As a journalist who writes about education tech, my kids' favorite education apps are those that have been tested and stand out above the rest. Over the many years of doing this there are some that really jump out, are loved by my kids, and get used continually over longer periods of time. Crucially, these also have a noticeable effect on their schooling and progress.

The apps I've written about have largely fallen across a few categories, some feeling too like homework, others repetitive when the novelty wears off, and some which strike the balance between playful and instructional while staying engaging. That last category is from where these app recommendations are coming.

So these are the apps that my kids genuinely returned to, out of choice, over the last year as I've been trying them out in our home.

Best of My Kids' Favorite Education Apps

Best overall

Wayground

Wayground is one of our favorite apps, bar none. This manages to combine the best of quiz-style platforms in a way that plays to the needs of the child.

So, in my house for example, one child was drawn to using it in a competitive way while the other was a lot more exploratory. It supports both, allowing them to enjoy it their way while still getting the learning from being on here.

While a lot of apps can feel built for the classroom and teacher-first, this is also good as an at-home app. It's easy enough to setup and use for parents and children, but that it can also be a bridge between class and home use.

Since this works across devices, using a browser, I could have one child on the laptop and another on my phone so they get their own experience, at their level. The pre-built quizzes make it as easy as handing over the device and letting them explore.

That said, the addition of AI now makes adapting to each child far more accessible as an option that's easy. Crucially, for me as a parent and for teachers, this isn't time consuming so you actually use it and -- as a result -- so do the kids.

To be clear, this is designed for teachers to setup and use, and works best that way. So if this is something your child's school is offering, or considering, I'd very much encourage you to take advantage of this and have your littles ones give it a go.

Best for literacy

IXL

IXL is a literacy app that's far less repetitive than many similar platforms by breaking learning into smaller, achievable chunks that build confidence steadily over time. Covering everything from spelling and vocabulary to grammar and reading comprehension, it offers a huge amount of structured practice while still feeling approachable for younger learners.

What worked well with my kids was the sense of progression. They could complete shorter activities, earn rewards, and immediately see improvement. The adaptive system also helped keep frustration levels lower by adjusting difficulty as they worked, which made it easier to maintain engagement.

The platform’s clean layout and focused exercises keep distractions to a minimum. While it still feels academically solid underneath, IXL avoids becoming overly classroom-heavy, which helped it slot naturally into home use. It became very useful for quick daily practice sessions that never felt too demanding.

Best for math

Buzzmath

Buzzmath feels much closer to puzzle-solving over traditional drills, which immediately made it more appealing in our house than many worksheet-style alternatives. Designed for middle school learners, the platform combines interactive challenges with visual learning tools that encourage experimentation and problem-solving -- rather than memorization alone.

One of the strongest features is how it handles mistakes. Instead of simply marking answers wrong, Buzzmath encourages students to retry, rethink, and work through problems independently. That helped reduce frustration levels, particularly with more difficult topics.

The game-inspired structure also works well without overwhelming the educational side of the experience. Progression feels rewarding, but the learning remains central throughout. Visual explanations and interactive feedback helped make more abstract concepts easier to grasp, especially for anyone that struggles with text-based instruction.

For kids who normally disengage quickly from math practice -- my daughter -- Buzzmath offers a far more approachable and confidence-building alternative that still delivers strong educational depth underneath the playful presentation.

Best for STEM

NASA Space Place

NASA Space Place stands out because it captures the sense of curiosity that great STEM learning should inspire. The platform introduces complex ideas through playful activities, bright visuals, games, videos, and short articles that make science feel approachable and exciting.

Space is naturally engaging for my and most other kids, and this platform uses that brilliantly to pull learners into wider STEM topics, including engineering, climate science, physics, robotics, and astronomy. One minute my kids were exploring planets, the next they were learning about satellites or weather systems without really noticing the educational shift.

The platform also feels refreshingly straightforward. Plus, no subscriptions, pop-ups, or overly gamified distractions competing for attention. Instead, the focus remains firmly on exploration and discovery.

For younger learners especially, NASA Space Place strikes an excellent balance between education and accessibility. It offers great STEM learning while still maintaining the excitement and imagination that often gets lost in more formal educational platforms.

Best for gamification

Roblox

Roblox may not look like a traditional education platform at first glance, but the creative side of the experience offers far more learning potential than many parents initially realize. Beyond simply playing games, children can build environments, experiment with coding concepts, design interactive experiences, and collaborate creatively with others.

What stands out most, watching my kids use Roblox, is how naturally problem-solving becomes part of the experience. Whether adjusting game mechanics, building worlds, or figuring out systems together, there is a constant layer of experimentation underneath the entertainment. It encourages creativity in a way that feels self-directed rather than instructional.

That said, Roblox still benefits from active parental involvement and sensible controls, particularly given the scale of the platform. The educational value depends heavily on how children engage with it.

Used thoughtfully, though, Roblox can become a surprisingly effective gateway into coding, digital creativity, collaboration, and design thinking. For children already interested in gaming culture, it offers opportunities to shift from passive consumption into active creation, which is where its strongest learning potential can emerge.

Best for AI

aiEDU

aiEDU offers one of the most accessible introductions to artificial intelligence I’ve seen for younger learners, managing to explain a fast-moving and often intimidating subject in a way that feels clear, balanced, and genuinely useful. As AI tools increasingly become part of everyday life, helping children understand the technology behind it all feels more important than ever.

Rather than focusing purely on flashy demonstrations, aiEDU places a strong emphasis on digital literacy and critical thinking. Lessons explore how AI systems work, where biases can appear, and why understanding the technology matters, all without becoming overly technical or difficult for younger people.

The platform also offers a clean design that keeps the focus firmly on learning rather than distractions. My kids engage particularly well with the real-world examples and discussion-led style of the content, which encourages curiosity rather than passive consumption.

Considering the quality of the material available completely free, aiEDU feels really valuable for families and schools looking to introduce AI concepts without adding yet another expensive subscription service into the mix.

Best for video

ClickView

ClickView takes the strengths of video-based learning and packages it all into a far more focused educational experience than the open-ended chaos of general video platforms. With curated educational content, interactive quizzes, and classroom-ready resources, it creates an environment in which children can stay engaged without constantly being pulled toward unrelated distractions.

What works particularly well with my kids is how effectively video helps unlock topics they might normally avoid in text-heavy formats. Complex ideas often becomes easier to understand once presented visually, especially through shorter clips and structured explanations designed specifically for learning.

The platform also feels thoughtfully designed for both school and home use. Teachers can integrate lessons easily while parents benefit from knowing the content has been curated with education in mind.

Importantly, ClickView avoids making video learning feel passive. Interactive elements throughout encourage participation and reflection rather than endless watching. The result is a platform that manages to feel engaging and educational in equal measure, which is surprisingly difficult to achieve consistently.

The best tools to teach storytelling can also be some of the most ideal ways to engage students, both creatively and more generally with education. From sparking their imaginations to helping structure a creative toolset, these digital assistants can be powerful in the classroom and beyond.

Giving a student the ability to structure and tell a compelling story can help to empower them in terms of literacy, empathy, and critical thinking.

Students can be given the opportunity to explore historical perspectives, dive into personal narratives, build fictional worlds, and present research in a story form. All of which helps strengthen communication skills while learning at the same time.

This guide aims to lay out some of the best tools to teach storytelling in the class and beyond.

Best tools to teach storytelling

Best to teach storytelling overall

Story Xperiential

Story Xperiential is a structured storytelling platform designed to teach narrative creation from the very start. Developed with input from professional storytellers, it focuses on helping students understand how to write a story and why stories work. Rather than functioning as a simple writing app, it delivers a curriculum-driven approach that breaks storytelling into clear, teachable components.

Students can move through the guided stages from idea development and character creation to plot structure, visual storytelling, drafting, and revision. Teachers can assign projects, monitor progress, and facilitate critique sessions -- essential in developing narrative strength. The emphasis on feedback and editing makes it especially strong for longer term development rather than one-off assignments.

Stand-out features include structured storytelling frameworks, scaffolded learning pathways, and cross-curricular flexibility.

This can be well used as part of a longer storytelling system while building in peer critiques to deepen understanding of structure and character development.

Best for interactive stories

SceneCraft

SceneCraft is an AI-powered storytelling tool that allows educators to create interactive, branching narratives through which students make decisions that shape outcomes. This is designed for classroom use by blending writing with decision-based learning, making it ideal for exploring cause and effect, character motivation, and ethical dilemmas.

Teachers can build or edit scenarios while students navigate storylines by selecting different paths. The interactive format often increases engagement, particularly for students who respond well to game-like experiences.

Standout features include AI-assisted scenario generation, branching pathways, and opportunities for social-emotional learning discussions.

Educators can pair digital storytelling with pre-writing story maps -- plus post-activity discussions -- to analyze how different narrative choices alter outcomes.

Best for visual inspiration

Storybird

Storybird is a visual storytelling platform that combines student writing with curated professional artwork. Students select images and build stories or poems around these, using visuals as prompts to inspire story ideas. This makes it effective for younger learners and reluctant writers, who can benefit from visual scaffolding.

The interface uses a book-style layout, encouraging students to construct stories page by page. This format reinforces pacing, sequencing, and concise writing.

Teachers can create assignments, review student drafts, and provide feedback directly within the platform.

Strong artwork libraries, support for both poetry and short fiction, and accessible publishing tools are key features.

Teachers can find it effective to use artwork for character development exercises or to set word limits per page to strengthen clarity and narrative precision.

Best for collaborative storytelling

BoomWriter

BoomWriter turns storytelling into a collaborative classroom experience. Students contribute chapters to a shared story, and classmates vote anonymously on submissions to determine which version becomes part of the final narrative. The completed work can then be published as a professionally printed book.

Teachers begin by setting a prompt and writing the opening chapter. Students submit their versions of the next installment, and peer voting selects the continuation. This structured cycle repeats until the story is complete, reinforcing narrative continuity, audience awareness, and revision skills.

The anonymous voting system promotes thoughtful critique while maintaining engagement.

Teachers can use this to establish clear evaluation criteria focused on storytelling craft rather than popularity. This can lead to discussions about why certain chapters effectively advanced the narrative and others did not.

Best for gamification

Imagine Forest

Imagine Forest combines creative writing tools with gamified elements to encourage ongoing storytelling skills. Students can respond to prompts, draft original stories, and publish their work. Badges and achievements help motivate consistent participation.

The structured editor supports story creation while offering built-in prompts to spark ideas. This makes it very useful for daily warm-ups, creative writing clubs, or independent literacy work. Students can develop stories over time, building confidence and fluency.

Pair prompt-based writing with mini-lessons focused on dialogue, pacing, or descriptive language. Also, encourage revision before publication to reinforce storytelling basics.

From AI-powered smart reading assistants to huge libraries of smart texts, there are a lot of tools aimed at helping students improve their reading skills. Simply reading stories, making annotations, and even embedding questions to be answered -- there are many helpful additions to the reading itself to help cement learning.

And with new AI additions, these resources are getting better than ever. The idea is to offer a way to help both educators and students work together to improve literacy skills in the most efficient and engaging way.

Many of these even come in web app forms so they can be easily accessed across a range of devices.

This guide aims to lay out the very best tools to teach reading so you can find the top contenders for a place in your class.

Best tools to teach reading

Best to teach reading skills overall

Actively Learn

Actively Learn is a digital reading platform that helps teachers turn texts into interactive, engaging learning experiences. The tool provides a large library of articles, stories, and curriculum-aligned passages, but teachers can also upload their own materials.

What makes Actively Learn stand out is its embedded questioning and annotation features. Students encounter prompts, notes, polls, and scaffolds -- such as hints, translations, and text-to-speech -- right inside the reading flow, which supports comprehension and encourages deeper thinking.

Teachers can track progress through a detailed dashboard showing how long students read, how they annotated, and with which questions they struggled. These insights help with differentiation and targeted instruction.

Actively Learn works across subjects, making it useful for ELA, science, social studies, and more. The free tier includes strong core features, while paid plans unlock expanded libraries and analytics. It’s a versatile platform for bringing structure and accountability to digital and classroom reading.

