We Give Books

Pearson has an amazing site that gives books away for free! Wegivebooks.org has almost 200 great books that you can read online for FREE and when you sign up, you can actually give a book each time you read a book. ALL FOR FREE! How amazing is that? Right now they have a Read for My School campaign which will give a book to the school you designate. Laurel Hill Elementary would love some free books so feel free to read for our school! Of course, you can also designate your own school to receive free books. It's easy, fun, and FREE! What's not to love?

ABC's of North Carolina

I hate to say it but I may just be a little crazy over VoiceThread. As soon as I used it the first time, I thought of all kinds of cool things my students could do with it. For the past couple of weeks, some of our 4th graders have been working on the ABC's of North Carolina and putting them into a PowerPoint presentation. I just had to take it a step forward and turn one (or two, or three....) into a VoiceThread. It makes it so much more fun to present their work with their voice plus more people can experience their projects. Here's one of my favorites:

Voice Thread

Last week I was faced with a problem.  I had the cutest little first grader come to me with a book he had made for the library.  This book was nicely bound with yarn and "printed" on copier paper.  Library books take a pounding.  They're shoved into book bags, tossed around on the bus, chewed up by dogs and babies....you get the picture.  Obviously this was not what I wanted for this aspiring author.  How could we preserve this great work while still making it available for others to read?  The answer to our conundrum was Voice Thread.  Voice Thread allows you to upload pictures and comment on them by recording your voice.  It is the perfect technology tool for students to share their work.  It took no time to scan his book, upload the pictures, and record his story.  We logged in through my account but it was easy to add the students picture and name to my list of identities.  I would definitely suggest doing this with younger students so that they don't have to worry about logging into their own account. Plus it gives me the ability to login and share his video on our school website and in this blog.  His class watched it on the SmartBoard and his parents were able to watch it at home.  Of course, Voice Thread could be used for more than just students reading their stories.  Check back soon to see the creative ways we're using it at Laurel Hill Elementary!