ePals

ePals is a FUN, safe way for your students to collaborate with students from around the world. With this electronic penpal, you can either pair up with another classroom or allow your students to post questions to learn about different cultures. Students can even go on and read about how others celebrate holidays, discuss current events, or just share about their favorite activities and compare with others from around the world. Go to www.epals.com to learn more! Be sure to check out the student forum to see what others are already doing.

Spelling City

Many of you are familiar with the great site www.spellingcity.com, but do you know about all the neat features? You can create your own account and type in weekly spelling words! Each student can then access the website and have their spelling words there and ready to go. Students can even access the site from home! Once you have the lists entered, students can take practice spelling tests, hear the words read aloud and play games using their spelling words. This is a great tool to keep learning fun!

Comic Creator

Are you looking for a fun way to engage your students in writing? Consider allowing them to create a comic as a tool to tell their story. Check out Comic Creator and enjoy exploring!

http://www.readwritethink.org/materials/comic/index.html

Fruit Machine

http://classtools.net/main_area/fruit_machine.htm

Need a fun way to engage your students in your lessons? Try the fruit machine! You can enter your students' names to call on them in random order.

Try using the machine with other information as well. For example, put in vocabulary from a unit you are studying. Have one student stand with their back to the machine and let others give clues about the word for the student to guess.

Have fun and please share your ideas!

Tiny URL!

Do you often visit the computer lab and have a difficult time getting your students to the site you want? Try this great tool to make your URL shorter! Go to www.tinyurl.com and put in the website you are using. This will then create a new URL that will take you to the same place. For example, change http://waynesboro.va.schoolwebpages.com/education/components/sectionlist/default.php?sectiondetailid=4937&PHPSESSID=04272fcbf3aedf6d379af76dcb668b2a into http://tinyurl.com/6xth5z. That’s 148 characters changed into only 25! You can even customize what you want the new URL to be! Give it a try!