READ: Actively Learn guide

Best for social reading

Glose

Glose is a digital reading platform designed to make reading more social, interactive, and accessible across devices. The tool provides thousands of ebooks and audiobooks, and its interface encourages students to engage with texts actively rather than passively. Students can highlight, annotate, leave comments, and respond to each other’s insights in a secure, teacher-managed environment. This shared reading experience helps build comprehension and confidence, especially for reluctant readers.

Teachers can curate reading lists, create assignments, and monitor student progress through built-in analytics showing reading time, engagement, and completion. Glose also syncs across phones, tablets, and laptops, making it practical for homework or hybrid learning. Its flexible library model allows schools to mix free titles with purchased ebooks. With a focus on collaboration and ease of use, Glose is a good option for classrooms looking to build community around reading.

READ: Glose guide

Best for real-time guidance

Amira Learning

Amira Learning is an AI-powered reading tutor designed to support early readers with real-time, one-on-one guidance. Using advanced speech recognition, Amira listens as students read aloud and identifies errors such as mispronunciations, omissions, or hesitations. The system then provides immediate, gentle feedback and prompts students to try words again, offering decoding support, or modelling correct pronunciation. This creates a personalized tutoring experience that aligns closely with the science of reading.

Teachers gain access to detailed fluency and accuracy data, including error types, reading rate, and progression over time. This helps identify students who need targeted intervention and helps with small-group instruction.

Amira fits easily into literacy blocks as a supplemental activity, allowing teachers to work with one group while others receive structured practice. District-level licensing provides access to the full platform. For schools looking to strengthen early literacy and provide consistent, adaptive support, Amira offers a powerful, research-backed solution.

READ: Amira Learning guide

Best for phonics

Lalilo

Lalilo is an adaptive, phonics-focused reading program aimed at supporting early learners as they develop foundational literacy skills. It offers a playful, illustrated environment in which students work through phonemic awareness, letter–sound relationships, decoding, and early comprehension tasks. The program adjusts difficulty automatically, ensuring each child works at an appropriate level that builds confidence without causing frustration.

Teachers can track progress through clear dashboards that highlight strengths, gaps, and emerging skills. This makes it easier to form targeted small groups or identify students who may benefit from additional intervention. Lalilo is especially useful in kindergarten through second-grade classrooms, where consistent phonics practice is essential. The activities are short, engaging, and well-suited to independent rotation work. With its focus on early reading science and its ability to adapt to individual learners, Lalilo provides a helpful layer of structured practice within a broader literacy curriculum.

READ: Lalilo guide

Best for independence

LightSail

LightSail is a literacy platform designed to support independent reading while giving teachers the data they need to guide instruction. The system offers a large library of levelled texts, allowing students to choose books that match both their reading ability and personal interests. As students read, LightSail embeds brief comprehension checks and vocabulary activities to keep them engaged and assess understanding in real time.

Teachers have access to detailed analytics showing reading time, progress, quiz performance, and overall growth. This makes it easier to monitor independent reading and ensure students are selecting appropriate texts.

LightSail also supports goal setting and personalized reading pathways, helping students build motivation and ownership over their progress. Suitable for classroom, after-school, or home use, LightSail provides a structured framework for developing reading stamina and comprehension skills, with a strong emphasis on student choice and visibility into learning.

READ: LightSail guide

Artificial intelligence has transformed writing. Yet in many schools, the conversation still stops at one shallow question: “Did you use AI?” That question misses the point. Using AI responsibly is not cheating. Using it secretly or deceptively is.

Innovative educators know that AI detectors are biased and ineffective. Still, some believe they have a simple way to detect AI use by checking the revision history. That reveals a misunderstanding of how writing works in the age of AI. Much of today’s writing, thinking, and idea development happens outside the document entirely. Revision history does not capture the brainstorming, the questioning, the refining, or the learning via the use of AI, humans, or other tools.

It is important to call out when this work might start. Elementary school is the time to help students discover their own voice. Once that foundation has been built by secondary school when students are old enough to use many AI tools (with parental consent), they can begin applying these supports to their writing. An educator’s job is to help them do that effectively, responsibly, and reflectively.

Some students have the privilege of having tutors or family members to support them with their learning. Interestingly, that is usually not questioned or considered cheating. If we think of AI as similar support, we realize we now have the ability to give every student a powerful thought partner in real-time. That partnership is not visible in revision history. It becomes clear only when students are empowered to explain their process and reflect on how AI helped them grow.

To support this, I developed Writing Partner Checklists for Students and Staff. The student checklist offers a simple way for students to document and communicate what responsible writing looks like. The staff checklist provides a way for educators to evaluate student learning.

Innovative educators recognize that when AI is used effectively, learning can be elevated. Students can be empowered to think more deeply, revise more often, and gain confidence as communicators. They build the skills needed for the world in which they live.

It is also important to note that AI does not necessarily make writing faster. When the writer stays in charge, AI has the ability to improve outcomes and support clearer thinking, richer revision, and stronger communication.

Students Need To Be Taught Effective Use of AI

Students need to be taught what it means to work with AI for writing. This does not come intuitively. None of this should happen without first teaching students AI literacy and ensuring they have a solid understanding of the risks, rewards, and responsibilities associated with using AI. This includes helping them learn how to communicate with and prompt AI effectively so they can get useful, ethical, and relevant support.

Teachers should consider providing a mini-lesson for each step of the writing process, showing examples of how AI might be used responsibly. Afterward, students can discuss which areas they find most helpful or not helpful for their own writing support. This type of guided practice helps students think critically about when and how to use AI effectively.

Everyone has their own writing process. The example that follows shows my process and how I write today in the age of AI.

My AI-Supported Writing Process

• Idea Exploration and Brainstorming - I work with AI to develop my ideas and goals.
• Identifying Key Elements - I determine what should be included for my audience and purpose.
• Structuring with AI Assistance - AI helps organize the draft, but I decide what stays or changes.
• Human Editing and Decision-Making - I revise in Docs and ensure the tone and clarity reflect my thinking.
• Iterative Refinement - I give feedback to AI, add details, ask for missing angles, and revise again.
• Style and Voice Alignment - I ensure that the writing continues to sound like me and meets my intended purpose.
• Connecting to My Work - I might ask AI to help identify places to include links or relevant background knowledge from other writing I’ve done.
• Final Polish - I review the final draft to ensure quality and flow.

Reflecting on and sharing your own process with students is an important component of supporting responsible AI use. Discuss your writing process with students as well as theirs. Consider what you can learn from one another. Discuss ways to use AI as a thought partner, editor, and brainstorming support.

Instead of policing whether AI was used, innovative educators focus on how it is used to help students learn and produce quality work.

The very best tools to teach coding can make learning this valuable skill not only more easy but also fun and engaging so students want to come back for more.

With the huge wealth of code teaching tools out there specifically designed for education, the main problem is finding the right one for your needs as an educator and for the students that are going to learn.

This guide has compiled only the very best tools to teach coding so you can pick the ideal one for your specific needs. That includes coding with gaming, coding with music, coding in AR and VR, coding with physical gadgets and plenty more.

Crucially, there are a mix of paid and free options in this list, and most work using a browser -- so these should be widely accessible.

Best tools to teach coding

Best to teach coding overall

Kodable

Kodable is a superb example of combining gaming and coding into a fun and engaging platform that's great for a wide age and ability range. The idea here is to not only teach coding -- from K+ -- but also to cement that learning through the games that encourage practice.

While the front of this is cartoon character-filled fun, behind the scenes students are learning JavaScript that can be used in a future coding career. The ability to build games also makes this a really empowering experience for students who want to learn but also create.

Teachers have a helpful dashboard with lots of information on student progress, which allows them to intervene when needed, but also to control difficulty levels.

With plenty of free resources, as well as premium plans, this offers something for everyone and is a really great way to get started with coding.

READ: Kodable guide

Best real-world coding

OctoStudio

OctoStudio is a free coding app that combines coding and smartphones. Created by MIT Media Lab, this uses a phone's audio and video recording smarts to build media using real-world recordings that can then be manipulated using the coding style.

Usefully, this allows kids to get creative on their own devices while also learning code passively as they use it to make their creations. This works using Scratch-based coding, so it's useful in the real world. Students can make shaking the phone activate a sound or turn on a light, for example.

Thanks to 20 languages coverage, easy-to-use menus, and the ability to share simply, this is a really great way to teach and have students learn.

READ: OctoStudio guide

Best for computer science

CodeHS

The CodeHS offering is designed specifically for schools and fits into the curriculum requirements, making it ideal for computer science teachers and students. Aimed at high school students, this offers far more complex learning.

The platform offers a suite of teaching tools that cover more than 100 classes. This uses a sandbox with output window so students can see how their code works, directly.

Usefully, this teaches a range of coding languages including JavaScript, Python, C++, and HTML. Teachers can monitor student progress, or lack thereof, so interventions are possible at the right moment. Tutors, on the paid version, are a useful addition to help students get support while using this platform.

READ: CodeHS guide

Best for fantasy gaming

Ozaria

Learning with Ozaria is more like playing a full-on fantasy game, and as such, means the practicing and cementing of skills is near effortless for students.

Despite this being a proper game, with its own universe and rich character stories, this also fits in with the curriculum to help teachers.

CodeCombat is the game being playing in this world, and through it, students learn Python and JavaScript from grade 3 right to 12 -- as individuals or in groups.

The teacher dashboard is there to monitor progress and even make assessments using a dedicated tool. Everything focuses on SEL to help build integrity while learning coding.

READ: Ozaria guide

Best creative

Elementari

Elementari works as a creative artistic project creation tool that also teaches coding at the same time. In this way it's a super effective way to offer coding to those kids who might prefer a more creative focus over the logical coding teaching many platforms feature.

Usefully, students can edit projects created by others, helping them spark ideas. Lots of media is available to pick from, including images, music, and illustrations. They then create a story using the coding back end to bring it all to life.

READ: Elementari guide

Best for beginners

Ready Maker

Ready Maker uses games and very simple coding-style controls to introduce coding to beginners and younger students. The drag-and-drop style interactions are super simple to learn, and since this is all about making games, it can offer a creative outlet.

This uses Unity code, so it's good for app stores publishing, yet starts super simple so it's easy to pick-up. Lots of helpful tutorials are available, and the Remix button allows students to work with something already created, so they can ease into it.

This also offers more complexity, and games that are made can be played too, with lots from which to pick.

READ: Ready Maker guide

Best for Apple

Swift Playgrounds

The Swift Playgrounds platform is designed to be fun and easy to get started with, and will teach code specifically for Apple devices.

This gamifies learning on iOS and Mac devices by which students can learn the Swift coding language from as young as age four. Students can create games with the platform and use previews to give any a try, while also seeing directly how the code affects end results.

Students can select code chunks or input directly if they know the language a bit more. Thanks to guidance and collecting gems, it creates a pathway that students feel progress along and can come back more often to get further.

READ: Swift Playgrounds guide

Best for AR and VR

CoSpaces Edu

CoSpaces Edu is a great way to teach coding skills along with animation for AR and VR creations. Working across many devices, this is widely accessible and works from grade three right up to 12.

This uses drag-and-drop style controls to let students manipulate objects that can then be coded to have actions in the 3D space. Students can build on desktop then experience it directly on a mobile device.

The layout makes for a great way to teach collaboratively by which groups work on creating their own virtual space and situation for others to play in and enjoy.

READ: CoSpaces Edu guide

Best for younger students

Tynker

Tynker is a fantastic option for younger students who are being welcomed into the world of coding. This uses fun cartoon characters, lots of colors, and games to immerse young users.

Aimed at age five and up, this uses block-based coding to teach the logic of code and coding lessons. This develops as students progress, and also teaches HTML, JavaScript, Python, and CSS coding at a more advanced level, so it can be useful for real-world scenarios.

Lots of community-created projects are available, and students can share theirs easily, making it great for collaboration and assessments.

