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“Every child deserves a champion – an adult who will never give up on them, who understands the power of connections and insists that they become the best that they can possibly be.”
Welcome to Fourth Grade with Mrs. Caiola
Welcome to my Tools for Success Page! This page contains digital tools that I am currently using for ELA in the classroom or hope to use within the year. Digital tools are engaging for students and are important for developing 21st-century skills that students need to be successful in the coming years of education and work!
Padlet is fun and easy to use! We will use it from time to time in the classroom Students log in using the code I will provide. Each student's response it added to a digital wall for all to see. It is a great way to check for understanding and to share thoughts and ideas!
Screencastify is my go-to recording tool! It is so easy to use! It is a free Google Extention that allows the user to have up to 3 videos at one time and a paid subscription provides unlimited videos. Teachers can teach lessons by sharing their screen or while they stand in front of their smartboard. Students can use the tool for presentations. The extension also allows the user to edit the videos.
Talk about fun and student engagement! Per the Website, "Glogster is a cloud-based (SaaS) platform for presentation and interactive learning. It allows users to mix all kinds of media on a virtual canvas to create multimedia posters, and access a library of engaging educational content created by students and educators worldwide. Glogster encourages interactive, collaborative education and digital literacy." True to this claim, users can embed videos, photos, captions, animations that grow and shrink as you access them. The only drawback is the free version is very limited.
How does sitting at a desk or at a table for seven hours sound? Not good, right? What if you are overstimulated and need to relax to get ready for learning? What if you learn best by singing a song or through movement? Go Noodle is the answer! I use Go Noodle at least once a day to give my learners a brain break during an hour block of learning or to get their blood pumping up to their brains! Students love being chosen to pick the video or the new character when ours reaches its final transformation.
Read Theory is a free reading comprehension site. When students first log on they are given a diagnostic. This diagnostic measures Lexile, Grade Level comprehension. After the diagnostic, the student is placed on a reading path that will build reading comprehension skills by providing passages followed by a quiz. The reports will show you student growth, how many quizzes the students have taken and will give Knowledge Points which teachers can use to motivate the classroom by highlighting students with the highest amount of Knowledge Points,
Education.com is a website I have a subscription to for online and print materials I can use for teaching or assessments but it also has game platforms for Math, ELA, and Typing practice. The games are challenging and fun!
Google Classroom is an online classroom with many useful features. The Stream page is the social hub of the platform. Teachers can enable students to post questions or comments to their peers or teacher. The Classwork tab is where teachers post assignments and materials. Students access the assignments here and can turn in their assignments here. The People tab is just a list of students and teachers associated with the classroom. Finally, the Grades tab is an easy way for teachers to see which students completed assignments and students can see their grades.
Since our school uses Google G Suite, all our staff and students have access to Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Slides, and Google Sheets. With the ability to share these documents with teachers and peers and vice versa, they can be truly collaborative! I personally use Google Docs for Writing. I can add comments for students to view and make revisions. Peers can peer edit each other's work as well. I can also give students options as to how they wish to present their learning either through a written report or slideshow. They can share them with me or can upload them into Google Classroom.
It is my hope to use this amazing tool this year! Flipgrid is a wall of 90-second video clips. Teachers can post questions and the students can respond. I would like to use it for 60-second fluency practice. Using flipgrid in the classroom allows every student to have a voice and they can respond to ideas they like by sending 'hearts'.
Students LOVE Kahoot! Kahoot is a wonderful way to get kids to engage in review materials. Teachers can create their own custom quizzes or there are a plethora of premade quizzes sure to meet your learner's needs. Kahoot is just the right amount of competition for students who thrive in that way but low-stakes enough to be engaging for students who do not love class competition. I personally use Kahoot to review ELA concepts such as grammar or replace bookclub worksheets with a quiz. You can also pause and use the responses as a teaching moment. It is assessment and feedback in real time!
Get Epic! is a free to educators digital library aimed at students 12 and under. Students can read books, listen to books, and watch videos. Teachers can assign books based on subject or Lexile, or give your students a chance to pick their own reading material. The website informs what students are doing - how long they read each book and total minutes students have read overall. It is a great tool to conference with students about their reading habits. Unless the parents pay for a subscription, the library becomes limited after 4 pm and on weekends, allowing students 2 out of school hours of reading.
Mr. Nussbaum is a free teacher-created website where students can do research, play games, access all subject matter, from Math, ELA, and Geography and everything in between. There is a paid version which gives teachers additional materials. In the paid version, teachers can directly assign reading assignments to their Google Classroom. I will use this site from time to time for activities to support or practice the standards we are currently working on.
Let's face it, giving students a task to conduct online research on the open web can lead to exposure to unsavory results. I like Ducksters because it is chock-full of interesting and useful information written in kid-friendly language. I use this website for Biography studies and Greek Mythology studies. It is endorsed by The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). It also has fun games from sports games to classic games and learning content games.
ReadWorks is my go-to for non-fiction passages. Mainly, I use this site for the Article-A-Day routine. The students read an article based on a theme for the week. Then they use their Google Doc Book of Knowledge to record two to three things they learned, found interesting, want to remember, or can teach someone else. Each day we set a purpose by stating: "Words are where humans store knowledge. So we will build our knowledge by reading these articles. We will also increase our vocabulary, improve our reading stamina, and enjoy reading every day."
Ed Your Friend In Learning is our reading curriculum website. Students log on to take assessments, can access a library of reading books, and can access several kid news sites such as Time for Kids and DOGOnews. They also have access to our textbook, helpful anchor charts, and multimedia. It is a rigorous curriculum with rich vocabulary and higher-level thinking skill development.
This year I am very excited to use Generation Genius for Science. The videos are made in partnership with the National Science Teaching Association (NSTA) and support the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) K-8. Since I am a Reading teacher at heart, the reading and vocabulary are very important to me and Generation Genius supports both. Many of the lessons have embedded Kahoot! quizzes as well!
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