StoryJumper is a safe and educational place for your kids. Our site teaches your children to write a story in just 7 steps using our Storyjumper process. Storyjumper allows you to create online books using a plethora of characters, scenes, and props. Teachers can, for free, create classes to register students so they each have their own account. As of this writing, there does not seem to be a limit as to how many student accounts you can create.

Lightning Bug is a writing resource companion website with interactive elements.  This site can help tween and teen writers to brainstorm ideas for their writing, develop stories ideas, and then figure out how to tie up the ending of a story.  Each section provides different suggestions on how to start, develop, and end the story in a fun way, but still using the main concepts of the writing process.  Under character development, the article provided shows Lego characters and how each different character could fit into a story along with teaching the concept of mind mapping.  This is also a great resource for teachers and parents to learn and use for lessons or activities. Creating a story together is a great way to share time with a teenager and allows for one-on-one interaction.

simple. you’ll see one word at the top of the following screen. You have sixty seconds to write about it. Click ‘go’ and the page will load with the cursor in place.  Don’t think. just write.

ReadWriteThink creates a lot of great educational resources. With Printing Press students can create a booklet, flyer, brochure, or newspaper fairly easily. There is a nice guide that walks you through the process and the focus is on writing. There is a place within each publication for a picture, but not one that you can add from your computer. This space is reserved for students to draw a picture after printing.

Read Write Think is one of the most popular websites for students to practice their writing skills.  This website has both informative and interactive elements.  Students can learn about the various aspects of writing by reading the lessons provided.  They can then put what they have learned into action by using the interactive resources like the build a comic creator, creating a timeline, and the Printing Press which helps students to make various documents like brochures and letters.  This website is also a great resource for teachers and parents to learn about the various aspects of writing like summarizing and fact finding. 

The BBC Bite Size site has educational resources for younger children in the areas of reading, writing, spelling, grammar, math, and science.  The writing component includes a game, a reading section, a video, and a quiz.  Topics include persuasive writing, writing letters, newspapers, and reports, and how to write and follow instructions.  The four components under each topic provide students with an online lesson into the various types of writing in a fun and interactive manner.

Learn Something Every Day is a fun, simple site that is great for a morning opening activity.  In the classroom you could have this site up on the projector every morning to generate discussion or as writing prompts.

Grammaropolis is a fun, interactive site that helps students learn about the parts of speech.

Grammar Blast offers 35 interactive grammar activities for students in grades two through five. Have a blast with Grammar Blast! Answer 10 questions and earn up to 100 game points. To play just choose a quiz below.

Grammar Practice Park, produced by Harcourt School Publishers provides 12 games for students in grades three, four, and five.

Writing with Writers provides an excellent resource for writing. There is an excellent section for kids called, Computer Lab Favorites (Teacher View Here | Student View Here), that has a variety of writing tools like Story Starters, Myth Brainstorming Machine, and Poetry Idea Engine; as well as learning games like, It’s Greek to Me (great for Real Spelling connections), and Fish Up Word Endings.

PicLits.com is a creative writing site that matches beautiful images with carefully selected keywords in order to inspire you. The object is to put the right words in the right place and the right order to capture the essence, story, and meaning of the picture.

It never ceases to amaze me the available resources on the Internet for teachers.  The next few "10 Resources" post will focus on the English curriculum, so I want to start with writing.  Many English teachers will tell you that technology has damaged writing because students are so reliant on spelling and grammar check that the idea of proof-reading your writing has gone to the wayside.  these resources won't necessarily fix that, but provide other options for writing and proofreading.
 

The Write-n-ator! Just watch the video clip – check the writing & vocabulary clues – then take the writing challenge!

Mr. Nussbaum’s 1,000 Sites in 1 provides annotated image links to appropriate learning websites for children.  They are broken down by subjects and topics like science, math, reading, and games, creativity, and apps.  This teacher created site provides links to language arts sites on various topics including spelling, comprehension, nouns, pronouns, and commas.  However, the best part of this is the games that are created specifically for this site.  Under language arts games, there are games ranging from learning spelling, proper use of semicolons, digraphs, and sentence structure.  Learning games are always a fun way for students to learn necessary skills for communication and this is a fun way that parents can encourage learning at home