READ: Tynker guide

Best for teachers

Blackbird

Blackbird is a good option for teachers new to coding who want to teach it. This tool, which is web-based and easily accessible, also features a training program for educators to learn the system and how best to teach coding with it's offerings.

This is aimed at middle schoolers and uses JavaScript as the coding language. That makes this specifically focused on getting kids jobs in coding. The Show Me option is a great way to help students, guiding them to the correct answers if unsure -- without the need for teacher intervention.

Thanks to a submissions section, this is built for classwork, allowing students to send coding to teachers for assessment and feedback.

READ: Blackbird guide

Best for curriculum

Codementum

The Codementum platform is a great way to teach coding in a curriculum-aligned way. This offers a tool that has a dashboard for teachers to monitor student progress and to assign future work, all in one place.

This is game-based, so students feel as if they're in a self-paced gaming experience while also learning Python and JavaScript coding options. Since this all works on ability levels, rather than ages, it will help progress students from their specific experience level.

Helpfully, this is broken down in courses that help make teaching easier. Thanks to AI and machine learning sections, this is very up to date and ideal for preparing students for the future job sector.

READ: Codementum guide

Best for robots

Sam Labs

The Sam Labs coding platform uses both software-based teaching as well as hardware. That makes this a great option for teaching how coding can have real-world effects and is ideal for more hands-on students that want to see things working as a result of their code.

Use the company's own blocks or others, such as LEGO, to have coding actions create affects. This is great for STEAM learning, allowing students to get creative by using the app and blocks with DC motors, LEDs, audio devices, buttons, and more.

This is superb for scaling up to add complexity and with lesson packs, activities, and guidance videos, it can be very easy to teach with even for those educators without much coding experience.

READ: Sam Labs guide

Best for fun

CodeMonkey

The CodeMonkey tool is a really fun way to teach coding to younger students and those who might otherwise be difficult to get engaged. This uses both block-based and text coding in a way that's ideal for scaffolding learning across ages and abilities.

Students have a monkey main character that they work with across levels for fun continuity through the hundreds of levels. They play while learning Python or CoffeeScript as they go through the various puzzles.

Lesson planning tools are in the paid version that can help make this ideal for educators to use.

READ: CodeMonkey guide

Best for teaching broadly

Code Academy

The Code Academy platform teaches coding but it goes further to cover web development, computer science, and plenty more related skills. This covers beginner basics and moves through to more complex lessons with Java, C#, HTML/CSS, Python, and others all covered here.

The free version is great for getting started but there are paid plans to offer far more depth to the learning available. Career path projects are a great way to learn with specific results, such as a data scientist, for example, which is a 78-lesson plan.

This uses quizzes, projects, and more to make the learning fun and engaging. This is also self-paced and self-contained for focused learning and minimal teacher interaction needed.

READ: Code Academy guide

Best screen-free

Kaibot

The Kaibot offering aims to teach the basics of coding while also being a screen-free experience. This uses a robot with wheels and cards with commands. Line up the cards and the robot will 'read' these and carry out actions.

This is simple to use, hands-on, and is aimed at K-3 and older. The app offers more complex interactions and learnings, if you want to use a screen. That should mean a very natural move from the physical into the software end of coding, ideal for beginners.

READ: Kaibot guide

Best free

Blockly Games

Blockly Games is a fantastic free coding creation that teaches block-based coding basics as well as more complex ideas.

This no-frills offering uses puzzles and games to teach block- and Java-style text coding options. The idea is to offer logic and computational thinking to kids so they can naturally progress into more complex styles of coding.

Students can make their own games for a fun and empowering learning journey.

READ: Blockly Games guide

Best collaborative coding

Pencil Code

Pencil Code is all about visual and collaborative learning with this using CoffeeScript -- a pro level language -- to guide students into real-world coding that's genuinely useful. This extends to Java, HTML and CSS for a really comprehensive coding experience.

This is designed so students can work with each other, collaboratively, on projects -- as they may need too when working in this way later in life. They can code with music, drawings, games, and more.

This offers complex coding if needed and uses a creative space to help learners explore and grow naturally.

READ: Pencil Code guide

The very best tools to teach writing are so plentiful now that finding the right ones can be a job in itself. That's what this article aims to make light work of for you, by laying out only the most relevant tools to teach writing in class and beyond.

From AI assistants to self-grading and guiding tech, there is a plethora of powerful writing-based teaching resources out there. You may want to work on storytelling, or perhaps it's more of a focus on grammar and structure that you need. In any case, there is likely an app for that and it's going to be in this guide, if it's good enough.

This aims to offer a mixture of free and some premium apps, while focusing on those that are widely available as web apps, when possible. That should mean this guide offers the broadest selection of tools to the widest of audiences.

Best tools to teach writing

Best to teach writing skills overall

NoRedInk

The NoRedInk website is a powerful resource for teaching writing thanks to this ELA resource's personalized content. Teachers set up their account and then use student accounts to let them learn based on their interests and abilities.

This asks students to restructure sentences, manipulate multi-paragraph sentences, scaffold essays, do guided reviews, follow writing prompts, and much more. All while offering fun, humor, and subjects that students finds engaging. All that should mean effortless honing of writing skills while enjoying the tasks.

READ: NoRedInk guide

Best AI-assisted writing program

Writable

Writable offers an AI-assisted option that is aimed at helping tailor learning to students while also delivering one-on-one feedback, grading, and guidance to save on teacher engagement time.

For use with students from grade 3 right up to 12, this adjusts to suit individual abilities and lets teachers customize, based on curriculum or rubric learning, to suit goals and progress.

This offers guided learning for students while allowing teachers to control automated feedback and grading.

READ: Writable guide

Best for AR fun

Catchy Words

When it comes to augmented reality fun, Catchy Words is the ultimate choice for working on word skills to help writing. This is simple to understand and starts off using shorter words, making this a possible option even for younger students.

Letters float about in the air and students need to pop a bubble to access each. Then they move the device to grab the ones they need and move them into floating boxes that ultimately make up the correct word.

It's a simple idea of playing a word game, but in this new augmented reality way, to make it truly engaging. This is an iOS app so is available on both iPhone and iPad devices.

READ: Catchy Words guide

Best for digital literacy

ThinkCERCA

The ThinkCERCA platform is a great way to focus on literacy skills. This offers a wide selection of reading materials that students work with to focus on vocabulary, writing scaffolding, sentence stems, and peer-to-peer debate.

Teachers can use the built-in rubrics to make grading a simple process but individual feedback is also an option within the platform -- in real-time. That makes this helpful for use both in class as well as for homework.

The automated comprehension assessments are also a nice feature here for helping students progress comfortably while saving teachers on time.

READ: ThinkCERCA guide

Best curriculum writing aid

Quill

The Quill offering is a totally free tool that appears like a premium feature-rich writing and reading aid. As such, this has been used by more than 7 million students to create more than 2 billion sentences since it launched.

This platform helps students improve writing but also reading comprehension and language skills. This is all Common Core skills-aligned, and offers differentiation for ELL, AP English, and pre-AP.

Select grade ranges and subject types before setting tasks in which students can follow lessons tailored to them. This uses writing prompts and helps build sentence-writing skills with grammar tools and evidencing features to add depth and mastery.

READ: Quill guide

Best for online community learning

Imagine Forest

Imagine Forest is an online platform in which students can write stories, with images, and publish these for others to read. Since this has built up an online community, it's a great way for students to read the work of others and get ideas before working on their own projects.

This is more than a word processor though as it offers guidance as well as challenges and activities to keep things interesting and engaging. The ability to like and comment makes this really interactive even outside of the writing part. Having a gamification option here that makes this immersive, fun, and guided in a way that should have students coming back for more.

READ: Imagine Forest guide

Best for self-publishing

BoomWriter

The BoomWriter platform is purpose-built to help students learn, not only how to create their own stories, but to experience being published, too. Unlike many other tools, this one leaves students with a printed physical book, which they created -- giving a sense of achievement that's quite unique.

This is a collaborative tool that encourages students to work together to create story ideas. Since teachers can set a first chapter, it offers a friendly way to ease into being creative as students can continue that story as they please. The ability to send notes back to students is a helpful teacher feature, as is the ability to specify certain words that need to be used -- ideal for growing vocabulary mastery.

READ: BoomWriter guide

Best for storytelling

Story Xperiential

The Story Xperiential service is quite unlike any other writing teaching tool. This uses writing and video editing combined to teach the creative process. It does this, crucially, with a team of real-world co-creators who feedback through the stages of story development.

This was created and is run by professional writers, artists, and animators involved in Pixar and Disney movies. So this is very much a skills-focused learning experience that can leave students with real marketable skills in storytelling.

This is an online service so it is easy to access both at school and when at home. That should allow students to really get into this and work on their projects as and when they want. Since this is largely self-paced, it's perfect for that way of working. and supports passion at whatever level it's being felt.

READ: Story Xperiential guide

Best novel writing experience

NaNoWriMo

Every November is the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) event. This sets a challenge, for adults and children alike, to write their own novel in that month. Everyone that participates keeps each other accountable and with group interactions possible this can be a great way to motivate everyone.

Using a word-count based goal, students are guided to craft a first draft of their novel, about anything they want. This nonprofit offers resources for educators including class activities and a helpful chart to find the ideal word count goal based on a student's age and level.

READ: NaNoWriMo guide

Best for grammar

Grammarly

When it comes to working on grammar, there are few tools as advanced as Grammarly. This is an online writing assistant that is able to check both spelling and grammar. It now also uses a generative AI to better offer use-specific writing assistance.

Grammarly can help students to write with an active voice, it can eliminate typos, and even offers helpful explanations. Since this can be installed as a Chrome plug-in, this can be used across a wide variety of writing platforms to fit in with how you and your students work.

Most of this is free but there is also a paid version that checks citation errors, proofreads formatting for bibliography, and highlights incorrect comma use and more.

READ: Grammarly guide

Many English teachers have drawn a line in the sand against any and all AI use for students. Bill Henry, an 8th-grade English teacher at Amity Middle School in Orange, Connecticut, on the other hand, has embraced his school’s approach of teaching students how to use AI in a responsible and ethical way that prepares them for a world in which AI will likely play an increasingly important role.

“The thought process behind this is that the technology is going to continue to be there, and if we embrace it from the start and teach them to use it, they will be able to accomplish more than if they were trying to use the one on their phones or a separate tab,” Henry says.

To that end, Henry teaches a prompt writing exercise to students that requires them to use MagicSchool AI, which is approved by his district and allows teachers to control how the AI chatbot interacts with students.

Henry, who also teaches English at Quinnipiac University, says he has used AI with college students as well to help them create an outline and structure for their work. He stresses to both his K-12 and college students that AI is not meant to replace their thinking and creativity.

Guiding AI-Led Writing Exercises

The platform Henry’s school uses for AI allows teachers to control what the AI can and cannot do in student interactions. This allows teachers to really emphasize thought and creativity with AI use, while teaching practical usable skills such as prompt writing.

In the lesson Henry conducts with 8th graders, students create a prompt for the AI asking for a statement related to the themes of their readings for the course, but the chatbot doesn't provide an actual theme statement in response. Instead, it offers advice on how to improve their prompt to the chatbot, so students can revise their prompt.

“They then used it to generate three theme statements, and had to choose the one they thought fit their book best, and needed to provide examples from their books to back them up,” he says.

How Students React To AI Use

“Students are usually excited at the very mention of AI, and immediately think 'We'll be using Chat or Snap AI,' but we start off with a discussion about how only certain platforms are approved for the district, and how AI should be used as a means to improve their writing, rather than replace the writing process,” he says. “While some students initially thought that it was a way to cheat, once they saw that it was a way to help them improve their writing and get live feedback, they were more enthusiastic about it."

He adds, "Some of them still tried to override MagicSchool with prompts that were asking it when it was taking over humanity, or tried to outsmart the system in making it do more than we had set it to do. Even so, ultimately, students met the lesson objective. Many also expressed interest in using AI as in further assignments."

