Tag Archives: Internet

Custom Flashcards

16 Aug

There are lots of flashcards apps for the iPad but I when it comes to customization there is one I absolutely love!

Flashcardlet by Quizlet allows students to view flashcards decks you’ve created on their iPads.  Quizlet is a free website where you can make  flashcards decks that correspond to vocabulary in any unit of study.  You choose the words and either create your own definition, or use/modify one of their suggestions.  It even allows you to search and use pictures from a free database to add to your flashcards (upgrade to a paid account and you can upload your own pictures).
With the Flashcardlet app on your students’ iPads, or iPod Touch, they can swipe through the cards, identify which ones they need extra practice with, and monitor their own progress.
*Make sure to choose a unique name for your cards (maybe include the school or class number) so that students can easily search for your flashcard deck and save it to their devices

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Gmail to Organize Student Work

7 Aug

I use Gmail for my personal email account and it is great in the classroom too. I have students send work they completed on their iPads (this works with PCs too) to a teacher Gmail account I set up in September.  Each student uses the same student Gmail account to send their work to me (I’ve set up each student’s iPad to send and receive emails from the same account).

So that’s two gmail accounts: 1. My teacher gmail account, 2. One student email address that all of the students use to send their work

If students write their name in the subject line of the email it makes it easy to search through my old emails for all of the work they have sent me that year.  Using Gmail’s search function, I can type in a student’s name and it pulls up all of the work that child has emailed me from the beginning of the school year until now.

1. Type in the students name
2. Press “Search”
3. All of the work they have sent you will appear on screen

I just think about the student who can’t find their Writer’s Notebook in January and are now missing months of their hard work.  This is a great way to store, organize and access student work throughout the school year.

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Math Tutorials

17 Jul

A great resource for math tutorials is MathTrain.  This site has student created tutorials for all age levels that are quick and engaging.  Their website isn’t iPad friendly, but they have an easy to navigate iPad app that organizes their podcasts by topic. Check it out!

Click on “Podcast” for a list of topics

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Internet Research: Fact or Fiction?

11 Jun

Internet research in any classroom can be challenging.  Students want to believe that everything they read is true.   Here are three great sites to demonstrate to students the importance of using critical thinking skills when conducting research online.

All About Explorers

Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie

Save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus

Check out my bundle of Common Core aligned iPad lesson plans for teaching ELA with iPads in the classroom!

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TED Talks

17 May

TED Talks are wonderful for adults and high school students, but I use them with my fifth graders – most often in small groups to extend guided reading or book club discussions.

If you’re not familiar with TED Talks they are worth checking out! Speakers are given 5 to 20 minutes to wow an audience with their knowledge, perspective and discoveries on their area of expertise. Topics range greatly and can be applied as extension lessons for all sorts of activities. There are even TED talks where the speakers are children.

Just like the website, the TED Talks app let’s you search by speaker and category.

Birke Baehr discusses “What’s wrong with our food system”

These talks can be shown to the whole class or played for small groups who are studying aparticular topic. After spending a week practicing nonfiction strategies using a text on the oceans, I loved ending my small group session by playing a TED talk on bioluminescence!

Here is a link to the TED talks iPad app, and some of my favorite talks. (Make sure to preview each talk before showing the class – I haven’t found anything inappropriate, but a few included some jokes that wouldn’t suit my class of fifth graders.)

The iPad app allows you to save these talks for offline viewing. If you’ve found TED talks that you love leave suggestions in the comments below.

Check out my common core aligned lesson plan using TED Talks in the classroom!

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Current Events in the Classroom

13 May

Content can come alive in the classroom when you connect instruction to current events. Students of all ages like to feel like they have a grasp on what’s happening in the world around them and there is always a way to make curriculum-to-world connections.

NBC Nightly News has an app that features up to the minute video clips on events of the day. If I saw a segment on polar bears on a Wednesday night, you can bet that by Friday my students have seen that clip too and are recording their connections to our ecosystem unit on arctic climate change. Segments from the show can be projected onto your classroom’s “big screen” or explored individually by students on their own iPads.


(Make sure to preview each segment before showing the class. Even though they might hear about a news story at home, all clips are not appropriate for the classroom).

Check out my common core aligned lesson using current events apps!

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