Article Review

Technology-Rich Projects

Five Internet sites too good to miss

By Linda D. Labbo

I was happy to find this article in The Reading Teacher May 2006 issue. It is fairly difficult to find technology information or websites that are useful and those that pertain specifically to first grade. I agree with the author’s comment that many Internet sites that supposedly provide young children with suitable activities are not developmentally appropriate. Many sites that profess they are suitable for primary students, I find usually have too many words that children are unable to read or they lack enough support with pictures or audio instructions for children to actively maneuver. It seems most sites that claim to be for primary children are not user-friendly or they don’t parallel the primary grade curriculum.

The author suggested five Internet sites in this article that are unique. They appear to be user-friendly and appropriate for the primary student. Coincidently, I use the first site, www.starfall.com, in my classroom quite often. It is especially good for non-readers or emerging readers as well as offering extended lessons and open-ended writing lessons for diversified levels of students. For children who require more scaffolding, Starfall provides comprehensible transitions between pages. For example, a star blinks to indicate to the children what to do next.

The other four websites the author suggested for primary students are unfamiliar to me. She suggested MoJo’s Musical Mouseum at www.kididdles.com/mouseum, the Biography Maker at www.bham.wednet.edu/bio/biomarker.htm, MotherGoose.com at www.mothergoose.com, and Months of the Year Published Project at www.siec.k12.in.us/~west/proj/month/index.html#Top. I visited each one of these sites and spent some time becoming familiar with them.

I found MoJo’s Musical Mouseum a site that offered an extensive list of children’s song lyrics, many accompanied by piano to help learn the rhythm. I plan to use this website as a teacher resource to provide more songs for my students. I plan to print the song lyrics for their personal reading poetry notebooks. I do not feel my students would navigate or stick with this site to provide significant learning. It is what I would consider an adult-assisted site.

Next I toured Biography Maker. It is a website sponsored by Bellingham School District in Bellingham, Washington. It is a tutorial to help instruct students on writing a biography. I think it is well done and would be helpful to students at the level where writing a biography was part of the curriculum.

I also visited MotherGoose.com and Months of the Year Published Projects. I found MotherGoose.com fairly wacky. I wasn’t sure what it was all about at first but when I went to the games and played Jack Be Nimble I was sure it was silly. I had 12 chances to press the space bar and assist Jack over the candlestick but apparently I was not very nimble in my timing of the space bar and Jack landed on the candle repeatedly. Each time his bum hit the flame, he would scream. I am not sure this site would assist much with literacy but might help with agility using the space bar and timing.

Months of the Year Published Projects was by far the best site as a resource for myself and for my students. It is a website designed by a first-grade teacher and followed many of the same topics I cover. This teacher has wonderful links to photos for Painted Lady butterflies and Luna moths. It gives a visual tour of Mount Vernon and historic Lincoln sites. This site has wonderful ideas on organizing curriculum using technology-rich projects over the months of the year. I am certainly game to give a few of these suggestions a try.