Websites to promote reading and writing!
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See Below for a list of great Children's Books!!!! |
animoto.com
Purpose: This website takes pictures and videos transforming them into short videos to get students excited about an upcoming lesson or unit. The program adds all of the transitions and features. You just add the photos, videos, words, and music. Unfortunately, the program is not free for everyone, but educators with an email ending in '.edu' can use it for free. |
ttl4.sunburst.com
Purpose: Keyboarding software to buy. |
typingpal.com
Purpose: This website offers fun typing programs in exchange for money. |
hubbardscupboard.org
This site contains ideas and resources for math, science, social studies, and reading for toddlers, preschoolers, and homeschooled children. Hubbard's Cupboard also includes adapted reading material for English Language Learners. This site and everything on it is free!
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mobymax.com
Purpose: This website focuses on finding and fixing missing skills. A full curriculum based on the Common Core State Standards is available from kindergarten to eighth grade. This website may have free options but it requires a credit card for regular use. |
ixl.com
Purpose: Tests skills in math, language arts, science, and social studies from grades Pre-K to twelfth. |
Storybird.com
Purpose: Read, write, and share books with previously created pictures. |
OverDrive.com
Purpose: Borrow books and audiobooks from local libraries using a library card. Read them on your computer, tablet, phone, or laptop. |
raz-kids.com
Purpose: Over 400 online audio and visual books as well as online running records, eQuizzes, and options for Spanish books. |
Goodreads.com
Purpose: Book reviews by educators, parents, students, and critics. Create your own book reviews. |
FunBrain.com
Purpose: Math and reading in the form of games and comics. |
Storylineonline.net
Purpose: A large selection of Children's book read by celebrities including Betty White and Hector Elizondo. |
sesamestreet.org
Purpose: Sesame Street characters help Pre-schoolers with Art, Numbers, and Letters. |
Starfall.com
Purpose: This website helps preschool to second graders with their reading, math, and number recognition. |
edHelper.com
Purpose: Puzzles, games, critical thinking worksheets, etc. for students Pre-K to High School. |
Prezi.com
Purpose: Student or teacher presentations. |
Powtoon.com
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Poodwaddle.com/meditation.htm
Purpose: Relaxing music to play while your kiddos work. Also includes a timer to keep on top of the time management. |
www.corestandards.org
Purpose: Common Core State Standards used in most states in the USA in an easy to read/navigate online format. |
Great Authors of Children's Books
Rising Author: Mo Willems
Great Children's Books!
Elizabeth Imagined an Iceberg
This book is about a little girl who imagines a friendly iceberg. Then one day, Elizabeth comes across a really strange, big, enthusiastic woman who is delighted with her. The woman invites her to play and then grabs her up without permission and dances around and around making Elizabeth quite dizzy. Elizabeth is not okay with this invasion of her space, but the enthusiasm and strength of the big woman makes it impossible for her to get away. But then, she imagines what her friendly, protective iceberg would say to this behavior and it gives her the strength to tell the woman to let her go. Surprised at the young girl’s outburst, the woman lets her go and Elizabeth rides away on her bicycle. The iceberg reveals the strength within Elizabeth and she ponders this on the last page.
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How my Parents Learned to Eat
A young girl explains how her parents dealt with their different cultural backgrounds. When her parents met, her American sailor father, John, didn’t want her Japanese school-girl mother, Iyicho, to see that he couldn’t eat with chopsticks. Iyicho thought it was because John didn’t want to embarrass her because she did not know how to eat with a knife and fork. Eventually, they learned their fears were unfounded.
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Joe and Sparky go to School
Joe and Sparky live in a zoo. Curious about the children who come to visit, Sparky gets too close to a school bus and gets trapped as it drives away. Joe jumps on to save Sparky. They end up traveling all the way to a school where they strive to fit in and earn gold stars.
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I Hate English
May May is a little girl from China who moved to New York with her family. She knows Chinese and has picked up English pretty well, but she feels if she speaks English she will lose something, probably her Chinese identity. At the end of the book, a special ESL teacher helps her to see that she can keep being Chinese and still learn to speak in English.
Deja and Nikki's teacher breaks her ankle and is unable to teach for three weeks. The class harassed the first substitute teacher until he couldn’t take the abuse anymore and left the class. The second substitute doesn’t crack as easily and is ready to treat the kids like cadets in the army!
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Little Audrey
This is a story about the life of a Caucasian girl living on a coal camp in Virginia. From being made fun of at school for being too skinny and wearing glasses to an alcoholic father using all of the family's money for his addiction, a mother who is "not all there," and selfish siblings, Audrey just can't seem to find happiness. When her father dies in a horrible car crash, Audrey wrestles with feelings of sadness and relief.
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Dare to Dream... Change the World
This book is a collection of poems. Each poem is about human struggles. Anne Frank’s struggle with Jewish persecution, a little girl’s questions when she’s barred from a ‘white’s-only’ school, and the determination a little boy develops to raise enough money for everyone living under a bridge to get winter coats.
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Migrant
A young boy living with his mother, father, sister, and dog on someone else’s watermelon and papaya farm in a little village in Mexico tells the story that brought him to Los Angeles. His father had to leave to find work in the United States because of the lack of jobs in their village. When the money stops coming from his father, his mother takes her children and arrives in the United States by riding the rails.
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Deep in the Sahara
Lalla longs to wear a Malafa but she must first understand the meaning of the Malafa before she is given the privilege to wear one. Lalla seeks to gain all of the characteristics that the Malafa seems to bring for all of the women in her life: Beauty, mystery, age, responsibility, intelligence. Through a talk with her grandmother, Lalla comes to see the Malafa as a symbol of her faith and her devotion to Allah. Once Lalla was able to understand that, she was given the privilege to wear the Malafa.
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The Matchbox Diary
The Matchbox diary is about a little girl who finds a box full of matchboxes. Curious, she approaches her grandpa asking him if he smokes. Her grandpa explains to her that those matchboxes are his diary and each one represents different memories in his life. As the little girl opens each matchbox one by one her grandpa recalls the significance of the object in the matchbox to a memory he collected while immigrating into America. After learning about her grandpa’s matchbox diary, the little girl wants to create her own since she too is unable to read and write
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The Boy Who Dared
This book is about a 17-yr-old boy named Helmuth who lives in Nazi Germany during WWII. Helmuth initially is quite found of Hitler, along with the rest of his intimidate family, starting out as a devoted member of the Hitler Youth until his freedoms are ripped away from him bit by bit. Seeking to change things, Helmuth and his friends create informative leaflets about the truth behind Hitler and the war. and then distribute these pamphlets around Germany until they are turned in. Helmuth and his friends then face a trial for their crime.
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Terezin: Voices from the Holocaust
This is an informational book about the Holocaust. Personal accounts are scattered on pages throughout the book supporting the topic highlighted in blue at the top of each new chapter. From Jewish isolation, Hitler’s wars, deportation, and culture to the end of the war, this book seems to cover it all. The end of the book also includes a visual timeline, glossary, sources, and an index.
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Hitler Youth: Growing up in Hitler's Shadow
This story was written from the viewpoint of German children. Many German parents did not want their children in those Hitler Youth groups. Many teenage children snuck out to attend the meetings. They were encouraged to keep a journal of anything suspicious even if it incriminated their own family members. One young girl told her Hitler’s Youth leader of her parents’ disapproval of her allegiance to Hitler. Her parents were arrested. This book also contains many short autobiographies of young children who joined Hitler’s Youth.
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