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Greetings!
Thanks so much for joining us in our mission to help people use the Internet more effectively. We'll be sharing tips and ideas and asking for your input in helping make our site grow and meet your individual needs in the classroom, home school setting, and as a parent. For many years, we have worked diligently to share the best resources that we have found for a variety of subject areas and grade levels. We are constantly updating this information on our website, and we are now sharing this information in other ways. We urge you to visit our blog and follow us on Twitter (internet4classr) to stay up to date with our offerings and our new sources/links for great educational and technology information for both you and your students and children. We also answer direct questions via email about almost any subject matter. One of the things that we have learned is that in this Web 2.0 world is that we have the ability to share our answers with anyone who has a similar issue. We will be posting these questions on our blog in the coming months, and encourage you all to post comments and read other comments to learn from your colleagues. Our user community is a great resource for information on almost any educational or technology topic.
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Getting Ready to Re-Enter the Learning Zone? Don't Leave it in the First Place!!
In our previous newsletter, we discussed Summer Learning Loss and ways to keep children learning through their summer activities, Believe it or not, school will start in a few weeks and children need to start practicing their reading and vocabulary skills again. Internet4Classrooms has Language Arts Skillbuilders for all grades to help students improve their vocabulary skills. Here are some quick activities to try at home after dinner: - Copy and Paste some text into a word document and then get creative! Change the plain words to fancy words and then have your child read it out loud.
- Follow these instructions for using the MS Word Thesaurus and create a story together.
- Here are a variety of grade based links for your child to practice comprehension skills.
Besides checking grammar and spelling, did you know that MS Word can be used to test passages for grade level readability? Try our tutorial of this feature, which can be used in a number of ways. |
Back to School Ideas
for Teachers and Parents
Most newsletters and blogs address this topic in August, but by then teachers are caught up in the throes of trying to organize their lessons, getting ready for registration, setting up their room and more. Parents are enjoying the summer nights of no homework and enjoying the evenings with their children. So, we thought it would be a good idea to put a few resources out now for everyone to think about now while we're all not so rushed. Healthy Lunch Ideas - This site includes ideas for school lunches, after-school snacks, and even special cakes to celebrate the start of the school year.
Helpful Tips for Moms and TeachersFirst Days of Preschool - Lots of songs and teacher tips that are especially suitable for beginning the school year and when "new" children enter your class. Lesson Plans for the First Days of School - from Education World |
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How Twitter Is Changing Our World
Whether you are a parent or a teacher, Twitter gives you the ability to communicate, network, share ideas and be part of a community......
For those of you who don't know what Twitter is, it is a microblogging service that allows people to connect and communicate to share idea s, ask questions, get/provide resources and form a community. Our user name is internet4classr and we are using Twitter as another way to gather and distribute free resources to interested educators and parents.
This summer, the Twitter storm has taken hold of the world in new ways, from joining people together that have a common interest to an internal news source from countries going through political instability.
These articles really made us think about how Twitter and Social Media is changing our world, on a tweet by tweet basis.
- Washington Taps Into a Potent New Force in Diplomacy - from the NY Times
- Twitter for Academia - Written in 2008, but the comments make it still relevant and includes many interesting resource links.
- 9 Reasons to Twitter in Schools - We especially like reason #1 - "Together, We're Better".
Have fun tweeting! Don't forget to follow Internet4classrooms on Twitter.
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Getting Around The New Internet4Classrooms.com
If you are a regular user of internet4classrooms.com, you've probably noticed some changes to our site. This summer we are continuing our migration to a new look and feel, as well as simplifying navigation and improving loading speeds for our pages. We've had a few bumps in our migration to our own hosted server environment, but our changes are in preparation for the coming school year, so we should be up and running 24/7 again very shortly. We will keep you posted on this and we will also "tweet" any downtime information via twitter.
There are new navigational bars across the top of the site. Use these to go to our major content areas. There is a navigational bar along the left side that will get you where you need to go very quickly. The "pink outlined word" indicates what section you are on and also some some sections have an additional one when you get deeper into the content area, showing the subsection.
This new menu structure should be a big help when you are navigating to various areas of the site, as this can now be done very quickly without having click "back" to get back where you were. In addition, we want to expose you to areas of the site easily where you may not be used to navigating.
Another update is that in our newly changed areas, all of the external links open out into a new page. This makes it very easy for students to get back to the i4c page they were previously on, just by closing the activity browser tab or window.
We realize that you may see more ads this summer than you have been used to seeing in the past. A major improvement to the site is that we will be no longer integrating ads into our content, and keep them in the outer frame areas. We will also start to minimize distracting ads, such as pop-ups/unders, once school starts and your students start using the site again for classroom practice and instruction.
Our company is currently supported by advertising, but our new look and feel is designed to keep distractions away from the eyes of students working on skills to improve their learning.
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Internet4classrooms.com is a free educational portal for teachers, parents, homeschoolers and students. Visitors come from around the world to find Internet resources for their educational needs. One can find resources ranging from lesson plans to worksheets, individual grade level resources to templates, and even interactive learning games. We were very honored when one teacher called the site a "Wal-Mart for Teachers". If you cannot find what you need for instruction on any topic, please feel free to email us and we will help you find resources to fit your needs.
Sincerely,
Susan Brooks
Myra Gold
Internet4Classrooms.com |
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Our Blog
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Worried about the summer flu? Check out our latest blog article for information on trustworthy sources and tips to keep your children healthy this summer and as they head back to the classroom.
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