Organizational Tools
Resources collected by: Angela Calcaterra
The tools and resources below are ideas to help your students with reading and writing organization. However, many of these tools can provide organizational help for other subjects as well as daily life activities. All of the tools chosen have AT or UDL ideals implemented in them in order to help your students be the most successful they can be. Click on the name of the tool for a direct link to the website for more information.
The tools and resources below are ideas to help your students with reading and writing organization. However, many of these tools can provide organizational help for other subjects as well as daily life activities. All of the tools chosen have AT or UDL ideals implemented in them in order to help your students be the most successful they can be. Click on the name of the tool for a direct link to the website for more information.
Tools For Students
Retrieved from: ITunes.com
Looking for an Ipad, Ipod, or computer application? Apple has created an app on ITunes that is loaded with a ton of different organizational tools such as venn diagrams, concept maps, problem/solution maps, and many many more. The graphic organizers are fill in the blank templates allowing students to keep their work organized. Not only can this app be used for reading and writing, but it can also be used for science, social studies, and many other subjects. This app can be adapted to all ages and abilities depending on the concept map used. The best part about this app from ITunes is that it is only $0.99 and it completely worth the purchase.
Lucid Chart
Retrieved from: Lucidchart.com
Need a resource where you can create your own flow charts, diagrams, problem/solution charts, and much more? Then Lucid Chart would be the perfect resource for you. This tool is excellent for teachers and parents looking to create their own tools and charts to use with their students. This resource would also he helpful for students who needs to organize their school work and the student has the freedom to do so anyway they would like too. Lucid chart allows you to choose the shapes you want your information to go in and lets you connect that information with arrows, or leave the shapes side by side, or one on top of the other. Lucid Chart let's your mind be the only thing that stops you when creating your chart or diagram. With an account username and password you can create charts and save them to use or edit later. This is a free program, but can also be purchased for an individual, team, or enterprise for a very minimal cost. For an individual the cost is $9.95 per month and a team $2.00- $5.00 a month. For an enterprise you must contact the company directly for pricing. After learning about this resource from a professor who has purchased the individual package, he has not seen a difference between the free and premium option. If you are on a budget and need to create charts and diagrams this may be the tool for you.
This link is an overview of how to use Lucid Charts and how it can be incorporated into your classroom activities. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtDym9Iasbo
This link is an overview of how to use Lucid Charts and how it can be incorporated into your classroom activities. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtDym9Iasbo
Prezi
Retrieved from Prezi.com
Prezi is an organizational tool that helps you organize, present, and share your ideas. Prezi allows you to create your own organizational tools that can be used sort of like a powerpoint presentation. Prezi allows for a variety of different visuals that help with learning. Teachers would benefit from this resource re-creating and re-designing the way they present a lesson to their students. Prezi is a great tool for visual learners because of all the different pictures and other learning tools that can be added to the presentation. Prezi is also a useful tool for students. Prezi allows students to be able to create their own presentation that is organized how they would like it to be and done in a very create way. Prezi is a free tool once you are signed up, but you can also upgrade to enjoy and pro level for a small fee. The enjoy cost is $4.92 a month and the pro charge is $13.25 a month. The one major difference that I have seen between the free and enjoy Prezi is that if you sign up for free everything that you create is public whereas if you pay your presentations are private. The other major difference is the number of Prezi presentations you can create. The free version only allows you a few presentations and if you pay you have a lot more space to create presentations. If you are looking to make a change to the way you present lessons to your class try Prezi today as a fun, visual, and create tool that can add excitement and stimulate learning.