Advice For Incorporating AI Into Your Classroom

When it comes to other teachers using AI, Henry has some advice: “Make sure you use a program that is approved by the district and that you have control over. Emphasize that the bots are not meant to replace thinking, but assist students in pushing their own thinking further.”

He adds, “When used as a tool, it can provide live feedback for students that supplements your own feedback, and can work to help them better understand the processes behind writing, when used in conjunction with the district curriculum and goals.”

Henry believes some of the concerns many writing instructors have around AI use are misguided. “The biggest fear for many English teachers is that it's going to make our jobs obsolete,” he says. “In reality, it can be used to help develop writers and allow them to integrate technology as a tool, rather than a means to replace their thinking.”

• 4 Ways I Improved My AI Prompt Writing
• 13 Ways to Detect AI Writing Without Technology

Current generative AI policies around writing are widely inconsistent. I’ve seen departments that discourage the use of any assistive technology for writing, including a Grammarly-style spellcheck. Others have mandated that instructors incorporate AI lessons into their classrooms as they believe use of AI is the future and that it will help students write.

As a writer and writing professor, I don’t believe either approach gets it quite right. On one hand, we need to do a much better job protecting the sanctity of human writing and draw a line in the sand—making sure all students engage with the cognitively beneficial and emotionally rewarding process of really writing. On the other hand, AI writing is here to stay, and there are some tedious aspects of writing that AI can help with, as well as ways in which students can hone their writing skills to better utilize it in their future careers and lives.

To find the right balance between these two approaches, I think writing instruction and assignments could use an upgrade. Here are five steps writing instructors can take to improve writing instruction in the age of AI.

1. Let AI Handle Formatting and Citations

Too much of my time as a student was spent agonizing over whether my citations and endnotes adhered to MLA stylebook, or whichever stylebook my teacher required. As an instructor, too much of time is spent making sure students adhere to various stylebooks required by different disciplines.

Citations and endnotes are something the robot AI writers will do better and quicker than us, and I’m happy to cede this work. Let’s teach students how to use the technology available to format their papers better in less time so they can focus on real writing.

The same might go for finding sources in some cases. Sometimes, conducting your own research and going down your own rabbit holes will be helpful; other times AI might help speed this process.

We also should tell students about potentially more efficient approaches, such as Google Scholar’s new AI summaries of research.

2. Teach How To Use AI For Cover Letters and Other Application Documents

I don’t love focusing writing instruction on career opportunities because, in my eyes, it diminishes writing, which I have always seen as far more important than simply a career skill.

That said, many of the career-oriented lessons we once taught, such as writing résumés, professional emails, and cover letters, might now be better accomplished with the help of AI. These types of documents are often so constrained by guidelines that they tend to be generic anyhow, and tailoring each specifically to a particular job, as is generally best, can make a job hunt even more agonizing.

One recent graduate told me how they used AI to write dozens of personalized cover letters per day and that’s how they ultimately landed a prestigious research position. Many big companies are using AI to scan initial applications anyhow, so I see no problem in helping our students level the playing field.

Of course, students must be taught to critically read their AI cover letters and application materials to ensure these are accurate, truthful, and are not too generic. You don't want to be submitting the same letter dozens of other applicants did because they used AI, too.

3. Prioritize Originality

AI writing tends to be lifeless, cliché-filled, and boring—minus an occasional unintentionally entertaining hallucination.

To combat unwanted AI submissions in our class, we need to encourage writing that is the opposite of that. Let’s stop deducting points for students using the word “I” in their paper and encourage them to share their perspectives in unique and new ways. Let’s grade for originality and design assignments that require them to do things such as conduct new experiments, unearth historic documents, or interview people, and get fresh quotes not found on the internet.

The more real and practical we make our writing assignments, the better these assignments will be overall and the harder it will be for AI to duplicate any. For example, AI can write a decent paper about Juan Soto and how he recently snubbed the Yankees by signing with the Mets, but it can’t interview your school’s history teacher, who used to play minor league baseball and fell in love with history because he had nothing else to do but read during long bus trips.

4. Writing Instruction Should Include Prompt Writing

Like it or not, writing effective AI prompts will be a skill that is important in the future. Writing, English communications, and the liberal arts departments in general should not cede this important modern-world skill to the computer science department.

Instead, these groups should work with the tech department to develop collaborative assignments and AI understanding so students can use the skills they learn in writing class to get the best out of their AI use.

Studying the ways in which AI responds to different prompts can also be a good way to study language and its intricacies. Yes, teaching students to get better at AI use might make them better at cheating on assignments for which you don’t want them to utilize AI. But I don’t think we should let fear of misuse blind us to potential benefits.

I also think we need to push for more effective institutional responses to prohibited AI use in class, so teachers can spend less time weeding out AI and more time teaching traditional writing, and even writing with AI.

5. Remind Everyone of Writing's Cognitive and Emotional Impact All The Time

Sometimes those who are too pro-AI writing sound to me like someone who is questioning why anyone would walk or run to the store when they could drive there much quicker. Sure, the car will get you there and save you the physical exertion, which might be painful at times, but by doing so it will rob you of the health benefits of exercise and--forgive the cliché--the joys of the journey.

Writing is the same, even in those rare instances when AI can do it as well as a human. We need to remind students, administrators, and ourselves that writing isn’t about getting from a blank page to one filled with words. It’s about debating with ourselves and researching and thinking and building our knowledge of a topic while clarifying our thoughts.

Writing has been shown to help us learn, but it does more than that. When we write, we create, and while it isn’t always easy, there is something so profound and satisfying about sharing our inner thoughts. In other words, writing is one of the great joys of being human and I'm not ready for the machines to rob me or my students of that.

• AI Starter Kit for Teachers
• 8 Ways to Create AI-Proof Writing Prompts

Passion in a subject can strike students at any time. Be it science, math, or history, students can find themselves enamored with their class of choice. However, writing can lose its luster early on with students as it is usually associated with busy work. This loss of interest in writing is what Mystery Writing is trying to fix.

Here we speak with Ryan Brusco, Senior Director of Strategy at Discovery Education, about why writing is so important and how a system such as Mystery Writing can help students find more fulfillment in their writing.

Why Writing Programs Are Necessary

From writing your name to completing your first book report, putting pen to paper has been a fundamental way to flesh out ideas, create stories, and communicate universally. But why would writing become such a focus for a dedicated curriculum?

“Most of the folks on our team are former educators,” says Brusco. “We want to make sure that whatever we create is by teachers, for teachers. When we think about what edtech should be, we want to make sure that it saves teachers time and engages students with ‘wow’ content. Those are the two pillars we focus on when we build out a Mystery product.”

But what is the main issue that students face when it comes to writing?

“Confidence,” says Brusco. “We want our students to be confident writers. We want to help them get over the fear of the blank page. We’ve talked with teachers over the last four years. Teachers brought up the fact that they will give a writing assignment, students will sit down to write, teachers will circulate the room, and 30 minutes later they will get to a student who hasn’t written anything. Our goal is to help students develop confidence in their writing.”

How Mystery Writing Develops Confidence in Students and Efficiency in Teachers

It’s true that a blank page can be a daunting task to fill, especially for a student. Pressure to write the right thing can be overwhelming, and this is doubly so when a grade is on the line. So how can a curriculum empower students to overcome the fear that comes with writing in order to become their best selves?

“We started out by making 45-minute lessons at the sentence level that students can do in a short period of time,” says Brusco. “Then we have genre units that are separate from the 45-minute essential skills lessons.”

When asking teachers about what they would like to have in a writing curriculum, the sentiment revolved around how writing was being taught. Most teachers told Brusco that they taught writing in a gradual way, focusing on one particular genre and ending in an overall final project.

In order to help serve teachers while helping students better understand their writing process, practice lessons were also created to parallel the main lesson. This allows students to continuously work on their writing skills without having to go over the same lessons that they have already completed. The beauty of this method is that lessons are set up to be familiar to complete while offering different subject matter to keep writing interesting.

Similar lessons also help teachers who want to keep their curriculums uniform. Simply being able to log into the Mystery Writing service and begin a lesson in minutes allows teachers the ability to use their time more efficiently for other tasks. Many teachers look for ways to help save time during the school day due to the sheer amount of tasks they have to complete. As this service was made using the input of teachers testing it, it was designed with giving teachers back their time in mind.

Mystery Writing was made to help teachers get their students to a more solid understanding of their writing process by demystifying the blank page, as Brusco calls it. With this, we create a future of confident communicators ready to let their voices be heard, even through writing.

I’ve recently been experimenting with QuillBot, an AI-powered spelling- and grammar-checking tool that also has rewriting capabilities thanks to generative AI. Additionally, QuillBot offers AI detection and summary tools, but I didn't explore those features for this story.

After utilizing the free version available as a Google Chrome extension and having it monitor my writing in emails and stories for several days, I’m impressed with the tool overall and believe it would be helpful to my students. However, I have some serious caveats.

For example, I’m a fan of the traditional spelling and grammar aspects of QuillBot, not the generative AI rewrites it offers. These rewrites violate the policies of most publications I write for as a journalist, including this one, as well as my personal ethics. Additionally, it would violate the rules I establish for my students around generative AI in my classes.

These ethical issues aside, when I’ve tested its rewriting abilities for the purposes of this class, I begrudgingly have to admit it did a decent job. I still prefer my original phrasing, but it wasn’t as lifeless as most AI rewrites I’ve seen, and it highlighted the changes it made, which is a nice feature.

Below I talk more about QuillBot’s spelling and grammar-checking abilities, interface, and generative AI rephrasing.

QuillBot Excels As A Grammar and Spellcheck Tool

I used QuillBot primarily as a spellcheck tool and an alternative to popular options such as Grammarly. In this respect, QuillBot excels and exceeds my expectations.

After I downloaded the Chrome plugin, the tool automatically scanned stories I was writing in Google Docs and was excellent at spotting small but significant mistakes such as typos and missing commas. For instance, it reminded me to put a comma after the word “respect” in the second sentence of the previous paragraph, which I had missed in my initial draft of this story.

QuillBot works by underlining in pink or yellow words and phrases for which it suggests changes. The tool also offers the option to use a sidebar as you type. This will flag mistakes with little animations and gives you the ability to navigate through each suggestion it makes one by one.

I go back on forth on the utility of this tool. At first I liked that it was flashing suggestions and reminding me to fix mistakes as I went, but ultimately, I found that slowed me down. However, different writers may have different preferences, and I can see an argument for using the sidebar tool.

Some Small Drawbacks

Like any spellcheck tool, QuillBot will occasionally make suggestions that are incorrect or imperfect. In the final sentence of the previous paragraph, it suggests a comma after “At first… ,” which I feel hurts the flow of the sentence. However, I don’t mind it flagging the word, so I can take another look and think about whether a comma should go there or not.

For experienced writers, these types of suggestions won’t be a problem. It can be a little problematic for students still struggling with grammar rules, and therefore, more likely to listen to whatever the tool says. But even in that case, I think students will find the vast majority of its suggestions helpful, and despite being occasionally led astray by the tool, will still benefit overall from using it.

Generative AI Features

Now let’s take a closer look at the generative AI paraphrasing tools.

The QuillBot sidebar that pops up in Chrome gives you the option to input text and have QuillBot "paraphrase" it. You can only do this a few times with the free version, but the subscription version provides unlimited paraphrasing.

Here’s the first sentence of this story I wrote: I’ve recently been experimenting with QuillBot, an AI-powered spelling- and grammar-checking tool that also has rewriting capabilities thanks to generative AI.

Here’s how QuillBot rewrote it: Recently, I have been exploring with QuillBot, an AI-powered tool for grammar and spelling checks that also uses generative AI to rewrite text.

I like that it highlights the new words it has added to the sentence, and I’m not too proud to admit that in some ways the sentence might read a little bit better. But I don’t like it. First and most importantly, it has obliterated my voice as a writer, and that’s kind of what writing is all about. Also, the change from “exploring” to “experimenting” strikes me as changing the meaning of my initial sentence.

