Discussions in Google Docs

Thinking about using Google Docs!  Here is another great reason to start using it.  As you may know Google has a feature within Google Docs that allows a collaborator to comment on the document itself.  The comments are placed in the margins of the document.  Well now Google has set up discussions that can take place within the margins of the document.  For example I can comment on a student's work and then they can reply to my comment as to what they were thinking when they were writing the paper.  This is a great way to help your students fine tune their writing skills and also a way that students can help each other with writing projects.  Check out this video if you would like to see more.

If you are looking for a website that has all the bells and whistles and amazing things that the web has to offer then don't read this!

If you are looking for a website that has all the bells and whistles and amazing things that the web has to offer then don't go to this website.  But, if you are looking for a website that will give your students ideas to write about then I would absolutely visit this site.  At first glance you would think that this website has nothing that you would be interested in but when you actually start to use it your students will thank you.  The Story Starter website is a website that provides 763,591,140 wonderful ideas and writing prompts for writers of all ages.  It is very simple to use all you have to do is click on the button that says "Click Here for a Random Story Starter Sentence" and the website provides a story starter.  After reviewing a few of the starters you will find some of them are very entertaining like this one "The hilarious airline hostess composed a song in the garage for the deadly frog."  Most of the story starters are probably for upper elementary through high school students but Joel Heffner has also created The Story Starter Jr. which provides story starters like "The superhero was walking in the school."  This website is good for your elementary school students but does not provide nearly the number of story starters as the original.  If you are anything like me this will make your job easier because I could never think of creative story starters like the ones provided on these two websites.

My Hippo has the Hiccups

Online books are becoming more and more common in today's world.  With the Interactive White Boards that are available to the majority of the teachers it makes them more accessible for us as teachers.  Recently I have found an online book that is Free yeah I said FREE, which makes it that much more appealing to teachers.  The book is called My Hippo Has the Hiccups and it is a great book to show students that poetry can be fun for them to write and also read. This book includes the online version of the book which can be viewed in the full screen mode.  Another great feature of this book is that it also includes the audio to the majority of the poems that are written.  With this feature the students can not only read the poem to themselves they can also listen to the poem the way that it was meant to be read. 

If you like this resource make sure you tell others to sign up to receive the same great resources that you get.   

Think Visually

If you are anything like me it is hard to get your students to plan their writing.  They never know what to write about or they "can't think of anything".  Now you can use the computer to your advantage to help your students become better writers.  Webspiration is an online tool that will help your students map out ideas, organize with outlines or even collaborate with each other.  Once you create a free account on Webspiration you have the ability to do all of the above as well as much more.  With Webspiration you can quickly create a map of what you are thinking about as a class.  You can now leave that up for the students to see or you can print it off so that all of the students have the ideas in front of them.  This program also gives you the ability to take a map of their thoughts and quickly organize it as an outline.  You can quickly add pictures to your maps as well as multiple shapes and colors that will help with the organization process.  Once you are finished with your map you can save it so that you can come back to it at a later time.  This will most definitely help your students learn to organize their writing in a fun and creative way.