Digital Interactives
"Dive into reading!" "Dig into a good book!" "Reading takes you places!"
All of these are common phrases people use when they are talking about reading and getting students to interact with books. Now there are a plethora of digital interactives and websites that can help you literally do just that! Below are four great digital interactives to help you learn and "dive into" our class.
This webpage was developed by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), an organization that supports English language arts and teaching/learning English. It has many different interactive tools to help you organize essays, take notes on text, develop ideas for study and writing, learn about different elements of English, and study grammar. The tools are organized by type and grade level. A specific tool NCTE provides that you will use in this class in "Essay Map," an organizer for writing essays. The interactive process helps you outline many different types of essays to end with a strong, well-developed essay.
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BBC, the British Broadcasting Company, has a site called "Pinball" designed to help "kick start your ideas, develop creativity and get thoughts flowing with... fun and simple tools." The site is focused on the writing process and is organized into different techniques to help start, develop, and focus writing. The site is very easy to use, connecting different ideas and topics for you as you type them in. There's also a tool for making an image map to use before you have your ideas in word form. The pinball imagery is great for the way students should bounce ideas around in their mind and make connections between ideas before combining them into one cohesive essay.
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BrainPOP is an animated, interactive learning site for multiple school subjects: science, social studies, English, math, engineering and technology, health, and arts and music. Under the English tab are many different activities and descriptions to cover topics that you will need in our classroom. The site has information on using the dictionary, combining English with the internet, understanding differing literary techniques and vocabulary, and organizing your writing. BrainPOP is also a great site because it has different study tools geared specifically toward English and preparing for an English test. There are also a few videos on the site that give concise information about big ideas of English and various authors that are well-known in the field.
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Quizlet is a website that lets you enter in a bunch of information to make flashcards, generate quizes, and play study games. It can be used for any class, not just English. The site also has lists and categories of flashcards that other users have made, so you can search for a deck of flashcards to study. Users need to create a free account to create and save flashcards, but previously made cards are accessible without an account. Quizlet helps students memorize and integrate information into their knowledge bank, versus memorizing information for a test only to forget it later.
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