It’s true a student writer might benefit from this type of paraphrasing by seeing how a sentence can be reworked and improved, but I wouldn't recommend it to a student because I worry that if they start using this tool, the temptation of overusing it will be too great. And, yes, I know many students will use AI whether I recommend it to them or not, but still, I’d rather not be the person who leads them to the dark side.

The Bottom Line About QuillBot

QuillBot’s traditional spelling and grammar check is a wonderful free tool and acts as a second pair of eyes, catching many mistakes and spelling errors that could otherwise hamper my writing. I remain skeptical of its generative AI features, but I’m not a fan of these tools for writing in general.

Overall, I’m a fan of QuillBot and will use it going forward and think it can be helpful for students as well.

• Grammarly Authorship: I Tested The New AI and Plagiarism Tool
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Rather than discourage generative AI use in students, Dr. Jennifer Parker has developed a tool for helping them critically assess what AI generates. Her FLUF test is a scoring system for critically evaluating the accuracy, applicability, and usefulness of AI outputs.

The tool was inspired by digital literacy frameworks such as the CRAAP test and the five key questions for media literacy. It draws on Parker’s three-plus decade career in K-12 education and her current role as Faculty Development Coordinator ​at the Center for Teaching Excellence, University of Florida.

“The FLUF framework can be used to help you create better prompts because it can assist you in identifying the who, what, where, when, why, and how, and what goes into a good prompt,” Parker says. It also provides a guide for evaluating the finished product and deciding whether you need to adjust your prompts further.

Here’s everything teachers need to know about the FLUF test and using AI with students more effectively.

Utilizing AI In The Classroom

The FLUF test stands for format, language, usability, and fanfare. Parker, who developed the framework while working with educators at the University of Florida, explains that format refers to the layout and length of a product created by ChatGPT or another AI tool. Language measures tone and phrasing. Usability refers to the credibility and consistency. Fanfare really refers to the audience the output is reaching. For example, is it appropriate for the setting and is it entertaining and does it incorporate anecdotes?

Each of these elements receives a plus or minus score, and the final total is then easily critically evaluated. The goal is to have a zero FLUF and a fluff-free final output, Parker says.

The FLUF Test is available free on Parker’s website, and she encourages educators to start using it for their own AI experiments and with students. The test works with any product a generative AI tool creates.

“You can use it on an image, you can use it on a text. You can use it to critique a video work,” Parker says. “You're really looking for: Is the result your intended purpose? And if it's not, what do you need to do better with your prompts to speak to those elements of the FLUF test so that you really are getting the results that you intended.”

AI Prompts and Necessity

Researchers at the University of Florida and Central Michigan University, where Parker works as an adjunct instructor, are conducting research studies of the FLUF test with students. In the meantime, Parker says using it has taught her how to write better prompts, and she has also developed a prompt generator template based on the FLUF test.

For example, Parker has found that one common prompt-writing mistake people make is writing prompts that are too short and lacking in specificity.

“Sometimes people write just a quick prompt, as if they were Googling something,” Parker says. “But with AI, you have to be really descriptive and detailed.”

You should include information about who and what the final product is for, and be specific about the desired tone and format, Parker says.

For Parker, these are the kind of AI literate tools students need to develop and should be developing in K-12 and college. For her, the answer to the question of whether AI tools should be used by students is a resounding, "Yes."

“I think students should always use AI. I think that it's a tool that's here, just like the internet's here. I don't think we should hide from it,” she says. “What I do think we should do is teach them how to use it effectively and thoughtfully, and we also need to get teachers to engage in using it to have them create authentic products."

• Should Digital Literacy Be Its Own Classroom Subject?
• Best Free Digital Citizenship Sites, Lessons and Activities

Teachers often don’t pay enough attention to the science of teaching. I know this because I used to be one of these teachers.

As a journalist, I frequently write about science and health, and am fascinated by the cutting edge of human knowledge. However, for the first half-decade or so of my teaching career as an adjunct professor, that interest did not extend to the science of teaching. I wasn’t against using evidence-based strategies in the classroom, those approaches just weren’t on my radar.

That all changed when I started writing for Tech & Learning and regularly interviewing educational scientists. Before this, I taught primarily by intuition and through a grab bag of ideas learned during my own time as a student or gleaned from colleagues and supervisors. The good news is much of what I did already matched with strong educational science — my intuition, like that of most teachers, has been generally pretty sound. But not everything I or my colleagues did made sense, according to the latest science.

Over my years of teaching, I’ve come across department-mandated practices that have been debunked as ineffective, and have seen things I did in my own teaching that were unlikely to be helpful for my students. Today, I do my very best to avoid these mistakes and try to keep up with the latest teaching research. I’m certainly not perfect in this regard, but I’m hopefully always improving.

Here are some of the main ways in which science now informs my work in the classroom.

1. Avoiding Learning Styles

When I was in college, one of my professors had every student in class complete a learning style questionnaire. According to the questionnaire, I was a "visual learner.” Later, as a teacher, I thought about how I needed to make sure my lectures appealed to visual, audio, and other types of learners. These efforts were at best a waste of time since learning styles are a myth.

The idea of learning styles was popularized by an Australian educator in the 1990s based on his anecdotal observations. Subsequent research has repeatedly failed to find any evidence that learning styles are real. So, needless to say, I no longer take these into consideration when preparing for a class, and instead prioritize my time around teaching strategies that actually work, such as providing individualized feedback.

Unfortunately, I do still find myself interacting with students and colleagues who bring up learning styles, and I am trying to devise better strategies for informing them about the research. Right now I worry that when I contradict people who believe in learning styles, I come off like a jerk.

2. Better Utilization of Video

Sending a student a link to a video explanation of a concept, say comma usage, can feel like a cop out. My thinking used to run like this: “The student is paying the university and, therefore, me, for my expertise, and won’t I do a better job explaining the concept than a YouTube link?”

The answer is actually, “No.” Students will probably learn better from a high-quality YouTube lesson than from me. That’s according to a 2021 study that found students learn better from video lectures than in-person lectures. With this study in mind, I don’t shy away from assigning and sharing vetted videos with students based upon specific knowledge gaps I notice in their work

Dr. Michael Noetel, lead author of this research and professor of psychology at The University of Queensland, told me last year that I wasn’t the only one who worried I was taking a shortcut with video. “For a while, I think educators saw videos as the lazy way to teach, or they thought students only liked videos because they found reading hard,” Noetel says. “That’s starting to change.”

3. More Pretesting

As a student, I hated the stress caused by high-stakes tests. So as a teacher, I’ve mostly avoided these in favor of projects — this is easy to do since I teach writing, which naturally lends itself to projects (papers) better than tests.

These days, however, I’m exploring a new type of testing: pre-testing. This counterintuitive strategy has professors giving ungraded tests to students before they have a chance to learn the material. This may feel weird and counterintuitive, except pretesting has been shown to boost learning.

Being tested in an unfamiliar subject with can be frustrating for students, but when you explain the cognitive benefits, they tend to understand the theory behind it and come around.

4. Less Lecture

I’ve become a big fan of active learning, which research suggests can be more effective than traditional lectures. But again, I used to feel bad about not lecturing as that was what felt the most "school-like” to me.

Now, with active learning in mind, I’m dedicated to devoting more class time to in-class writing and other writing-related projects. I used to worry about not lecturing enough, but now I worry about lecturing too much.

Of course, I have not abandoned direct instruction, as that has strong evidence to support it as well. I have, however, gone away from the idea that true teaching means standing in front of the classroom and imparting wisdom to students. I’ve learned to trust my instincts that the best way to teach students to write is to have them spend as much time as possible — including during class — actually writing.

5. Fighting AI-Generated Papers

I’ve always been against work for work’s sake. Unlike some teachers, I encouraged my students to use automated citation tools, as I didn’t buy any of the arguments against using these, especially for undergrads. So I like the idea that generative AI tools can save students time and believe these are great for helping with spelling and grammar.

That being said, I’m firmly against AI writing replacing student writing even if AI writing gets good enough that students won’t need to write in the future. That’s because of the positive ways in which the writing process is linked to cognition, thinking, and learning. This is well-documented and something most of us have experienced. For example, it’s why you remember a high school history paper or other written projects. And while writing this article I learned more about my relationship to research in the classroom because sitting down to do it forced me to really think about it and remember how I've grown and evolved as a teacher.

Consequently, the research is clear: Students will be robbed of these types of critical thinking experiences if they outsource writing to AI.

• The Research-Practice Divide is Real. Here's How To Overcome It.
• Teaching Writing With AI Without Replacing Thinking: 4 Tips

NoRedInk is a web-based platform that's designed to help teach students about good writing practices, including grammar, by doing and experiencing.

The tool is aimed at grades three to twelve and works alongside a curriculum to offer the best possible progression for students. Since it's all web-based and self-explanatory, it is easy to get going both for teachers and students.

The idea here, as the name suggests, is to place task delegation and marking all in one digital space. As such, this can be setup, monitored, and adjusted by teachers to ensure students are individually on the right trajectory.

This guide aims to lay out all you need to know about NoRedInk to see how it could work in your class.

What is NoRedInk?

NoRedInk is an ELA site and resource space to help students and teachers work together to most effectively improve writing skills.

By offering a wide variety of content, tailored to each student's likes, this is able to keep even less-focused students engaged with the learning.

Usefully, this tool has developed over time, so it offers a student-focused selection of features that have developed based on student and teacher requests. It works to offer tailored suggestions to students to help them progress through their learning.

Thanks to a teacher dashboard it is possible to set work, see results, create feedback, and plan longer term, all within one space.

How does NoRedInk work?

NoRedInk can be setup by a teacher before adding students to the class roster. Then, groups can be made in which specific skills to focus on are assigned to individual students, or the entire group, to build mastery. They are then able to login and begin their tasks set in front of them, right from within the browser on their device of choice.

Since this is tailored to the needs of each student, it can be used for for anything from introducing new skills to reinforcing one for mastery. Crucially, it can allow students to work at their own pace and with challenges to grow and progress without feeling overwhelmed.

What are the best NoRedInk features?

NoRedInk allows for a great level of personalization so it can be humorous, engaging, and genuine fun for students to use. From including their favorite celebrities, shows, or sports teams, to adding the names of friends and pets, this is very adaptive and ideal for personalized learning.

A wide variety of activity options keeps this fresh. From restructuring sentences and manipulating multi-paragraph sentences to following writing prompts, completing scaffolded essays, and doing guided reviews, or even editing work -- there is plenty of opportunity to practice skills in action.

The diagnostics are helpful to focus work to suit students needs as well as to inform in-lesson teaching. Plus, the quiz tool helps to make assessing progress an easy process.

Go for the paid version and you get the helpful curriculum-based set of tools for students to work toward a well-aligned experience. This includes extra help with revision and writing practices.

How much does NoRedInk cost?

NoRedInk offers free and premium tiers to pick from with lots covered in the basic version but some extras that can make paying worthwhile.

The Free version gets you personalized content for students, a teacher dashboard, quiz activities, and lots of styles of written learning content that is scalable and works with the curriculum.

Go for the Premium version and you get full access to thousands of skills exercises, writing prompts, guided composition tools and reporting features. In addition, there are prompts and rubrics from ACT, SAT, AP, state tests and more. Standards-aligned benchmark assessments, evaluated tracking and dynamic usage reports for admins are also included.

NoRedInk best tips and tricks

Class-wide
Start by performing a task as a class so everyone understands how it works before setting individually adapted tasks.

Group targets
Tailor work to individuals but tailor goals for groups so you can address these in class without needing to see each student separately.

Revision
Use this tool as a part of revision, with exam and project goals in mind, as targets for learning outcomes.

• New Teacher Starter Kit
• Best Tools for Teachers

New research highlights that when it comes to writing instruction for middle and high school students, it’s important to get it, well, right.

“It does matter what you do when you teach writing because some things don't appear to work so well,” says Steve Graham, lead author of a new analysis of writing interventions (or “treatments”) for students in grades 6-12. 

