Totally 3rd Grade Blog

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If you haven’t stumbled upon Mrs. Thorp’s Third Grade Blog yet,  then take a minute to enjoy the resources that this 16 year veteran teacher has so diligently collected, organized and selflessly offered to anyone who’d care to use them.

Mrs. Thorp’s Third Grade Blog has one of the best “how to” collections for 3rd grade teachers to employ.  These are specific, well thought out tasks and techniques that can help overcome an impressive range of classroom instructional hurdles.

Having trouble teaching reading? Multiplication not sinking in? Kids don’t want to write? Science needs a little zing?  Visit Mrs. Thorp for a little help.

Additionally, she evaluates and recommends an occasional website when it’s clear that the site provides extraordinary value.  No time-wasting link farm referrals  here.

As good as Mrs. Thorp’s Third Grade Blog already is, I suspect that it will only get better over time since the collection will surely continue to grow.

Take me to Mrs. Thorp’s Third Grade Blog

RethinkingSchools.org offers a free, interactive web application that does a great job of teaching the locations of countries in and around the Middle East.

Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan are mentioned often in the news but few Americans have any idea where any of these places are.

Thirty five countries from this important region of the world are presented in a word pool and the objective is to drag and drop them into the correct positions on a map.  Countries “stick” when they’re in the right spot and you can use trial and error to figure out countries that you’re unsure of.

This ability (trial and error) is where the power lies; I thought I was pretty well versed in geography but soon discovered that I had a lot to learn.

If you’re teaching anything related to this region or just want to become more educated yourself, then go check this out.

Take me to RethinkingSchools.org to learn about other countries

I’ve known for a while that there are teachers who don’t teach 3rd grade that still like to use the resources on Totally3rdGrade.com.

So that older kids won’t feel slighted by working on “3rd grade” activities, I created a sister site that has no mention of grade level or achievement level.  It’s called FuriouslyCurious.com and it has lots of cool features that are sure to be a hit with kids and teachers.

• For a little fun, users can select one of four color schemes to suit their own tastes
• The navigation is much easier to work and creates an opportunity to more easily meet different teaching objectives
• Printable flash cards are now available for each song. This is a real time saver when  you need a ready way to help students who are struggling to “get it”
• There is also an “Easy Read” feature that makes the lyrics bigger. In this view, the lyrics absolutely dominate the page. No more problems for the kids in the back of the room!

Go check it out when you get a chance.

Take me to FuriouslyCurious.com!

I recently discovered a simple and completely free flash card generator.

The website is  http://www.kitzkikz.com/kitzkikz/flashcards and despite the site’s incredibly ugly interface, the results are superb.

You just type in your question on one side, the answer on the other and then select how you want the cards to look.

Here is a set of multiplication cards that I produced in about 1 minute, complete with score marks so that it will be easy to know where to fold:  See my example

Every now and then I come across a website that is really worth your time.  One of those sites is www.SpellingCity.com.

SpellingCity is free to use and in a nutshell, you can type in your spelling list and the site will:

1. automatically produce 8 different spelling games utilizing your list
2. automatically produce 2 or 3 different kinds of interactive, online quizzes
3. display your vocabulary words in sentences
4. audibly pronounce the words for you
5. offer a variety of printable worksheets involving the spelling words you’ve entered
6. provide other useful functions that you can check out while you’re on the site

Did I mention that it’s free? Additionally, if you create a user account (also free) you can save your lists for future use.  This can be handy if you want to sit down once for an hour or so and prepare all of the vocabulary quizzes you’ll need all year in one sitting.

Once you’ve set it up, just have students pull up the appropriate list and get to work!

Click the link below to see for yourself.

Take me to SpellingCity.com to check out a truly useful website

P.S. The site has a vocabulary of 38,000 words.  As a smarty pants, I typed in “discombobulation” and the site correctly pronounced the word and correctly used it in a sentence.  I was blown away.