Wordplay Wonderland: Fun Learning Tools for Kids

Shanna Martin 0:19

Thanks for listening to the Tech Tools for Teachers Podcast, where each week we talk about a free piece of technology that you can use in your classroom. I'm your host, Shanna Martin. I'm a middle school teacher Technology and Instructional Coach from my district

Fuzz Martin 0:31

And I'm her producer and husband Fuzz Martin and Shanna, do you know why whenever we play Scrabble, I like to sit on the game pieces.

Shanna Martin 0:40

You sit on the game pieces?

Fuzz Martin 0:41

Yeah, cuz I like a good play words. Uh huh.

Shanna Martin 0:48

Oh, it was a pretty good one.

Fuzz Martin 0:51

I could use my own spring break. But you just had yours.

Shanna Martin 0:55

I did. And it was enjoyable. And nothing really exciting happened, which is the best part about it. Last year we traveled this year. Nobody spring breaks a line. So all of us were on our own. Yeah, but it was good.

Fuzz Martin 1:07

All by my sellllf. and glorious.

Shanna Martin 1:10

So yeah. Cool. Cool. So we're starting in the fourth quarter. We're moving through the school year. And today, there's a little word play

Fuzz Martin 1:21

today's little word play. Wordplay coming at ya.

Shanna Martin 1:25

I've been doing pretty good with only having one or two websites this season. You know, and focusing on them. Yeah, well, this army of three. But it'll be a quick little episode of fun ways to play with words in the classroom because students need a little pick me up sometimes. And I thought these were fun. And they're for all different age groups. So I figured everybody could have a little word play today. Great. We should play more Scrabble. It's been a while it has I agree. I like to play Scrabble. None of these are Scrabble, though. But anywho episode 147. Word lay, we have three different sites. So let's start today.

Fuzz Martin 2:02

Okay.

Shanna Martin 2:05

All right, first site we're gonna talk about today. It's really straightforward. It's called Crossword Labs. And it is crossword crossword labs.com. Give, okay. Easy enough, Crossword Labs. There are several of these out there. But this is what I find very useful. You make a crossword, you type in your title. You enter the answer, and the space and then the clue. And then a one word clue. And you put that per line. So you type in your little to do here's my answer type in my clue do to do to do and then it'll set it up for you create a passcode, boom, you have a crossword. Wow, it is super fast. And it's super awesome. So you can go ahead and type in your information, create it, and then share it out. You can either share it, like as a URL, or an embedded code if you want to, or just print it for your classroom and that kids can have it. You can throw them up on your, like whatever type of projector or board you have. And kids can just figure it out digitally on your board and work having worked through those groups if you choose to just have a number it. So crossword labs, super easy, straightforward, will take you less than five minutes to crank out a crossword for your classroom. And it's a great way to practice spelling practice vocabulary for your different units to go through and practice you don't have I have kids create them, for them to help practice like vocabulary talking about a unit. And they as groups make their own crosswords, and then we just project them because they can share it digitally. We didn't even print them. We just share them digitally and have them the class figure them out. I'll break apart vocabulary. Each group has like five vocabulary words to figure out and then they share them with each other. But it's a super fast free, straightforward, easy way to make crosswords and play around with words and have little fun with it and not have a bunch of frills or a bunch of extras. Yeah,

Fuzz Martin 4:03

I just set one up in the just make fun. Every answer has to do with a cat. So nice. Yeah, here we add fuzzy

Shanna Martin 4:11

tastic cast. So you're going to add that shareable link and we can drop it into the website and then people can play your crossword okay. All the answers that live there are public if you choose to have hidden ones and it's a members only type thing or private members only thing but if they're public, they're free to anybody and anybody can search them and see them. So cool. quick way to do vocab. Super easy fun crossword labs.com. Check it out.

Fuzz Martin 4:36

Check it out.

Shanna Martin 4:37

Easy word play,

Fuzz Martin 4:38

go go.

Shanna Martin 4:40

Okay. Do it. Sit two. This one. So Crossword Labs, I would say like upper elementary through high school could use up our next site is definitely for early elementary students. Okay. And it is from PBS kids.org. And we love PBS Kids. specifically this will be taken from the show Super Why super. They like fly all the book, little superhero ones. They're so cute. Anyway, so super why has a game it princess was on a spectacular spelling play. So for this one the easiest way to search this because although it's a very long URL, and you can just either favorite this one for your students or put into Google Classroom, PBS kids.org, super y games, and then it's Princess presto, spectacular spelling play is the whole thing. Yeah. With hyphens. Yeah, yeah. So the easiest way, if you just type into Google, PBS, kids, search spelling games, or super y, it'll come up really fast. Cool. So what's great about this as you can choose, as students can choose upper or lowercase letters when they're working, which I think is always helpful with our younger students, because some of them are still learning uppercase versus lowercase and being able to identify those letters. Yep, our preschoolers, kindergarteners, and you can choose uppercase lowercase, and then opens up a little play screen. It's great. She walks you through and you get letters. And it will give you the sounds so it's practicing phonics skills. And then you have to click on what you think the sound is. And if it's correct, it then goes into the little like flag that they are making. For the play label.