The meta-analysis was published in the Journal of Educational Psychology and used data from 406 previous experiments involving 52,529 students. While no interventions studied in this analysis had a negative effect on writing outcomes, some interventions didn’t have significant positive effects. For instance, “Just simply increasing how much students write in middle school or high school does not improve their writing,” Graham says.

On the bright side, however, many interventions did help students improve their writing, and writing practice paired with enhanced instruction could make a significant difference. 

In their analysis, Graham and his co-authors identified 16 categories of writing interventions that had a positive impact on student writing and can serve as a guide to writing instructors. However, Graham cautions even though analysis of this kind provides teachers with tools that have a proven track record, there are no guarantees these strategies will work in all instances. 

“Just because a writing practice worked in eight other teachers' classrooms and had a positive effect, it does not mean that it is for certain going to work in your classroom,” he says. “Because the conditions under which research studies are conducted are different from the ones that may exist in an individual teachers’ classroom.” 

That’s why Graham advises instructors to use these 16 writing interventions as inspiration and to keep monitoring and adjusting their own practices based on what is and isn’t working for their students. 

Note: This study, like most education studies, measured effect sizes in standard deviation, which is the average deviation from the mean score for a group of students studied. In education research, effect sizes are notoriously small, so anything approaching a standard deviation of 1 is significant. For instance, a student with a 1.5 below the mean would require significant intervention.

1. Comprehensive Writing Programs  

Standard deviation: 0.47

These programs include those based on the process approach to writing, or what is sometimes called a writers’ workshop. Graham and his co-authors note this includes “extended opportunities for writing; writing for real audiences; engaging in cycles of planning, translating, and reviewing; personal responsibility and ownership of writing projects; high levels of student interactions and creation of a supportive writing environment; self-reflection and evaluation; personalized individual assistance and instruction; and, in some instances, systematic instruction.” 

2. Strategy Instruction  

Standard deviation: 0.76

This method of writing instruction involves explicitly teaching strategies for planning, revising, self-assessing, and/or editing text, the study authors note. Writing strategies range from processes, such as semantic webs to strategies designed for specific types of writing, such as stories. 

3. Digital Writing Tools  

Standard Deviation: 0.31

When students moved from using pen and paper to writing with the help of a traditional word processor over time, there was a marked improvement, Graham says. “The reasons for that are fairly obvious,” he adds. It’s easier to self-edit and move words around, and grammar and spellcheckers also help with the process. An even greater improvement was seen among students who had access to more advanced word processors, which might include the ability to add images and sound, or have gamified elements to help students learn to write. 

4. Transcription Instruction  

Standard deviation: 0.71

This positive effect was seen in lessons that included teaching spelling, handwriting, or keyboard use.

5. Computer-Assisted Instruction  

Standard deviation: 0.32

This included teaching writing, spelling, and other lessons with the help of a computer program as well as technology provided personalized instruction. However, computer-generated feedback on writing, in and of itself, did not provide a benefit, Graham says. This research predated the rapid advances in generative AI over the past year, so computer-assisted benefits and limitations will need to be updated in the future. 

6. Teaching Critical/Creative Thinking Skills for Writing  

Standard deviation: 0.27 

Teaching students critical thinking strategies improved writing as did teaching them how to add more creativity to their work. “Creativity could be exemplified in a study in which students were taught how to use metaphors, similes, etc., and critical thinking could be shown in a study in which students are analyzing their texts using questions that help them think critically about the veracity and value of the content they're looking at,” Graham says. 

7. Emulating Good Models of Writing

Standard deviation: 0.46

Graham and his co-authors defined this as, “Examining one or more examples of model texts or models for carrying out writing processes and attempting to emulate these models when writing.” This is something many professional writers do intuitively, so it makes sense that it would help with student writers. 

8. Feedback  

Standard deviation: 0.34

“We found feedback makes a difference,” Graham says. This included instructor feedback as well as peer and group feedback but notably not self-assessment/feedback or computer-generated feedback, at least in the studies looked at for this analysis. 

9. Goal Setting  

Standard deviation: 0.44

Whether teacher-assigned or based on students’ own goals for for writing or learning writing skills and processes, goal setting seemed to have a measurable impact on writing success. 

10. Prewriting Activities

Standard deviation: 0.49

“If you engage students in prewriting activities to gather or organize information – so it might involve discussion, or using some kind of organizer to generate and organize your ideas – writing gets better,” Graham says. 

11. Grammar Instruction 

Standard deviation: 0.77 

This positive association was much stronger than in some previous research into grammar’s impact on writing, including work Graham has been involved in. He says the change is likely due to better methodology that eliminated less well-designed grammar interventions as well as other factors. Most of the studies involve teaching grammar in context, he adds. So it was not the old form of grammar instruction that involved fill-in-the-blanks exercises and decontextualized practice around specific contexts. 

12. Sentence Instruction  

Standard deviation: 0.73

“We found that teaching students how to create more complex sentences had a positive effect on students’ writing,” he says. “When you write a lot of your cognitive efforts and resources are engaged in taking your ideas, images, etc, and translating them into an acceptable sentence that conveys your intended meaning, and is going to be understandable to the reader. So when you teach kids to be more facile with construction, then there's a positive effect on your writing.”  

13. Inquiry  

Standard deviation: 0.92

“We don't have as much data on this, but the idea behind inquiry is that you're gathering information that you're analyzing, that will help you in terms of your writing assignments,” Graham says. The study notes this could include comparing and contrasting cases or collecting and evaluating evidence.

14. Observing Writers/Readers, Peer Assistance  

Standard deviation: 0.41

Simply observing other writers, readers of writing, or teachers/peers as they model how to go about a writing process or skill, can also improve writing outcomes. 

15. Summarization Instruction

Standard deviation: 0.49

This can take the form of either sharing summarization strategies or direct instruction in which you present a summary, you discuss it, your students practice, and you get feedback, Graham says.

16. Text Structure Instruction  

Standard deviation: 0.39

Graham and his co-authors defined this as strategies in which teachers explicitly teach students knowledge about the purpose and/or structure of specific types of text, such as stories or persuasive texts. Once again, few writing instructors will be surprised this is an effective method. 

• Khanmigo’s Academic Essay Feedback Tool Can Help Make Writing Instruction More Accessible, Sal Khan says
• 4 Tips for STEM Writing

Star Wars Day, May 4th, is a great time to turn the magical allure of the Star Wars movie franchise into fun and fascinating lessons in the classroom. Using these free Star Wars ideas, lessons, activities, and tools, teachers of any galaxy will easily engross Padawans of any age in instruction on any topic.

May the learning be with you!

May the 4th Be With You: Best Free Star Wars Teaching Ideas

Prestwick House: Star Wars and the Hero's Journey Lesson Plan
A standards-aligned downloadable lesson plan that can be completed in a single class period, “Star Wars and The Hero’s Journey” looks through the lens of the archetypal hero story, found throughout civilizations. Students will examine Star Wars to identify universal themes, such as the challenge, the decision, and the obstacles. Included are detailed guidance for teachers and handouts for students.

Edutopia Star Wars Day Activity
A thought-provoking and insightful article from world cultures teacher Lori Brenneise, who demonstrates how to seamlessly weave Star Wars into your social studies, art, and English language arts instruction. Teach all lessons as a project over the course of several periods, or select the one that fits your students best.

Star Wars Story Writing Template
Take advantage of students’ love of Star Wars and adventure to inspire them to write their own narrative with this Star Wars Story Writing Template. Simply open the step-by-step template in Google slides and share with students. For those who don’t know where to start, the linked Star Wars story prompt generator provides lots of great ideas.

The slide presentation 15 Legendary Lessons from Master Yoda can be the starting point for a classroom discussion or writing lesson. Have kids choose their preferred Yoda quotation and ask them to write what it means to them, and how they apply its principles to their everyday life. For more great writing prompts check out 15 Star Wars Writing Prompts and 16 free Star Wars writing prompts.

Build an X-Wing Fighter From Office Supplies
A fun Star Wars art lesson that uses common office/school supplies. After building this one, students may be emboldened to start creating their own versions of memorable Star Wars vehicles and other technology.

May the 4th Be With You: Real-World Connections in the Classroom and Beyond
Award-winning English teacher Katherine Mulrooney offers great ideas for relating Star Wars to classroom subjects, including engineering, social studies, music, math, and literature. Each standards-aligned digital teaching resource is shareable via Google Classroom and forms the basis for a complete lesson.

Create Star Wars Art
As an art or graphic design assignment, have your students focus on an aspect of Star Wars they find meaningful, such as good vs. evil, relationships and community, or mythic heroism. Then ask them to illustrate this theme, either by creating their own artwork or developing a specific prompt for AI-generated artwork. To complete the assignment, students write an essay (but not AI-generated!) explaining how their art exemplifies their chosen motif.

Starwarigami
What does origami, the ancient Japanese art of paper folding, have to do with Star Wars? Strictly speaking, nothing at all. But that’s where the novelty (and fun!) lies. Combine the intricate paper engineering of origami with the futuristic spacecraft design of Star Wars and you will have a lesson that appeals to your entire class. The brainchild of software engineer Martin Hunt, Starwarigami provides 18 printable fold-and-crease patterns in addition to a gallery of finished artwork and links to other patterns.

Star Wars - Would You Rather?
A high-energy, feel-good exercise program that asks kids to choose between two Star Wars choices, then perform the indicated activity.

May the Force = mass x acceleration
What do Star Wars, NASA's Dawn spacecraft, and Newton's Laws of Motion have in common? From the renowned Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, this Star Wars-inspired, standards-aligned lesson about ion-propulsion includes background, student activities, example spreadsheets, and more. Want to go deeper into the physics? Check out the fine collection of force and acceleration lessons here.

Not So Far, Far Away
A lesson about latitude and longitude based on Star Wars fictional planetary locations and their Earthly analogues. Students learn how filmmakers used various extreme Earth landscapes as the basis for other-worldly Star Wars scenes, then map latitude and longitude of the real-world locations. Includes follow-up questions.

Star Wars Day STEM Activities
A wealth of Star Wars STEM activities can be found here, from creating colorful lightsaber greeting cards to building robots from junk. Many of these excellent resources are aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards.

Teaching With Star Wars
In the Star Wars saga, the most valuable lessons extend beyond technological advancements. Rather, they explore life’s problems and solutions, whether in a distant galaxy or right here on Earth. Star Wars authority and educator Dan Zehr thoughtfully delves into timeless themes such as dedication, resilience and effective leadership.

Teaching ‘Star Wars’ With The New York Times
The Times takes Star Wars lessons to a level above Cloud City with its Shakespeare, history, physics, science, math, and yes, economics, Star Wars-themed lessons. An exceptionally strong resource, especially for middle schoolers and above.

Star Wars Lessons for the Music Classroom
John Williams’ Star Wars score is one of the best known movie themes of all time. But what about other avenues to combine Star Wars and music in a single, thought-provoking lesson? Teacher Jessie Powell, the force behind the popular YouTube channel Music and Motivate, provides a detailed narration of her favorite Star Wars music lessons, as well as a link to her blog, where the interactive lesson can be accessed for free.

Stanford professors Rob Reich, Mehran Sahami, and Jeremy M. Weinstein are sounding the alarm on a new method for student cheating: AI-generated papers. 

AI writing tools, such as the recently made public ChatGPT, have improved rapidly in recent years, and even months, and free programs are regularly advertised to students in targeted ads, making this an issue that might already have impacted many educators’ classrooms, whether they know it or not. 

“The astounding pace of progress has far outpaced any capacity for regulation to meaningfully keep pace,” Reich says. “[This] has put educators in an unbelievably difficult position.” 

What Should Teachers Know About AI Writing Tools?  

AI (artificial intelligence) writing programs have become good enough that detecting whether a student uses one is often impossible for a teacher. However, teachers can still discuss the technology with their students and explain that using AI writing tools is a serious form of cheating. 

For the first time, Reich, Sahami, and Weinstein are addressing the potential misuse of the technology with students for the course they teach together, Ethics of Technological Disruption. “We feel that we need to add language in the syllabus that signals for our students our expectations about them not using these tools, to either write code for the technical assignment, or to draft their philosophy papers or policy memos,” Weinstein says. “[Using these] will be met by the same kinds of standards with respect to the honor code at Stanford as any other form of plagiarism. But of course, we don't ourselves have the ability to detect the use of these tools.” 

