Thing #17 YouTube and TeacherTube

So, I first starting looking for videos that I can use in my lessons. I'm all about killing two birds with one stone! Anyway, in YouTube I just searched first grade, and right away found several "Hooked on Phonics" videos. I watched a few, and they were actually pretty good! I thought they would be great for some of my struggling readers to watch on the classroom computers, just to help them more with their phonics! Here's one on -sh and -ch:

Since I found a video for language arts, I wanted to find one for Math. This was considerably more difficult, I found lots of songs or parts of songs, but I thought they were too cheesy for me. Then, I found this song for Skip Counting. I know that my first graders had a hard time counting by 2s at the beginning of the year this year, and it would have been great to have. It's a very catchy song counting by 2s, 5s, and 10s! Check it out!!

I have been trying to knit forever! I know the basics, but I haven't been able to start a project! So for my how to video, I found several videos showing how to knit!! I watched some show how to cast-on and knit and purl and cast off! Lots of great videos to choose from too! There were over 600 videos on knitting! I don't have the time for all of them, but it's great to know where to go when I get stuck! The last video I looked at in YouTube was my fun video! This year the teachers at my school are singing a song for the kids to get the pumped for the CRCT! So I looked up some songs other schools have done! I found a great one a school did to Lady Gaga's Poker Face! It's Test Taker Face, it's too good not to share!

I've heard of TeacherTube, I prefer SchoolTube, but they are both very similar. While at TeacherTube, I thought of searching for items that have to do with Folktales, which is what my WebQuest is about. I found a cute video where children make coffee portraits of Johnny Appleseed.I thought that my students can create their own portrait of Johnny Appleseed, and write what they have learned about Johnny Appleseed on his "hat". This is similar to what the young children did, except they will be required to show what they've learned! I even think that this would be a great project to share with our parents! I've made a few videos and posted them on my classroom blog. One of the last ones we did was when we were learning about Teddy Roosevelt. I have my students create a Teddy Bear and write 3 facts about his life on the belly of the bear. Then I took a picture of the bears and made a movie for our blog! The kids love seeing their work, and their parents love it even more! I'm glad I checked out TeacherTube, because I never thought of using it as a way to get ideas!