Here is a Prezi presentation that has been created by a Prezi user about the story of Hansel and Gretel. Click the link to see how Prezi can be incorporated into your classroom lectures and used for students organization. This Prezi is in the form of a story and is a way to present reading in a different format other than just reading students a book or having them read a book. http://prezi.com/gv4_hgsyfvpy/hansel-gretel/
Here is a Prezi presentation that has been created by a Prezi user about the story of Hansel and Gretel. Click the link to see how Prezi can be incorporated into your classroom lectures and used for students organization. This Prezi is in the form of a story and is a way to present reading in a different format other than just reading students a book or having them read a book. http://prezi.com/gv4_hgsyfvpy/hansel-gretel/
Squareleaf
Retrieved from edutechintegration.blogspot.com
Do your students need colors and shapes to help stay organized when reading and writing? Squareleaf is the perfect tool for you to try. Squareleaf is an online sticky-note tool that can be used for reading, writing, and organization. Students can easily share notes that they have created with classmates, teachers, and parents. Different color and different shape notes can be used to organize either individual writing assignments, or even more than one writing assignment. For example a student could use a different color to represent each different writing assignment that they have been assigned. A lesson plan idea that can be implemented into a classroom is if your class is working on writing stories and learning the different parts of a story, you can use Squareleaf as a way to help students learn the different parts of a story such as the characters, climax, setting, etc. by each part representing a different color and shape. This can either be done with a whole class where each student uses the same color and shape to keep it uniform across the class. Or this can be used for an individual student who is having a difficult time understanding the story parts, and this way the student will have a visual represtitive of each part of a story by showing it in different colors and shapes. Check out Squareleaf for more information.
Thoughtboxes
Retrieved from Thoughtboxes.com
Thoughtboxes is a recourse designed to make organizing, completing tasks, and collaborating much easier! Although from first glance this website looks like it is a tool to just organize your daily life, but after looking at this tool closer, it can easily be incorporated into students writing. Students can use Thoughtboxes as a first step to their writing as a way to get ideas and main points down. For example a student wanting to write about the zoo can title the Thoughtbox "Zoo" and then under it list any ideas about the zoo the student has and would like to write about. As the student is writing, they can then check off which idea they have written about and it gets crossed off their list making it easier to see which ideas they have written about and which ideas still need to be written. This tool would be especially helpful for a student that has ADD or ADHD and looses focus quickly allowing the student to see visual reminders about what they have or have not already written about. Thoughtboxes is a free program after you get signed up and you are also able to share your Thoughtboxes with others. You can access your Thoughtboxes from any computer that has internet accessibility. Thoughtboxes also allows you to keep all of your notes on a single page and then by pressing the individual note you can get more close up details. Having all of your notes on one page allows you to be able to see everything that you are working on, or if that is too distracting you can, like I mentioned above, click on an individual note for further details.
Super Teacher Worksheets
Retrieved from Superteacherworksheets.com
Looking for a website filled with great worksheets for reading and writing organization? Super Teacher Worksheets has hundreds of worksheets for not only reading and writing, but also for sequencing, KWL, venn diagrams, relationship trees, math, science, and social studies and much, much more. These worksheets are pre-made and can be printed off of the website directly. The catch is that you need to be a member paying $19.95 for a single year. Your school can also purchase a membership for $300 per year as well. However, with the amount of organizational worksheets available and the creativity or the worksheets, you are sure to find one the peaks the interest of your students to help them become engaged in writing as well as more excited about the writing process. There are organizational worksheets like the one pictured (hamburger), and there are also robots, flowers, ice cream cones and many more. Even though these worksheets are fun and silly, they also have an educational purposes helping students organize and be more clear as they write and read.
The picture below is taken from a 4th grade classroom where the students modeled the process of "hamburger" writing. Each student made their own hamburger modeling the writing process practicing adding details to their writing. The buns are the introductory and conclusion paragraphs and the detail paragraphs in between are the lettuce, meat, etc. This writing process for adding details can be easily implemented into any age classroom as visual way to help students understand about writing.
