Samson's Classroom Website and Giveaway!

I'm sharing all about Samson's Classroom today; a website my students and I love using for sight word and reading practice.

With Samson's Classroom, your students can practice sight words, spelling, reading fluency, and reading comprehension in such a fun way, they won't even know they're learning. 

In the sight word section, students choose a word list to practice.

Samson takes students through 5 steps to help them practice and master each word list. In step 1, student learn the words.

In step 2, they build the words.

 In step 3, they identify the words.

In step 4, they practice spelling the words.

And in step 5, they practice using their new words in sentences.

Immediate feedback is given to the students in each activity and prompts are provided when needed. Students can also click "hear again" to have a word repeated.

Samson's Classroom tracks each student's progress, so I can go into my teacher dashboard and view my student's sight word progress.

In the reading section, students can choose from 5 different reading levels and earn carnival hammer swings for mastering passages.

All of the passages are timed and include reading comprehension questions students must answer. Samson provides immediate feedback and another feature I love is if students need a hint or a little help, he will highlight the area in the text where the answer can be found.

Again, I can go to my teacher dashboard and check my student's reading progress. I can see what date they read the passage, the time it took, and their comprehension score.

I have not used the spelling component yet, but it looks just as engaging and I plan to use it next year. There are almost 100 pre-made spelling lists to choose from or you can customize and add your own lists.

You can also track spelling progress in the teacher dashboard and the dashboard is so clear cut and user-friendly!

 You can click here to try out a free demo of Samson's Classroom! 

Here are some of my students engaged in Samson's Classroom!

I've piloted and used many websites in my classroom over my last 10 years of teaching, and Samson's Classroom is by far one of mine and my student's favorites for sight word and reading practice and I can't wait to implement the Spelling component next year. I love the simplicity of it, for both the teacher and the student, yet the immediate feedback and engagement it provides and the progress my students have made!  

A classroom subscription is $80/year, AND so worth it, but guess what?? I'm giving away 3 classroom subscriptions today!! That's right! Samson's Classroom has generously offered to give 3 of you a free one-year classroom subscription to use in your classroom!

Enter using the Rafflecopter below and Good Luck! I'm confident that you and your students are going to love Samson's Classroom!
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MobyMax Giveaway!!!

Hi Teacher Friends! Have you heard about MobyMax??? I used the free version last year and liked it so much that I purchased it this year! 

MobyMax is a web-based K-8 Common Core Curriculum that assesses and finds your student gaps and missing skills and then automatically assigns lessons to fill in these missing gaps!!! That's right.....Moby does it all for you!! However, you do have the flexibility to assign your own lessons and assessments if you choose. 

There are so many exciting features......where do I begin?? 

Here is a look at the dashboard and subjects! 

Students choose a subject to work in. Most subjects begin with a placement test that the student will need to take.

Classroom Tools allows the teacher to easily sign up students using the roster button, post assignments and announcements for the class, print worksheets, design whole group clicker activities, or privately send messages to parents and/or students using messenger.

Students are easily motivated with the badge system by earning a star for each practice set they complete. After ten stars, they earn a badge! Students are also automatically awarded with game time minutes for correct answers, but teachers also have the flexibility to reward more and monitor game time if they choose. Vibes can be given to reward or remind that difficult child of positive behavior. And you can even put together class contests!

But this is just the start teachers!!!

MobyMax gives you the ability to progress monitor, assign formative, summative, diagnostic, and unit assessments and more!

But wait....it gets better!
I haven't even told you about my most favorite features!

Reports
Parent Portal
IEP Goal Monitoring

Yes! There is a parent portal, so parents can check on their child's progress at any time. Another piece of "evidence" for home/school communication checked off the list!

Printable reports are available for all subjects. Here is an example of addition fact  progress for all and then broken down for one of my students.

And yes you did read my favorites correctly.....IEP goals! Say what? Built-in IEP goal monitoring and data collection! I haven't had chance to delve into this feature too much, as the free version I had did not offer this feature, but check it out!

Coming from a special education teacher, this is a HUGE plus! I can actually assign lessons and standards that target my student's IEP goals and let Moby do the monitoring! Wowza!! I have an instant print out of how my students are maintaining or progressing towards their goals whenever I need it! 

Two last features I must mention are the audio capability. You can adjust the settings to automatically have the lessons read for your students. This is a must feature for me as a special educator as most of my students cannot read. Another plus is that Moby allows your students free access at no charge....no expiration, no hidden charges, no limit to number of students, and offers an entry to their monthly tablet giveaway just for signing up for free! 

However, in order to gain access to all of the teacher components like the assessments, reports, worksheets, student motivators, etc. you must have the paid version. BUT MobyMax and I have some great news! Not only is it only $99 a year for an entire classroom.......MobyMax is giving away a free one-year subscription to one of my readers!!!! WooHoo! Just follow me on Bloglovin' to enter. Pin, like "The Bender Bunch" on FB, or leave a comment to earn more entries and increase your chances to win!

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Try MobyMax out for free {here}. 

And since it's also "Freebie Friday with TBA," here's a little freebie for ya! I'm working on a mini unit to teach my students about their state of Nevada, so if you live in NV, stay tuned for this product! I'm thinking about even taking requests for other states if it goes as planned. But for now, please enjoy my "Desert Animals" booklet that will be a part of this unit. 

ClassJump.com

Do you have a classroom website? Are you thinking about creating one? Then, you will love Class Jump! My school district offers a platform that allows us to create free class websites, but it's.....well I must say, cheesy. It's plain and not very user friendly. 

I knew what I wanted! I wanted to design a class website where I could add my class photos for parent viewing, post calendar events, include "one click" links to educational websites my students can access from home, links to parent resources, an email link, and a subscription link where parents could subscribe to receive notifications via email. 

After much shopping around, I found it!! Class Jump allows me to do all of these things. It's user-friendly, reader-friendly, and it's FREE! My favorite thing is that I can upload all of my class photos so parents can see what's happening in our classroom! Very few sites offer this! Parents can also right click and save the images of their children to their files for long lasting memories. 

Another great feature is that parents and students can access resources and links with one click. No copying or pasting web addresses. They just click on my links and they are directed straight to the site they have chosen. 

Here is a snippet of my homepage. 

 I chose blue, but you can choose from various background and font colors! You can also customize your sidebar, events, and layout! It's super easy to work through the site!! 

Here's a snippet of my links page........(with more to come)

.............And a snippet of my class photo album.

The pictures will normally display upright. This is my fault that I forgot to rotate them before uploading them! 

If you're looking to create a class website, you'll want to check it out!

www.classjump.com

You can visit my class website at:

www.classjump.com/MrsBender 

A class website is a just another great way to communicate and keep parents up-to-date and involved in what is happening at school! I'm super excited about my new site with Class Jump and feel confident that you will like it too!!! :)