“It’s an honor system,” Reich adds. 

Teachers can also structure assignments in such a way that the AI writing models can’t mimic currently. For instance, a student could be required to show an outline and other work documenting how an assignment progressed. Or teachers might structure assignments in the form of a dialogue, forcing each student to respond to inputs from another student. 

However, Reich, Sahami, and Weinstein believe this places the emphasis on teachers when the tech companies that create and release this technology should do more to safeguard against its misuse. 

In a recent op-ed in The Guardian, Reich, Sahami, and Weinstein put forth several potential ways that tech companies could safeguard against the misuse of AI writing models. For example, one method would be to have all text generated by commercial AI language moderators placed in an independent repository so papers could be checked for plagiarism. Age restrictions and age-verification systems could also limit the potential for student misuse. 

Why This Technology is Different  

An AI writing program called GPT-3 has made headlines and sometimes produces writing that is almost indistinguishable from human writing. Reich, Sahami, and Weinstein used it to write a small part of their book System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot. That was published in September 2021, and in little more than a year, more powerful AI language models have emerged, including ChatGPT. 

Now that these tools are more widely available, teachers need to educate students and the public about what makes these different from other student-friendly technology, such as a grammar check or even a calculator. “It challenges us as educators to say, ‘Well, what is the line between this and the word suggestions that Google offers students when they're writing to complete a sentence?'” Weinstein says. 

The answer for Weinstein and his colleagues is that these tools create a shortcut that doesn’t just help a human complete task, it essentially eliminates the human role in the task. It’s one thing for professional writers or adults to utilize an AI writing tool to save time, but quite another for students to skip out on learning a fundamental mode of human communication. 

“I don't think that the parallel to the calculator makes a lot of sense here,” Weinstein says. “These are fundamental tasks about being human, connecting with others, and engaging in deliberation. The ability to develop writing skills is central to that.” 

What Does AI-Generated Text Looks Like  

To better understand how quick and effective AI writing tools are, I asked ChatGPT the following question: Why is it wrong for students to use AI language generators for assignments? Here is the response: 

It is generally not considered ethical for students to use AI language generators for assignments because doing so would involve submitting work that is not their own and that has not been properly cited. This is a form of academic dishonesty, which is taken very seriously by schools and can result in penalties such as failing grades or even expulsion. Additionally, using AI language generators for assignments deprives students of the opportunity to learn and develop their own writing and critical thinking skills.

As you can see, it may not win a Pulitzer but it's probably good enough to get a good grade. 

Update 12/14/22: This story was updated to include direct mention of ChatGPT and to include a sample of its writing abilities. 

• What is ChatGPT and How Can You Teach With It? Tips & Tricks
• AI Writing Programs Are Getting Better. Is That a Good Thing?
• How to Teach With Deep Fake Technology

Thanksgiving is a day to reflect with gratitude on the blessings of our lives. It’s one of the most beloved American holidays, celebrated by people of all religions and backgrounds, and ideal for incorporating into your curriculum.

However, our understanding of the day has changed over the years. While some of the following Thanksgiving lessons, activities, and games include familiar elements such as turkey and pumpkin pie, others inquire into the historical record and modern social perspectives, helping students gain a fuller, more authentic understanding.

Before diving into the following free Thanksgiving lessons, activities, and games, educators can get an overview of the changing way Thanksgiving is taught through the articles listed below under Thanksgiving Perspectives, Past and Present.

Thanksgiving Perspectives, Past and Present 

The Wampanoags' Thanksgiving
Historian David J. Silverman’s essay delves into the Wampanoag side of the Thanksgiving story. What was the state of the Wampanoag nation when the Mayflower landed? What motivated the Wampanoag to create an alliance with the English settlers? This revealing examination from a historian’s perspective is ideal for high school students. Lesson idea: Before assigning the essay, ask your students to write a few sentences on what might have motivated the Wampanoag. Then have them read the essay and write about how their views may have changed.

Thanksgiving: Another Serving
What happened to relations between the Wampanoags and the European settlers? In a span of a single generation, they went from Thanksgiving comity to the bloody battles of King Philip's War. Historian and professor of Early American History at Harvard University Jill Lepore explains in this fascinating video hosted by The Gilder Lehrman Institute.

Time: The Way American Kids Are Learning About the “First Thanksgiving” Is Changing
Should we be teaching students myth or history? This excellent article is a great starting point for teachers to learn the truth, the myths, and the historical interpretations surrounding the first Thanksgiving. Best to read before planning your lesson.

Native Educators Say Thanksgiving Lessons Can Be Accurate, Respectful, And Fun
If you’re wondering whether there’s anything suitable left to teach about Thanksgiving, don’t despair. This article details simple steps you can take right now to make your Thanksgiving lessons accurate and inclusive.

Best Free Thanksgiving Lessons and Activities

Thanksgiving Math Activities for Kids
Two engaging Thanksgiving-themed math activities include printable handouts and an exploration of math skills. Aimed at kids in grades preK-3, the Thanksgiving Coloring Activity combines arithmetic with coloring by number. For older students (grades 4-8), try the Thanksgiving graphing activity, in which a correctly plotted graph reveals a surprise message. Great fun!

Squanto's gift: A Thanksgiving science lesson
A hands-on Thanksgiving science lesson that demonstrates the importance of Patuxet tribe member Squanto (Tisquantum) to the early settlers. Ideal for grades preK-5, this lesson requires only simple materials, a bit of time and careful observations. An excellent introduction to the scientific method for younger students.

The First Thanksgiving Celebration Lesson Plan
A K-4 reading-based Thanksgiving lesson that teaches students about the lives of the Wampanoag people and their participation in the first Thanksgiving celebration. Includes key questions, extension activities and suggested reading.

Thanksgiving Music Activities
These five terrific Thanksgiving-related songs will have every kid in the classroom singing along. But there’s much more than just the joy of singing in these lessons from Beth’s Music Classroom. Included are tips for teaching music principles, activities and videos.

Thanksgiving Science Experiment
Perhaps more than any other American holiday, Thanksgiving celebrates the abundance and variety of delicious foods. And nothing makes food taste better than butter! This detailed butter in a jar experiment is perfect for teaching science with a Thanksgiving flavor. Includes chemistry discussion, photos, video, worksheets and printables.

Plimoth Patuxet Museum Teacher Toolkit
A five-unit curriculum that takes a deep dive into the first Thanksgiving. The standards-aligned lessons comprise sections on the Patuxet people, leadership and diplomacy, the crucial role of corn, the celebration as a historical event, and ways to think about giving thanks. Included in this comprehensive resource are vocabulary, themes, historical notes, and bibliography.

StoryCorps: The Great Thanksgiving Listen
The nonprofit organization Storycorps has been capturing the voices and stories of Americans since 2003. Storycorps’ Great Thanksgiving Listen invites young people to take part in this oral history project by recording an interview with an elder, mentor, friend, or anyone they admire. The Educator Toolkit provides step-by-step guidance on every aspect of the Great Thanksgiving Listen and includes printable handouts for students.

Lesson plan: After helping Pilgrims, today's Wampanoag tribe fight for their ancestral lands
A lesson for grades 6-12 that teaches about the Wampanoag people of today in the context of their historical role at the first Thanksgiving. Choose from among topics such as Thanksgiving history as told by the Wampanoag, land disputes, and gambling, then ask the provided questions. Lesson available as a Google Doc.

Celebration, Conflict and Contemplation: Digital Thanksgiving Activities and Lesson Plans for Students
Ideal for distance or hybrid learning, these free preK-12 digital Thanksgiving lessons include thought-provoking writing assignments, recipe-based math lessons, humorous turkey hijinks, and a look at the modern day lives of the Wampanoag People.

Thanksgiving Directed Drawings
Directed drawings are a great way for kids to gain basic drawing skills and confidence while creating their own artwork. Whether apple pie, cooked turkey, Happy Thanksgiving message, or cartoon turkey, these free and fun video drawing lessons are perfect for both classroom and remote learning.

Turkey Templates for Thanksgiving Creativity and Writing
Education technology expert and Google app guru Eric Curts shares Google Slides templates for building and disguising a turkey. Use it as a fun art lesson, or as a jumping-off point into a discussion about empathy with animals.

Best Free Thanksgiving Games and Interactives

PBS Kids: An Ellwood City Thanksgiving
Join beloved cartoon character Arthur the aardvark as he visits various friends and relatives for Thanksgiving, and learns about different ways of celebrating the holiday. This interactive game allows kids to select whom to visit, participate in the meal and acknowledge the role of Indigenous people. Options in this high quality game include closed captions, music, sound effects and dialog.

Plimoth Patuxet Museums: Activities and Games
Living like people of the 17th century is an excellent way to learn social history. Talk like a pilgrim, cook 17th-century food with modern recipes, and ponder 11 tricky riddles. Fun for students and teachers alike.

6 fun Thanksgiving-themed games for young learners
If you’ve never tried ABCYa games, here’s the perfect opportunity. High-quality digital games are accompanied by an amusing soundtrack that only adds to the fun. Best of all, five out of these six games are CCSS-aligned. Try the Thanksgiving printables too!

You Are the Historian: Investigating the First Thanksgiving
A great way for students to investigate and learn a more nuanced history about Thanksgiving, from both the Indigenous and Colonial perspectives.

• Best Free Indigenous Peoples Day Lessons and Activities
• 8 Ways to Create AI-Proof Writing Prompts
• Best Free Winter Holiday Lessons and Activities

Today, Google for Education announced the launch of originality reports, a new feature that helps ensure the authenticity of coursework by flagging any text that has missed citations and has high similarity with text on the web or in books. 

Available through Classrooms, originality reports use search capabilities as it cross-references student work against hundreds of billions of web pages and tens of millions of books.

Google for Education also announced new activities to CS First, a Code with Google curriculum for elementary and middle school students. The new CS First activities, called Characterization and Interactive Presentation are two key components of English Language Arts (ELA) instruction. Both activities align with Common Core ELA Anchor Standards and include instructional videos, lesson plans, student materials and more.

BoomWriter Media recently announced they will once again be providing the writing platform for The Writing Bee.  This event is made available for free to classrooms, schools, and school districts around the world to participate.  What's new for this year's event is the addition of a middle school Writing Bee that will take place concurrently with the Elementary Grade Writing Bee.  Qualifying Rounds for both events will begin this February and continue through May with the Writing Bee Finals scheduled to take place in June.

This year's Writing Bee features Nick Bruel, author of the Bad Kitty series, for the Elementary Grades as well as civil rights icon and former Black Panther Jamal Joseph inspiring students with their creation of spoken word-orientated content in the Middle School Writing Bee.  Following on the momentum generated by previous years' celebrity guest author Jeff Cohen from the Goonies and Jeff Kinney from The Diary of a Wimpy series, this year's authors promise to deliver the biggest and most  interactive Writing Bee to date!

The Writing Bee represents a unique way for teachers to engage all of their students in reading and writing both within and beyond the school day.  School districts, schools, or even individual classrooms can conduct their own local "Qualifying" Writing Bee using the prompts provided by the respective guest authors.  Elementary grade students will use BoomWriter to complete subsequent chapters of a story created by Nick Bruel.  This story will then be published and include the names of all participating students.  Middle School Writing Bee participants will view video prompts provided by Jamal Joseph on BoomWriter offering instruction, inspiration and the themes around which the students will be creating their original spoken word-orientated content.

As with past years' Writing Bees, teachers have the option of providing personalized feedback to students once they've submitted their work in order for them to conduct revisions before the submissions go into the voting portion of the event.  During voting, students review the anonymous submissions of their peers in small batches and cast votes for their favorite/s.  Students who win their class, school, or district's qualifying rounds, as well as each event's top vote-getters, then qualify for The Writing Bee Finals.  This knock-out style competition takes place in June with participants from around the world submitting their work and competing to become the Elementary and Middle School Writing Bee Champions and receive a $2,000 college savings scholarship!