ReadWriteThink
Retrieved from ReadWriteThink.org
Many adults forget that timelines are also a form of organization that are very important to students learning. Timelines can be used in reading and writing as a way to get all the facts down about a specific topic in chronological order to more easily organize writing. ReadWriteThink is a tool that is very easy to use and is free to use with out without a membership. ReadWriteThink takes you step by step through the process of helping you make a timeline starting with your name and title and allowing you to choose your unit of measure to be shown on the timeline such as; date, time, event, entry, or one of your choice. Choosing the next entry arrow at the top then allows you to start adding more details to your timeline. Once you are finished adding the events to your timeline you can then go back over your timeline and edit it and you can also print, or start a new project. However, the only way to save your work is by printing it. ReadWriteThink timeline is a great resource to help students understand sequencing and chronological order.
Above is an example of a timeline that was made on the life of Benjamin Franklin. As you can see, this tool allows you to add dates, events, and descriptions making your timeline personal to your lesson or topic that is being taught. Not only can a teacher or parent use this tool to show students events on a timeline, but a student could also easily use this tool to create their own timeline. The timeline can also be used as a pre-write as a way to gather and collect ideas that can be used to write a paragraph or a paper based on the events that are put in the timeline. This can also be used as a way to teach across subject areas such as social studies, writing, and many more.
Postica Stick It
Retrieved from http://www.posti.ca/
Easy way to create and share sticky notes! Use this tool to help students learn organization through posting sticky notes on an online site. This resource can easily be incorporated into daily reading and writing activities. For reading students can use the stick notes as a way to post main ideas that they read about, and for writing the students can use the sticky notes to organize their thoughts before they begin the actual writing assignment. This is an easy tool to use and it gives you different color options as well as being able to share the notes with others. Postica Stick It does not limit the number of characters per note and it is a free program to use with internet access.
Below are a few of the key features of Postica Stick It:
Below are a few of the key features of Postica Stick It:
- New email delivery of notes- you can now set your sticky notes to be delivered to you each day or once a week to your inbox. Download any attachments directly from the email.
- Filter your notes on the fly- using postica's new search you can filter your notes based on keywords without leaving or refreshing the screen.
- New services page- when you login you can control all of the Postica services under one page. Update your twitter settings, change your email notifications, or check out our iGoogle gadget.
- Better designed sticky notes- the notes are now bigger and have a nicer design.
- Set a background- on your stick note wall you can now set either a background color or select one of the themes. Just a little more personalization for Postica.
Worksheet Works
Retrieved from worksheetworks.com
Worksheet Works has many different subject areas filled with all types of worksheets from fill in the blanks, to word searches, and venn diagrams. This tool also has a category for English Language, which includes reading and writing which we have been focusing on. Withing the English Language category there are sub categories split up into alphabet, vocabulary, alphabetizing skills, writing skills, parts of speech, and numbers and words. Then inside each sub category there are other folders or tabs that have more information regarding that specific topic. For example the writing skills then has scissor practice, foundations of writing, and handwriting practice allowing you to choose which category your student or students' need extra practice with. Then withing each of those topics there are more options for you to be able to customize the practice you are looking for to give to your students. The writing skills section is particularly helpful because not only does it focus on the regular alphabet, but it also gives students practice with fine motor skills such as cutting, tracing, and copying made up signs and letters. Many times we forget that part of being successful in writing is having developed fine motor skills. This tool is a great way to help struggling writers be able to gain more confidence through developing those fine motor skills that are needed to be successful.
This tool makes it very easy for teachers to be able to customize the worksheet for their students needs allowing you to choose the number of letters, if you want the student to trace it, and so on. Below is an example of a writing skills worksheet I have created. This could be used for younger students who need to develop fine motor skills and already have the regular alphabet down, but just need more practice, allowing them to trace made up letters and signs to develop those skills.
This tool makes it very easy for teachers to be able to customize the worksheet for their students needs allowing you to choose the number of letters, if you want the student to trace it, and so on. Below is an example of a writing skills worksheet I have created. This could be used for younger students who need to develop fine motor skills and already have the regular alphabet down, but just need more practice, allowing them to trace made up letters and signs to develop those skills.