Unknown Speaker 6:21

With my spectacular spelling wand, we can make a map appear. ones up spell with me which letter makes the sound beautiful. There you go. There you go.

Shanna Martin 6:36

So she walks you through gives you all the directions and you can go ahead and play and create all the little letters with her. And she's adorable. And it's a great way to practice spelling for younger students and practice word sounds at the same time. Those words sound spelling, PBS Kids, they have wonderful things. Super why we love it for our readers. So there you go. Princess Presto Spectacular Spelling Play, yes, word play, little kid,

Fuzz Martin 7:02

go kids PBS kids.org/ a whole bunch of stuff...

Shanna Martin 7:07

Now that we've built a crossword and we've put out a play.

Fuzz Martin 7:11

Yes.

Shanna Martin 7:11

The third fun word site is Magnetic Poetry, lay online.com. Now, if you've ever walked into, I don't know, arms and oval or kind of any bookstore, I feel like they always had those little tins of magnetic words. And you'll play with them. Like when you're in this, like when you're there. And you like make the sentence. And then the next person changes it. And then someone walks through and does something inappropriate, and then somebody fixes it. And then they let you build sentences. So Magnetic Poetry, play online.com is just that it is the little magnetic words that you would see that come in a box. Usually, I use, click and drag. And you can go ahead and make your sentence or make your poem. So for those of you that do spring poetry, this is a great place to do it. If you want to do a sentence builder, you can also do that. But it's a great way to build. And you just click Load more words. And you can go ahead and make all the poetry sentences that you want with these cute little magnetic words. And they really do like magnet over each other, which I think is funny. Like, they don't just click into a line, you can just stack them on top of each other like you wouldn't realize. You can be annoying with it. So what's cool about it is you could have your kids creating poetry or creating sentences. And then when they're done with their creation, they just click Save home, and it will download their poem to their computer. And then it's like an image. Yeah, cool. And you can see, it looks like it's just like the words all kind of like piled up on your screen. And then they can share it with you either email it to you or drop into Google classroom or downloads. A few, I guess, warnings ahead of time. Yep. If you're doing this with students, make sure that you choose a specific set of poetry words, okay. So like I chose Magnetic Poetry play online.com/kids. And these are across the top. So when you're in magnetic poetry, there's original nature, kids, geek and happiness. And so, choosing the words the kids want is obviously kid friendly. It's fine for like elementary, middle kids. The word choice is easy to understand. And all the words are appropriate. You don't have to worry about anything. If you choose original, just be aware that that's gonna have all kinds of words on it. So you might just want to preview because you can load more words and load more words and they're not. Not appropriate. But there also, there might be words in there that you don't want to have elementary students working with when they're building poems and things like that. So there's just something to be aware of. There are different choices. They have of nature, they have kids, like I said, so make choices with what you want your kids words to be working with. But it's really kind of cool. Then they a little magnetic poetry play online. And then they can go ahead and create all the poems they want. And just like having those magnets that you buy in a box, but you have them digitally on your computer, download, and then you can always reset it and just gives you a blank space and you start over and read another poem.

I wrote you a poem. Did you? Yeah. Oh, here. Goody. I can't wait. My toy sings dinosaur feet. I swim through that chair. Dinner and dad walk together.

Well, wow, yeah, that was very insightful today. Very deep. It was. Thank you for sharing. You're welcome.

I'm poet.

And you didn't even know.

And neither does the world at this point.

So yeah, so there's a little fun little plan words. So just three very easy, straightforward sites to play around with in your classroom. From word puzzles to PBS Kids to Magnetic Poetry. Go ahead. Have some word practice with your kids easy ways to build that in and get into fourth quarter a little fun. Never hurts. Anyone. Agreed. There you go. Yeah. Welcome back from spring break. Or some of you might be going on spring break. Because of how like our weeks are so weird this year.

Yeah. Our daughters. Our youngest daughter has the last spring break here next.

Now this upcoming Yes. Upcoming upcoming week. So then everyone will have experienced spring break and a different week this year.

Yeah. All right. Meet. Yeah, I don't get one tear tear. You can have one whenever you want. Well, thanks.

So thanks for tuning in. This has been the Tech Tools for Teachers Podcast. If you ever have any questions you can find me on Twitter at smart in wi and if you want to get more information on the links to the technology discussed in this episode, and you can visit smart in web.com. If you'd like to support the show, please consider buying me a coffee or to visit buymeacoffee.com/smartinwi or visit smartinwi.com and click on that cute little purple coffee cup. Your donations help keep the show going. New episodes each week. Thanks for listening, go educate and innovate.

The ideas and opinions expressed on this podcast and the smartinwi.com website are those of the author, Shanna Martin, and not affirm employer. Prior to using any of the technologies discussed on this podcast, please consult with your employer regulations. This podcast offers no guarantee that these tools will work for you as described, but we sure hope they do.