Storybook

Storybook is a great website with games, word banks and videos about a collection of stories written by authors Scoular Anderson, Debi Gliori, Mairi Hedderwick and Frank Rodgers. It would be a prerequisite to have the books of course and the books in question are Never Keep a Python as a Pet, Katie Morag and the New Pier, My Little Brother, I Can’t go to Sleep, The Bunk-Bed Bus, Backseat’s Special Day, Oh No Peedie Peebles and The Snow Lambs. Teachers of the younger classes my well be familiar with some of these and hopefully have them in their libarary. If so the website is for you.

The sie has interactive activities for each of the stories including bright, fun games and choosing the correct letter to complete words from the story. There are also videos of the authors talking about their story and reading excerpts. If you have these stories I highly reccomend using this website. It is suitable for children from Junior Infants to possibly 2nd class at a push.

Countdown Game

The Countdown Game website, based on the Countdown TV show, is a resource that children in my class love. The 3 games that are played on the show can now be played on an Interactive Whiteboard. I tend to use these as starters to a maths or literacy lesson . In the ‘Letters Game’ children  select from vowels and consonants, with the aim being to create the longest word in 30 seconds. In the ‘Numbers Game’ children select their large and small numbers and try to reach a given target using addition, subtraction, multiplication and division within 30 seconds. The ‘Conundrum Game’ asks you to find a 9 letter word from a jumble of letters but I have found that even 6th class find this one too difficult. You can find any potential Carol Vordemans in your class. My favourite part of the website is the fantastic Countdown music.

A useful tip when using any website on an Interactive Whiteboard is to put the page to fullscreen. This can be done by pressing the F11 key or by selecting View->Fullscreen on your browser.