When used effectviely, technology can enhance your instruction, leading to increased student engagement and learning. Below are some tech tools that can be infused into your ELA instruction...and they are free (at least the basic membership is free)!

BookSnaps give students an opportunity to record their thinking while reading. BookSnap creator Tara Martin's website offers how-to videos using a variety of formats. This is fun for students and not just limited to ELA...try MathSnaps, Social Studies Snaps, and ScienceSnaps!

Flipgrid is an app where someone, usually a teacher, poses a question or prompt, and students respond to it with short videos. Once they’ve finished their video, they can leave responses to other students’ videos.

Book Creator is a beautiful, flexible tool that allows students of any age or skill level to create, publish, and share online books.

Creating books using this tool can be as simple or complex as you make it. Students who prefer more structure can choose a comic book layout and insert Google images straight from the app into locked panels. Those who want more flexibility can choose a completely blank page and upload their own artwork. Students can customize the font, add shapes and stickers, hyperlink the text to other online resources, and import audio and video files.

When the book is ready to be published, the pages turn like a real book, and the audio and video play right inside the app.

Jennifer Gonzalez, Cult of Pedagogy

https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/6-tech-tools-2018/

Newsela has a growing collection of articles about science, art, health, war and peace, and money written at four different Lexile levels. This makes it possible for teachers to group students by reading level in a station rotation and differentiate subtly by assigning students in each group the same article written at a different Lexile level. There is a short quiz paired with each article, so teachers can assess the students’ ability to comprehend, analyze and evaluate what they’ve read.

Catlin Tucker http://catlintucker.com/2016/07/englishtechtools/

Storybird is a unique language arts tool. Illustrations are used to inspire students to write stories: picture books for K-5, longform chapter books for Grades 5-9, and poetry for everything in-between.

In a learning scenario, “starting with pictures” is powerful: it stirs the emotions while it engages the brain and jumpstarts students into their text, avoiding the blank-page syndrome.

EdPuzzle is the perfect tool for allowing students to watch and engage with videos while the teacher gathers data throughout the lesson. As teachers dabble into the flipped classroom philosophy, EdPuzzle is the perfect enhancement tool for videos to be watched at home instead of eating up valuable class time.

Email: mhayes@ltps.org
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