.com.

Website Review: Poets.org

April is National Poetry Month. The POETS.ORG website sponsored by the Academy of American Poets is a wonderful website to feature during this month-long celebration.

The “Dear Poet” multimedia education project for grades five through twelve is a letter writing contest specifically for National Poetry Month. Students watch video-recorded poetry readings, then respond in the form of a letter. To learn more, go to http://www.poets.org/national-poetry-month/dear-poet.

The “Browse Poems & Poets” section of the website provides access to thousand of biographies of poets and poems, essays, and books related to poetry. Users can browse by poem, poet, text, book, or audio. For youth working on projects, students can search for poems by occasion, schools & movements, or forms. Featured poems and poets can get students started. The audio section is particularly useful to young poets learning about the cadence of poetry. Readers can listen to poems like The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost read aloud. Links allow users to share their favorite poems through social media or print them out.

The “Poem-a-Day” feature providers readers with an unpublished poem throughout the week and classic poems on weekends. Consider highlighting new poetry on a bulletin board during the month of April.

The “Materials for Teachers” section provides dozens of standards-aligned lesson plans for primary and secondary levels. In addition, the area includes thoughts on teaching poetry and additional resources.

The “Stanza: Updates” area is a blog highlighting new resources and events.

To explore POETS.ORG, go to http://www.poets.org.

To extend the National Poetry Month experience, try some of the resources provided at Reading Rockets at http://www.readingrockets.org/calendar/poetry.

Website Review: Gooru

GOORU is a web-based resource that contains over 70,000 collections of free, K-12 web resources. 

The mission of GOORU is to provide personalized learning for teachers and students. The website allows users to FIND standards-based learning materials, REMIX the resources to create custom collections, SHARE collections, and MONITOR student use of online materials.

Built-in, online tools make this a unique environment for librarians to collaborate with classroom teachers. Educators can create pathfinders and even design questions for students to address.

A dedicated webpage can be created for classes that can be used to build and manage assignments. Images, handouts, and slides can be added to enhance the learning environment.

Begin with a search for a topic such as “erosion” or “American Civil War”. It’s possible to narrow a search by resource format, subject, grade level, standard, publisher and mode. The search returns interactives, lessons, and other web-based resources. Each resource also indicates whether it’s “mobile friendly.” Users can then examine any Gooru collections that contain the resource. In many cases these collections contain a gold mine of ideas and additional resources.

The Gooru iPad app is easy to download and use for school with iPads.

To learn more, go to http://www.goorulearning.org/

Website & App Review: News-O-Matic

NEWS-O-MATIC is a subscription-based app that provides engaging nonfiction reading experiences for elementary students. Each weekday, readers are provided with standards-aligned, grade-appropriate news stories to read. The high-interest resources are a wonderful way to promote life-long reading habits. From covering science discoveries to sporting events, NEWS-O-MATIC provides exciting informational reading experiences across the curriculum.

Although the articles are brief, they’re a great starting point for class discussions and may stimulate interest in a more in-depth investigation. In addition to reading experiences, the features often include slideshows, puzzles, games, timelines, maps, or video clips. A read-aloud options is useful for students with special needs. In addition, a Spanish translation is also available.

Student accounts allow youth to take quizzes, write, draw, and record their results.

Available as both an iPad App from iTunes and an Android App from Google, go to http://press4kids.com/ for more information.