OC CUE Tech Festival: Web Resources for Primary Grades

Finding resources on the web that are specific to your grade level and to the skills and strategies you are teaching on any given day is not easy. You may be looking for material to help you teach or a site that gives your students independent practice in the skill of the day. Sites that offer interactive activities to reinforce the skills your students are learning and that require only a small amount of your time for instruction are the ideal.
Our vision was and still is to create a collaborative site with links to interactive sites - students can use independently, project sites that incorporate 21st Century skills and links to downloadable lesson presentations for teachers; all pretested by teachers, and that support our curriculum standards.
Before you get into checking out web sites, you should have a social book marking account. Furl is one source for social book marking. Once you set up an account you can book mark sites no matter whose computer you're on. All the bookmarks are kept on an on-line site you send them to. If you don't already have a social bookmarking account you can set up one with Furl.net, then you're ready to check out some resource sites. If you're not on your own computer use the link http://www.furl.net/doc/get_started to get back into your account and set up the furl button link on your own computer later. Use the get started link and log in (top right) using your user name and password (that you hopefully wrote down).
Our first site hmtech.wikispaces.com is a wiki that has links for each week in our K-3 HM Reading Themes. Right now this is just a K-3 site but, the great thing about wikispaces is that any one can post to the site and we're hoping some teachers of other grades who have created presentations or used links will post links to their work for other teachers to use on the site.

At the time we created this site there was little online support from HM. But other groups were also gathering materials and links. Two good examples of these collaborations are Santa Maria-Bonita School District
and YAHOO WEB GROUPS
These are groups you can join and download files or contribute files that support using HM. Some groups can be joined immediately and others have a moderator who reviews your application before they email you that you've been accepted. To join a group you must first open a free account at my.yahoo.com or click on one of the group links below and click on sign up on the top left. After you have your verification email you can go to groups.yahoo. and find your group under "Find a Group" or click on one of the group links below and then click on sign in.

hm_kinder

5TH GRADE GROUP

HM SHARING ALL GRADES

HM SHARING 1ST GRADE

HM SHARING 2ND GRADE


HM CHAT
This is a chat group, started in Missouri, who posts times for future chats. This group is intended for use by teachers, specialists, and administrators using Houghton Mifflin Reading programs. It is a forum for educators to share ideas, discuss strategies, and ask questions of each other about using these programs to their fullest potential.

Once we got our site going we thought what we really needed was a site with links and presentations not just for reading but for all our curriculum and techtips.wikispaces.com came into being.


Computer Centers are links for students to use during UA or other practice time.

There's more! Check out the posts
Tons of Resources from Gail Lovely (NECC 2006)
Visual Literacy Resources from Lynell Burmark( NECC 2006)
Primary Source Materials from Kathy Schrock (NECC 2006)

At the NECC 2007 in Atlanta, Georgia, the Teacher Tube(a great teacher resource) execs were recruiting and offered me suggestions on how to get my site funded. They are looking for teacher created videos to share with other teachers. Just a sample: