May's Most Popular Posts on Free Technology for Teachers

Good evening from Maine where the first day of June made it feel like summer has almost arrived. At the end of every month I take a look at the posts that received the most views. The ten posts below were the most popular posts in the month of May.

1. Read & Write - A Great Chrome App That is Now Free for Teachers
2. Project Based Learning - An Explanation and Model Rubrics
3. Four Ways for Students to Create Multimedia Magazines
4. Three Good Pieces of Google Apps News
5. Twelve Good Tools for Building End-of-year Review Activities
6. Quill - Writing Worksheets Made Interactive
7. 7 Ideas for Implementing Technology For A Purpose
8. By Request - Good Alternatives to Google Image Search
9. 7 Web-based Tools for Creating Short Video Stories
10. Guided Reading in Google Apps for Education

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Grammar Bytes is a Great Site for Developing and Testing Grammar Skills

Grammar Bytes is a great website for teachers of Language Arts to share with their students. Grammar Bytes offers teachers and students a glossary of terms, handouts, interactive exercises, and slide show presentations. Instructional slideshow presentations are available to free download from Grammar Bytes. Each slide show is accompanied by a handout for students to complete as they view each presentation.

The interactive activities on Grammar Bytes require students to do more than memorize the rules of grammar. The Grammar Bytes interactive activities require students to read sentences and identify errors. In some of the activities students have to correct errors in a sentence. Each interactive activity is accompanied by a handout on which students can record their scores and measure their progress.

Applications for Education
The design and content of Grammar Bytes makes it a good resource for students and teachers. If I was responsible for teaching grammar I would use Grammar Bytes by having the students complete the interactive activities independently. I would follow-up the interactive activities by collecting my students' results sheets to select the slideshow that I would use in the next day's lesson.

Essay Map - Provides Step-by-Step Help for Constructing Essays

Over the years I've written about a lot of tools from Read Write Think. This one has received more views than any other that I've featured.

Essay Map is a handy tool from the folks at Read Write Think. Essay Map provides students with step by step guidance in the construction of an informational essay. Some of my students seem to struggle most with constructing an introduction and conclusion to their essays. Essay Map is particularly good for helping students visualize the steps needed to construct good introductory and conclusion paragraphs.

After students complete all of the steps in their Essay Map, they can print their essay outline. I have included a blank Essay Map outline in the image below.

Applications for Education
Essay Map is a convenient tool for anyone that teaches writing informational essays. Essay Map is probably too basic for most high school students, but it is definitely a good tool for middle school and elementary school students.