21 Things 4 Students

21 Things 4 Students is an educational website that focuses on educating students for the 21 century classroom. Each topic contains examples, resources and activities to help further develop those 21st century tech skills that some of them are in desperate need of.  The topics are wide ranging and the lessons are well designed with opportunities for assessment.

Topics: Staying Organized, Web Presence, Digital Citizenship, Be Legal and Fair, Productivity Suite, Project Collaboration, Digital Video, Information Literacy, Personal Networks, Self-Directed Learning, Online Learning, Interactive Tools, e-Commerce, Career Prep, Troubleshooting, Visual Organizers, Powerful Presentations, VAI-Casting, Virtual Programming, Data Quest, and Mobile Computing.

Free resources to help you tackle spelling and grammar in the classroom.

Spelling

Vocabulary/Spelling City  is a free, interactive educational website that enables students of all ages and learning differences to practice their spelling and vocabulary words.

Knoword is a word game that focuses on teaching and advocating proper spelling habits.  This is an activity that students could spend 5-10 minutes doing in a lesson or you could set it for homework. A downside is that currently there is no way to check if students have completed the activity.

Visuwords is an online graphic dictionary. It lets you look up words to find their meanings and associations with other words and concepts. It produces diagrams reminiscent of a neural net to help students learn how words associate.

Grammar

Grammar Girl is a website that has podcasts on grammar. They are styled as short helpful tips. Hint: why not get students to create their own podcasts?

Grammarbook.com is a website contains free grammar tools such as rules, commonly confused words and grammar and punctuation videos.

Vocabulary

My Vocabulary - is a free resource that helps students master vocabulary. There are free interactive puzzles focusing on using latin/greek roots, thematic puzzles on a variety of subject areas and word lists.

18 Years in Rap

Flocabulary is all about hip-hop in the classroom. They are well known for their weekly news in rap.  As a tribute the graduating classes of 2011 they have released a video summarizing the last 18 years.

If you are interested in their work they do have resources/units available on their website including some free resources.