TeachersFirst Online Tools and Timesavers Editor's Choice
This collection of Editors' Choice FREE, reviewed resources from TeachersFirst is selected to help teachers and students save time using handy online tools that get the job done and make your classroom run smoothly. Find tools for organizing and communicating, managing your classroom, do-it-yourself creating, sharing links, useful utilities, saving paper, and much more.
Think of this as a handpicked list of "friendly favs" from the Thinking Teachers at TeachersFirst. For a more extensive collection, see our full listing of online tools. For more sophisticated tools to create full blown projects and more (conveniently sorted into categories), see the TeachersFirst Edge.
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The Readability Test Tool - David Simpson
Grades
1 to 12
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tag(s): independent reading (81), readability (5), writing (307)
In the Classroom
Use this tool to offer differentiated resources for the different reading levels in your class. At the beginning of the year, as you learn your students' capabilities, use this tool to find reading at the appropriate level to eliminate frustration. This is perfect for finding the "just right" level for your highly advanced/gifted students and those needing extra remediation. If you do discover that a website you want to use is over your students' independent reading level, you can still use it, just use Read Ahead, reviewed here as a guided reading activity for younger students. Read Ahead is perfect for introducing any reading passage to struggling readers, special education students, and ENL/ESL learners. View readability levels of websites before sharing with students to find appropriate reading levels for differentiation. On an interactive whiteboard or with a projector, test passages of public domain texts from sites like Project Gutenberg, reviewed here, by famous authors to see how their writing ranks when discussing their writing style.Why not have students put in the URL for their blog or wiki (or simply paste in a writing sample) to see the level at which they are writing? This is one way to encourage writing as a craft and challenge students to include more varied vocabulary and sentence structure in their writing.
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Safe Share TV - SafeShare.TV
Grades
K to 12tag(s): noregistration (81), safety (66)
In the Classroom
Use this to put videos into your teaching presentations. Or, to help students create presentations without the typical YouTube distractions. Have students edit clips to include only the information that is relevant to their project. Or, add clips to your class webpage or wiki as part of homework assignments or discussions. You could even use a clip as a writing prompt.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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