Zing - Free Access to Thousands of Digital Books

Are you looking  for a wide variety of high quality digital books.  Take a minute to check out Zing. The books are organized by genre, reading level (lexile and guided reading), themes and topics. There are suggested collections for age levels as well.

These books can be used at all levels.  Consider the ways to use this site.

• a mentor book
• gathering background knowledge 
• model reading strategies 
• differentiate classroom reading 

Parent Teacher Conference Digital Sign up.

There never seems to be an easy way to schedule Parent Teacher Conferences.  Well wait no longer using Google Forms with a Google extension might fit the bill!  Take a look at Richard Byrne's blog post Coordinate Back-to-School with Choice Eliminator and Google Forms.

Guide Student Focus on Websites- Bounce

How often do you direct students to a website to gain background knowledge or to research and the room echos of "I can't find it".  Reading informational text is difficult in general, but add images, flashing advertisements, and different fonts with varied sizes it is hard to find anything much less focus on the important text.  There are many tools that allow teachers to annotate webpages directing focus and save precious classroom time.

Bounceapp is a simple tool to use and share annotations with students.

• Teachers can highlight areas and add questions and comments for students to ponder.  
• The highlighted information is numbered in the order selected, guiding students learning. 
• Suggestion: have students open a word document or paper and pencil to reflect and answer questions.

Try it out.  Click here to view an article annotated with the use of BounceApp.

Here is a short tutorial on creating your own BounceApp.

Padlet~ A Quick Tool for Formative Feedback

Padlet has been around for awhile, but still holds it weight for use in the classroom.  It is a great tool to collect feedback from your students and formatively assess their learning to guide your instruction.

Padlet is platform friendly, easy to use on computers, tablets and mobile devices.

Book Review Sites K-12

Here are a few of my favorite sites in finding good reads for literature lovers of all ages!  Over the years these have been my "go to" sites.  I really enjoy the "Cool and New" book section (Kidsread and Teenreads), it is a wonderful resource to keep up popular new reads.

• Kidsread
• Teenreads
• LitPick (Grades 5-12) - Students can become members and write reviews, a wonderful way to make their reading and writing relevant and meaningful!

Looking for a New Book?

Check out the...

Book Seer
Type in the title and author of the last book you read and the Book Seer will give you similar books.

Your Next Read

Type in a title of the last book you read, click on the image of the book and a web of suggestions will be given.

What Should I Read Next?

Enter a book or author name you like and the site will analyse our huge database of real readers' favorite books to provide book recommendations and suggestions for what to read next.

Google Slide Templates

Are you tired of the boring template options in Google Slide Presentation and PowerPoint?  Check out Slides Carnival, download a template and let your slides come alive!

• Click through the presentation to get an idea of the options one template has to offer.
• Quick "how to" use a template.