These sights are designed to help children with their grammar and writing skills.
Clean Up Your Grammar: http://www.missmaggie.org/scholastic/cleanup_eng_launcher.html
“Clean up Your Grammar” is an online game from the site “Maggie’s Earth Adventures, LPC.” The mission of this website is to help children learn about real life environmental problems. They state that “learners respond best to integrated material presented in meaningful situations.” With this particular game, “Clean up Your Grammar,” students “recycle the trash that washes up on the shore by dropping the words in the right bin.” If the children make any mistakes the beach becomes dirty with litter.
The goal of the game is to recycle 10 pieces of trash. Each piece of trash has a word on it that’s either a noun or a verb. The children have to click on the words and drag them into their correct recycle bin. The recycle bins are labeled “Nouns” and “Verbs.” The game has a lot of sound effects and there are two different levels to choose from. If a child makes a mistake and puts a word in the wrong recycle bin, the game makes a noise and puts a big ‘X’ and the word ‘incorrect.’ The trash that the word was attached to then gets thrown on the beach.
Some of the strengths of this game are that it’s enjoyable to do and provides children with some information on the environment. It also teaches them an important difference between verbs and nouns. However, this game would be restricted to a very limited age group and some very specific words are continually recycled within the game. It would not be long before children master both levels and are ready to move on to something else.
I also think this would be a good game to use when teaching the specific concepts of verbs and nouns and I would probably use it in my classroom as a fun way to solidify those ideas. But children would definitely need some background information on what verbs and nouns are before playing. This game is also relatively applicable and useful for multiliteracy classrooms because there are visuals to help children with the concepts. Nevertheless, children would need to have a basic understanding of the difference between verbs and nouns and would need to know and understand the vocabulary words used in the game.
Overall, I think this is a useful game for solidifying the concept of verbs and nouns. Children should enjoy playing it and feel good about keeping the beach clean. The game can also teach them how important it is to recycle and they will hopefully be able to apply this in their own life. It would have been a great game to play during class on Earth Day this past week, or in a unit focused on educating children about environmental issues.
(Evaluated by Clare Cryar)
Toon University: http://www.toonuniversity.com/aol/aol_language_k2.asp
Toon University is an online activities website geared towards elementary age students, more specifically 1st & 2nd graders. This page offers 5 online games/activities students can play around with for fun, while learning at the same time. The focus of this site is to improve language arts skills and each game focuses on a specific area of content.
On the main page there are 5 links you can click on that take you to the game of your choice. The five focus areas are opposites, alphabetizing, inferences, punctuation & capitalization and abbreviations. I played all the games and they are fun and easy to use. These games can be used by teachers or parents because they are educational. Another great thing about this page is it can be used by students who are learning English because it is basic and not too challenging. ESL students who need help in these content areas will greatly improve their knowledge of language arts. These lessons teach necessary skills to speak and write in English and through repetitive practice they will grow as English speakers. Once they master one activity they can move on to the next and have a new area to focus on, and so on.
Some cons of this website are the limitations of the main page and rest of the website. There is not a lot of room to grow besides these 5 activities unless you want to pay to be a member. Kids may get bored or move on to the next language arts level and therefore move on from this site. Another con is some of the games don’t provide feedback or the correct answers so students who aren’t at the level of these activities may need teacher or parent supervision. Also some of the links lead you to other parts of this website rather than the activities main page. Though this site has some flaws its purpose is accomplished through the activities it offers.
As a teacher I would use this website during free time. If my class is working in the computer lab and students finish their work early I would allow them to play on this type website. It may not be used for a main assignment but more of a review type situation. I think it would be great for parents to use with their children at home if they are struggling or need extra practice. In classrooms, if students work on these activities alone, they won’t feel the pressure of getting the answers wrong in front of everyone which will build their confidence. As an ESL teacher you could play this game as a class or in groups which will work on comprehensible input and output from the teacher, students and website.
Overall this website is simple and beneficial for students. It helps to build a stronger foundation for reading and grammar while engaging kids in fun activities. I would suggest this site to anyone who is looking for an internet based interaction for students’, parents or teachers. Also if you do decide to become a member ($99.95 yearly, discount for students and teachers) there are a ton of resources and activities for all ages. Parents, teachers, and students will love the opportunities to learn, teach and grow because of Toon University. They offer activities for the subjects of math, reading, social studies, and science for Pre-K to 6th grade level students. Also they have a teacher store and toonbooks. If you are truly interested in this website they even offer a free 10-day trial. Check it out!
(Evaluated by Marissa Rosenstein)
Bitsize: http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/english/writing/
Bitesize is a website where children can practice their English, math, and writing skills. It is really easy to navigate, with links that lead the children right to the different activity choices. This is a great resource for students who are English speakers or ELL students. It Explains why writing is important for children to be able to communicate, and then gives multiple kinds of writing styles that may be used. This would be very helpful in the classroom or for children to use at home, because it not only helps with how to form sentences, but also how to write letters, instructions, arguments, comments, leaflets, and story planning. Allowing students to practice different types of writing will help them in the future when they are writing for different purposes. This is an extremely hands on website. For each type of writing the students can play a game, read about important information on each type of writing, watch a video about it, or take a quiz over the subject. This gives them information and practice in multiple ways, which is one of the main strengths of the website. I would not say that there are any downfalls to it, and I will for sure use it when I become a teacher. I could use this website for home work assignments, and have the children practice playing the games and learning about each type of writing style, have them take the quiz, and then have a writing assignment in class using the different styles of writing. I would recommend this website for children who are ELL learners and English speakers for all the subjects that it offers, not only English.
(Evaluated by Micah Morgan)
Arcademic Skill Builders: http://www.arcademicskillbuilders.com/
This site has different subjects that the kids can build their academic skills on. The different subjects that they have are: Mathematics, Language Arts and Geography. Children get to play different kinds of games that will test how well they are doing on those subjects. Each game is a race against either the computer or another player and there are also some timed individual games. At the end of each game, the children are shown what they missed while they were playing the game. This site can be really fun and they have an option that once all the children are logged in they can all compete against each other.
This site can be really fun for the children who do well on the site. However, for the children whose minds are not as quick to be able to answer the questions fast enough to win, then it could have a negative effect on them. They can feel like they are not as smart as the children who always win the race because they are very quick with their answers. As for ESL learners I think that this would be extremely difficult for them because they won’t be able to think as fast as the other students who are native English speakers. So they wont be as motivated to try to win the games because they will most likely feel like the native English speakers will win anyway so there is no point in putting up much effort. The games are very fun; the individual games will be less pressure for the child to come up with the answers against anther peer but there will still be pressure to come up with the answer fast enough to have a high school. The timed games are much easier for a ESL learner because the only person who is going to see their score is the student.
(Evaluated by Candyce Pace)
