Critical Thinking Games

It’s time for the Wednesday Website suggestion!! For two years, I was the Technology Specialist at a school in Georgia. During that time, I amassed a large collection of websites that I use with my students. If you want to search through some of them, you can check out my IKeepBookmarks site. Or, you can check back here each week for the Wednesday Website suggestion.

I don’t know about your kids, but my kids are really starting to tune me out.  It might have something to do with there only being 32 days of school left.  (How many days do you have?)  So, I have been going through some of my website collections looking for something that will hold their attention.  This week’s website of the week is Cool Math Games 4 Kids.  If you’ve never visited their site – it’s an amazing compilation of math games that work on tons of math skills, including critical thinking.  I spend a lot of time on critical thinking in my classroom, (In fact, I wrote a guest blog post for Fabulous Fourth Grade Froggies on critical thinking that you might want to check out.) so I have been working on these three critical thinking games with my students. 

Be warned – these games are addictive to ADULTS as well as children, and can be played happily for hours, thereby draining you of your grading time! 

 

B-Cubed is a great critical thinking game.  It is like a 3-d maze.  Every time you move the yellow cube on top of a grey cube, it makes the grey cube disappear.  The object of the game is to make all o the grey cubes disappear before you make the red cube disappear.

 

 

Bloxorz is a greatly addictive strategy game.  You must twist and turn the tall box to get it through the hole.  There are many, many levels!

 

Phit is a tetris-like game where you use all the pieces and try to get them to fit into the yellow box.  It’s a great visual thinking game!

 

 

 

 

 

Hope you enjoyed this Wednesday’s Website suggestion – check back each Wednesday for a new Wednesday’s Website suggestion and click HERE to view previous Website suggestions.

Using Wallwisher as a Center

It’s time for the Wednesday Website suggestion!! For two years, I was the Technology Specialist at a school in Georgia. During that time, I amassed a large collection of websites that I use with my students. If you want to search through some of them, you can check out my IKeepBookmarks site. Or, you can check back here each week for the Wednesday Website suggestion.

Have you ever used Wallwisher?  I have used it in multiple professional development activities, but I think lots of teachers overlook it’s uses in our computer center.  So, this week’s Wednesday Website suggestion is www.wallwisher.com.  This website is basically a virtual interactive bulletin board, where different people can collaborate to join their ideas together by adding a “sticky note” to the wall.  You can also add pictures, and videos to your sticky notes.  It’s a great way to get kids collaborating, but it’s also an innovative way to collect information from your students and it makes an easy computer center.  Here are some ways you can use Wallwisher in your classroom:

1.)  Put a challenge up on your wall for students to complete when they come to the computer center.  For example:  Write a silly sentence using two or three of your spelling words.

2.)  Assign your students a video (by adding the link to your post on the wall).  After students have watched the video – they can answer a question about the video, tell you their favorite part, or even leave you a question about something they didn’t understand.

3.) Combine two great sites to make a dynamic listening center – Add the video links from www.storylineonline.net to a post.  Let students listen to the story and then “summarize” the story in 160 characters or less (160 characters is the limit for each sticky note).

4.)  Make a virtual “add a sentence” story – post a picture into a sticky note and write the first sentence of a story about that picture.  Ask students to add one sentence to the story, by adding a sticky note and placing their sticky notes in order to make a story.  

5.)  Do Math Problem Solving in Reverse.  Post a number sentence (2×5=10) to your question.  Have students each add a sticky note with a self-created word problem that could use the number sentence.

 

BTW – I am taking the Organized Classroom Blog’s 5-Star Blogger Challenge.  Stop by her blog for details, and please feel free to leave me a comment telling me if I am a 5-Star Blogger.

 

Hope you enjoyed this Wednesday’s Website suggestion – check back each Wednesday for a new Wednesday’s Website suggestion and click HERE to view previous Website suggestions.

 

Shel Silverstein Site

It’s time for the Wednesday Website suggestion!! For two years, I was the Technology Specialist at a school in Georgia. During that time, I amassed a large collection of websites that I use with my students. If you want to search through some of them, you can check out my IKeepBookmarks site. Or, you can check back here each week for the Wednesday Website suggestion.

April is National Poetry Month, so this week’s website suggestion surrounds around my absolute favorite kid’s poet – Shel Silverstein. I have all of his books in my class – and we regularly read from A Light in the Attic and Where the Sidewalk Ends. In honor of this amazing author, my kids are going to spend some time this month at his official website. There are games, free printables, lesson plans and information about Shel Silverstein. It’s such a great sight, I wish I had time for an author study!

If you are looking for more activities for National Poetry Month – be sure to check out the Linky Party over at the ESOL Odyssey. I’ve linked up my poetry journal over there with her, and there are tons of other ideas and resources available.

Hope you enjoyed this Wednesday’s Website suggestion – check back each Wednesday for a new Wednesday’s Website suggestion and click HERE to view previous Website suggestions.

Earth Day Website

It’s time for the Wednesday Website suggestion!! For two years, I was the Technology Specialist at a school in Georgia. During that time, I amassed a large collection of websites that I use with my students. If you want to search through some of them, you can check out my IKeepBookmarks site. Or, you can check back here each week for the Wednesday Website suggestion.

Earth Day is coming up quick, and I know many classes are studying Ecology in preparation.  Here’s a great Ecology website from PBS called Eeko-World that is extremely kid-friendly.  There are videos and games for students to play to encourage and explain many different aspects of ecology including: recycling, reducing air and water pollution, and preserving habitats.  Students can also create an eco-creature and use that creature to interact with other people’s eco-creatures. 

 

Hope you enjoyed this Wednesday’s Website suggestion – check back each Wednesday for a new Wednesday’s Website suggestion and click HERE to view previous Website suggestions.

Puzzlemania!!

It’s time for the Wednesday Website suggestion!! For two years, I was the Technology Specialist at a school in Georgia. During that time, I amassed a large collection of websites that I use with my students. If you want to search through some of them, you can check out my IKeepBookmarks site. Or, you can check back here each week for the Wednesday Website suggestion.

I do three center rotations a day – math, reading and writing, and I try to have a computer center during each rotation.  During writing centers, the computer is my content (science or social studies) center.  During reading centers, the computer is my listening center (see this post for the websites I use).  During math centers, the computer is my critical thinking center.  One of my favorite critical thinking websites is Jigzone.  On this website, students can work on tons of different jigsaw puzzles at many different difficulty levels.  It’s a very easy way to differentiate, and still work on visual and critical thinking.  It’s also a way to give students a chance to do puzzles, without all the mess of puzzle pieces everywhere!

 

Hope you enjoyed this Wednesday’s Website suggestion – check back each Wednesday for a new Wednesday’s Website suggestion and click HERE to view previous Website suggestions.