NAVIGATING THE WEB |
CLTA Web Site - A Goldmine of Literacy BY SHERI MANKAL The CLTA Web site is a goldmine of activities for the Literacy classroom. CLTA stands for the Centre for Language Training and Assessment, which is a program that runs out of Brampton and Mississauga. At this site you can find activities to suit every level of user. Note: You must have Shockwave to use many of the activities offered here, including Mouse Master, one of my personal favourites. There are links to download Shockwave right on the CLTA site and although it doesn't take long to download, depending on your system, I would recommend that you download Shockwave before you use these activities with your students. Mouse Master is an indispensable part of my computer lab as it teaches novice computer users how to become comfortable using the mouse in a very stress free, fun and interesting manner. In Mouse Master the students are presented with activities that slowly increase their comfort in using a mouse. First they are asked simply to point to various circles with the mouse. In stage two they learn to click on the circles. In stage three they are taught how to double click. This progression continues and includes all necessary mouse functions such as clicking, dragging and scrolling. Once your students are comfortable with the mouse, you may want to move on to some of the other lessons available on the CLTA Web site. These areas include Canadian Corner, Grammar Central, Crazy English, Terrible Teacher, Shocked ESL, Flashed ESL and American Stories. Canadian Corner offers 12 Canadian stories and American Stories includes six stories. Each story begins with a prereading vocabulary exercise and is followed by comprehension questions. Students can choose to print the story and questions to work on paper or they can complete the exercises on the computer and submit their answers to be checked. Grammar Central, Crazy English, Terrible Teacher, Shocked ESL and Flashed ESL are all grammar related activities. These lessons include such things as contractions, parts of speech, tenses, plurals, correct the mistakes, confusing words and run on sentences. The most recent addition to the CLTA activities is a Literacy Software CD that is available to purchase. The activities on this CD are geared toward low level learners and would be a great addition to any literacy classroom. To find out more about this CD and the other activities mentioned above visit http://www.clta.on.ca or call 1-905-949-0049. PuzzleMaker - http://puzzlemaker.school.discovery.com By DIANE MCCARGAR If you're someone who likes to use puzzles with your students, you should definetly take a look at Discovery Channel's online PuzzleMaker. This Web site allows you to create and print over 10 different types of puzzles including word searches, crossword puzzles, math puzzles and cryptograms. You create the puzzle on the Internet by following clearly defined steps. You can enter your own vocabulary and specifications such as size. The PuzzleMaker not only creates the puzzle, but it also creates a solution sheet for those of us who like to have the answers close at hand. Because the site is so easy to use, you may want to have students create their own puzzles and share them with others in the class. This tool is part of the Discovery Channel School Web site and can be found at: http://puzzlemaker.school.discovery.com |