There's a great buzz around this event (pardon the pun), but it really serves as a great way to get kids excited about writing.  Keep in mind the last year's Writing Bee did reach capacity, so if you want your students to have the chance to participate you should go to the Writing Bee site as soon as possible and register your class, school, or district. 

cross posted at cyber-kap.blogspot.com

David Kapuler is an educational consultant with more than 10 years of experience working in the K-12 environment. For more information about his work, contact him at dkapuler@gmail.com and read his blog at cyber-kap.blogspot.com.

I love writing… blog posts, stories, poems, and more. As much as I love it though, writing can be a challenge. Often one of the mostdifficult parts is just getting started. Sometimes we just need a little inspiration, a jump start to get us thinking down a new path.

When my daughter was younger we used to do poetry nights where we would use a website (Watch Out for Snakes) that would randomly create titles for us by putting together adjectives and nouns. We would then challenge each other to write a poem based on one of the prompts, followed by reading our new creations. Yes, I have always been a nerd.

Just like those random titles inspired me to compose poems, such tools can help our students when they need to write a journal entry, short story, essay, article, poem, or such. Thankfully there are many resources available to use for writing prompts, story starters, and other writing inspiration. In this blog post we will take a look at 10 example tools to use in your class.

By the way, if you are interested to see some examples of what came out of my poetry nights, feel free to check out Elemental Love, Moonstruck Conifer, and Smallest Pony.

 #1 - Writer Igniter 

This site is a simple but fun way to make random story ideas. Simply click the "Shuffle" button to get a new random prompt including "Character", "Situation", "Prop", and "Setting" (which will display as an image).

#2 - Scholastic Story Starters 

This tool for grades K through 6 randomly generates plots for adventure, fantasy, and science fiction stories, and then works students through the writing process.

• To begin, choose the type of story you want to write including "Adventure", "Fantasy", "Sci-Fi", and "Scrambler".
• Next choose the grade level from "K-1st", "2nd", "3rd", "4-6th".
• Now pull the lever to spin the wheels and get a story prompt.
• If you want, you can also push the individual buttons to spin just single wheels and change just a portion f the prompt.
• When you are happy with the prompt, now choose the format for the writing including "Notebook", "Letter", "Newspaper", or "Postcard".
• Finally the student can now write their story.
• There is also an option to draw a picture to include with the story if desired.
• When done, you can print your story or download it as a PDF.

 #3 - Writing Sparks 

This site guides students through the writing process, providing inspiration along the way. Here's how to use it: 

• First, begin by clicking the "Create Spark" link.
• Next, choose the age of your students, either "7 and under" or "8 and over".
• Next, select the type of writing you want your students to do, including "Story", "News Article", "Opinion", and "Poem".

• Then choose how long the writing exercise should last, from "10 minutes" to "15 minutes" to "20 minutes".
• The site will now provide the writing prompt and guide the students through the writing process.
• Along the way, the site will continue to provide inspirations that can be including in the project.

Here is a video from Writing Sparks with more details: 

#4 - New York Times Learning Network 

This site is a little different from the others in that it does not generate random prompts. Instead the site offers several new writing prompts each week. The added value however is that each prompt comes along with an associated New York Times article for the student to explore, as well as thought-provoking questions to help the students dig deeper in the topic before writing. 

 #5 - Describing Words 

 This is another tool that is different from the others in that it does not create random prompts, but instead helps extend an idea the student already has. 

• To use the site, start by typing in the key word you want to write about, and then press the search button.
• You will now get a giant list of adjectives and phrases related to your main word.
• You can click "Sort by usage frequency" to show the list from most common to least common.
• Or click "Sort by uniqueness" to get more unusual options at the top.

This site can be helpful for a student who has a general idea of what they need to write about, but could use some inspiration. Alternately it could be interesting to have every student in the class start with the same word, and then use this site to get creative ideas on what to do with that word, comparing their final writings. 

 #6 - Writing Exercises

This site has a large collection of many different writing prompt tools to get students thinking in creative ways. The tools include the following: 

• Story Title - Click the "Adjective" and "Noun" button to generate a title for your writing.
• Story Title 2 - Click the "Press here" button to get a different random story title each time.
• Story Plot - Click the buttons for "Character 1", "Character 2", "Place", and "Event" to get the elements of a story plot.
• Character - Click the "Create a Character" button to get a couple of sentences describing your character to include in your writing.
• Animal Character - Click the "Animal Character" button to get the description of a creature to write about.
• First Line for a Story - Click "Press Here" to get the beginning of the story, and then write from there.
• The Journey - Click each of the three "Press Here" buttons to get different parts of a story about going on a trip.
• Random Picture - This tool gives you an image to describe and write about.
• News Headline - Click the "Press here" button to get a headline from which you can write a news story, answering where, how, and why.
• Odd Object - This option will generate an object in a strange location. Students can write about why it is there and what it is doing.
• Random Words - The final generator simply gives you three (probably unrelated) words that you need to incorporate into your writing.

Note: The site also has a main page at http://writingexercises.co.uk with even more writing prompt tools. However the main site is not specifically for children, so some of the prompt could be more mature. 

#7 - Google Sheets Random Writing Prompt Generator 

This option uses a Google Sheets template I created that randomly pulls from a list of about 2,000 adjectives and 1,000 nouns to create over 2 million unique prompts. To get your own copy of the "Random Writing Prompt Generator" spreadsheet, click the link below: 

Random Writing Prompt Generator - Google Sheets link

 The Google Sheet has three tabs: 

• The Prompts tab - Here you will find 20 randomly generated writing prompts in the form of an adjective followed by a noun. These can be used for the title of a poem or the topic of a story. 
• The Adjectives tab - Here you will find a list of about 2,000 adjectives.
• The Nouns tab - Here you will find a list of about 1,000 nouns.

You can get a new set of 20 random prompts by pressing "Ctrl" and "R" (to recalculate) or by refreshing the page in your browser.

#8 - Google Sheets Emoji Writing Prompt Generator 

Here is another Google Sheets template I created, but this one uses emojis instead of words to generate writing ideas. To get your own copy of the "Emoji Random Writing Prompt Generator" spreadsheet, click the link below:

Emoji Random Writing Prompt Generator - Google Sheets link

The Google Sheets has six tabs along the bottom:

• "Directions" tab - Here you will find the directions for using the spreadsheet.
• "2 Emojis" tab - This tab randomly generates 2 emojis as a writing prompt.
• "3 Emojis" tab - This tab randomly generates 3 emojis as a writing prompt.
• "4 Emojis" tab - This tab randomly generates 4 emojis as a writing prompt.
• "5 Emojis" tab - This tab randomly generates 5 emojis as a writing prompt.
• "Data" tab - This tab has over 800 emojis, from which the other tabs randomly pull.

#9 - Google Drawings Story Cubes 

Story cubes can be a fun way for students to get inspiration for writing. Typically they are regular cubes with a different picture or word on each face. Students can pick a few cubes and then roll them to randomly get elements for a story.

Although you can certainly buy these cubes, you can also make you own. Below you will find three Google Drawing templates for making story cubes. Each is optimized for different types of cubes including picture cubes, emoji cubes, and text cubes. 

• Story Cube Template - Picture Version - Google Drawing link
• Story Cube Template - Emoji Version - Google Drawing link
• Story Cube Template - Text Version - Google Drawing link

 #10 - Watch Out for Snakes

 And finally, the one that started it all for my poetry writing fun, this site offers several different random prompt tools. The option I used most often was the "Phrase" tool.

• You can choose up to four different words, which can include nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, interjections, and prepositions.
• For each word you can also choose how common it is, with choices ranging from "Very Common" all the way to "Obscure".

In addition to the "Phrase" tool, the site also has other generation tools including  "Word", "Word+", "Sentence", and "Paragraph".

Conclusion 

Hopefully one or more of these tools will be a great match for your class and your students! If you have your students create some writings from using any of these prompt generators, please consider sharing some examples of what they make. I would love to see their creations! 

cross posted at www.controlaltachieve.com

Eric Curts is an education trainer and consultant with over 20 years' experience throughout the U.S. He is an authorized Google Education Trainer and a Google Certified Innovator. Read his blog at www.controlaltachieve.com and follow him on Google+ and @ericcurts on Twitter.

 "Plagiarism is the 'wrongful appropriation' and 'stealing and publication' of another author's 'language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions' and the representation of them as one's own original work. (Wikipedia)."  Technology has made it easier for teachers and students to check for plagiarism and make sure that work is original, leading me to creating the following list.

*This list is in alphabetical order.   

1. BibMe - Not only does BibMe check for plagiarism, it also checks for grammar and allows for proper citation to prevent stealing others' work.
2. EduBirdie - A free tool where a user can upload or copy/paste text into the submission field, to receive a report detailing what words and phrases are unique or "stolen" with listed sources.
3. Grammarly - A great site where users can check for plagiarism and get recommendations for citations on sources that need to be properly credited.
4. Noplag - An excellent online plagiarism, spell, and grammar checker for teachers and students.
5. OuiWrite - An innovative all-in-one site that checks for plagiarism, but acts as a writing assistant for student's papers automatically searching/citing sources as they go along.
6. PaperRater - A nice site for students want to check grammar, spelling, and plagiarism.
7. PapersOwl - A convenient free plagiarism checker that students can use to detect their work and get detailed reports.
8. PlagTracker - A wonderful site for uploading a document and then scanning for plagiarism with accurate reports.
9. Plagiarisma - A simple little site for pasting in text to check for plagiarism.
10. QueText - A fantastic site where a user can copy/paste or upload text to detect plagiarism and generate detailed reports.

cross posted at cyber-kap.blogspot.com

David Kapuler is an educational consultant with more than 10 years of experience working in the K-12 environment. For more information about his work, contact him at dkapuler@gmail.com and read his blog at cyber-kap.blogspot.com.

Finding inspiration and working through writer’s block can be a challenge for students of all ages. There are a handful of technology tools that bring writing prompts to the fingertips of anyone with access to a web browser or tablet. What I love about these tools are how they each address the idea of supporting struggling writers. You can use these tools in whole class activities, to support individuals, or for individualized learning experiences.

When can writing prompts come in handy? You might build writing prompt tools into everyday activities like a do now or writing station. Students can journal in response to writing prompts on a regular basis. They can even use one of these as discussion prompts to help kids build speaking and listening skills before getting ready to write.

Here are 5 tech tools for writing prompts:

• Write About (iOS, Web): Students can access writing prompts in the Write About iOS app or web platform. Students on the web can write stories for teachers to monitor and give feedback. The Write About app lets kids record their stories and save their writing and narration to the iPad Photo Library.
• Scholastic Story Starters (Web): Perfect for classrooms with interactive whiteboards, this tool lets students spin a dial for a new writing prompt. There are different genres to choose from including fantasy and adventure.
• CommonLit (Web): The writing prompts on CommonLit’s website include access to short texts students can use to support their answer. Whether you use these resources or not, CommonLit does a great job of organizing prompts by theme.
• Writing Challenge (iOS, Android): This super fun app lets you set a timer to introduce a new story parameter to students. The countdown clock can be turned off or customized for your group of students.
• Writing Prompts (iOS): This app is from the folks at Teacher Created Resources. With a tap or shake of the iPad users will see the object, setting, and other story elements change.

How do you share writing prompts with your students? Tell your story in the comments below.

cross posted at classtechtips.com

Monica Burns is a fifth grade teacher in a 1:1 iPad classroom. Visit her website at classtechtips.com for creative education technology tips and technology lesson plans aligned to the Common Core Standards.

Title: Scribble Press
Summary: Terrific book creator for prolific and reluctant writers, alike.

Pros: More than 500 drawing and writing tools and 50 story templates, as well as three publishing options.
Cons: No kid-friendly guide on the app about protecting their personal information in public publishing.
Bottom Line: Scribble Press is a quality way for kids to explore storytelling, illustrating, and publishing.

Read more here.

By Common Sense Education