Comic Maker

New from Artisan Cam is the excellent Super Action Comic Maker. It has a range of backgrounds and characters and allows the user to create an A4 action hero comic book page. 

Myths and Legends

Myths and Legends is a brilliant piece of online software for all those who enjoy stories and storytelling. It allows you to read stories from all over the Country and once inspired, to create your own. These can include pictures and sound effects before being submitted to the site.

Digital Audio

Recently, I have been working on a number of different projects using digital audio and have found some great tools for the job. These include the brilliant Easi-speak (below) from TTS, the free to download Audacity and the great podcasting tool Podium. 

Thanks to a post by Doug Dickinson on his blog dougmuses I can now also add Vocaroo to that list. It is such a simple way to quickly send a voice message. Listen to Doug explaining just how easy it is to use …. here

Newspaper Generator

The Newspaper Generator is another ‘nugget’ from ICT Nuggets.

And from the St Mark’s Blog comes Puzzlemaker, which allows you to create and customise a range of different Puzzles including word searches and cross words.

Primary Literacy Resources

Learn English Kids is a free British Council site for children who are learning English. It has vast range of games, songs, stories and things to print off and do. The site is appealing to children and also has sections for parents and teachers.

Tom Barrett has been busy blogging again and this time he has shared his favourite spelling resources. The accompanying text in italics is what he likes about each site: 

1) Spelling City

‘This has proven to be a highly valuable resource. You are able to save spelling lists for the children to access beyond school. It comes into it’s own as each list is used in a variety of different games to help the children learn them. Each word that you add to the list is automagically linked to a snippet of audio pronouncing the word and there is even audio of the word used in a sentence. Lists can be downloaded, printed and there is even a handwriting sheet that you can print off for your spelling list. My only grumble is that some words are difficult to understand in the audio as the pronounciation is American.’

2) TutPup

‘No problem in TutPup with the English pronunciation of the words as the lady who has done the audio, I am told, did the announcements for the London Underground system! TutPup provides a social competitive edge to the children’s practice which they really enjoy. The main bulk of games are maths based but the audio quiz for spelling is excellent too. The children listen to a word and type in the spelling, they are of course paired with another user from somewhere in the world giving it that competitive fun.’

3) Look Say Cover Write Check

‘There are a whole bunch of these resources but the best in my opinion is the Crickweb version. You can add your own 10 words, practice using the look, say, cover, write and check method and there is even facility to print paper based resource cards and review and assess progress. Simple and very effective.’

4) Spin and Spell

‘A lovely interactive site for the simple practice of common key words. Children can choose from a range of different word topics such as “In and around the home” and “Animal Kingdom”. The children then are presented with a big wheel in the centre of the screen with all of the letters on it. They choose a little image from the many that populate the rest of the screen and they hear audio of that word and then have to spell it using the dial. You can select to have the words chosen randomly and they can reveal and hear the word again as they are working. Again the American pronunciation can cause some confusion but otherwise it is worthy of a spot in my top 5 spelling resources.’

5) GeoGreeting

‘A bit of fun for number five – this resource will help children to see their spellings in a different way.  GeoGreeting finds satellite images of buildings and other objects from around the world that resemble the letters in your words.’

Great resources. Thanks Tom!

Electronic Texts and Stories

Thanks to Oxfordshire Online who have put together a useful collection of online texts and stories to use on Interactive Whiteboards. The page aims to take the time out of finding suitable ICT-based texts on the Internet to use in shared, guided or independent reading.

Film Clips for Visual Literacy

There are a number of web sites which host a range of film clips and movie trailers. I especially enjoy the trailers and short animations found at www.pixar.com

 

For old television clips try the TV ARK pages. It used to be possible to view old adverts here too, lets hope it isn’t too long before they are back online .  

Other collections worth a look include Screen Online and Film Education which both include lesson ideas and teacher’s notes for use with film. Alternatively www.arkive.com offers a glimpse of life on Earth.

Our friends in the Bristol ICT Team have started to collect together a range of film clips which they are generously sharing at:

http://whiteboard.bristol-cyps.org.uk/vis_lit2/

Images of film clips can be captured into Interactive Whiteboard flip charts by pausing the clip and using the software’s camera tool.

 

Roy the Singing Zebra

There are some wonderful interactive games, stories and resources to help emerging readers on the Roy the Singing Zebra website. The site is free to use at school or at home and is alot of fun.

Thanks to the Teachers Love SMART Boards blog for mentioning it.

Kent NGFL Resources

 I was looking again at the wonderful resources  on the Kent Ed website, these range from those aimed  at supporting an ICT Subject Leader,  cross curricular resources such as the ever popular Sebastian Swan and games and ideas to support Early Years ICT . The colourful and easy to navigate website also includes a number of free interactive games such as Star Writer and the Writing Repeater. The latter allows a demonstration of handwriting on an interactive whiteboard to be saved and played back. It can capture a total of 17 letters, words or joins which can be played back any number of times.

BBC Bitesize Games for KS1

The BBC has increased the range of their ‘Bitesize‘ activities to now include Key Stage 1 for both Numeracy and Literacy. The games cover a range of topics and look to be good fun. There are three levels to each activity (medium, hard or very hard) and can be used as starter activities, for independent work or during a plenary.