Tag: lists
33 Online Research Resources
Quick, safe spots to send your students for research (click here for updates):
- BrainPop–with the BrainPop characters, a launchpad to curiosity
- CoolKidFacts–kid-friendly videos, pictures, info, and quizzes–all 100% suitable for children
- Dimensions–academic research geared for college-level
- Fact Monster–help with homework and facts
- Google Earth Timelapse–what changes to the planet over time
- Google Trends–what’s trending in searches
- History Channel–great speeches
- How Stuff Works–the gold standard in explaining stuff to kids
- Info Please–events cataloged year-by-year
- National Geographic for Kids
- Ngram Viewer–analyzes all words in all books on Google Books
- TagGalaxy–search using a cloud
- Wild Wordsmyth–picture dictionary for kids
- World Book–requires membership
Citing Resources
Kids Search Engines
How to Research
- A Google A Day
- How to Search on Google
- Power Searching (with Google)
- Teaching students to search/research
- Internet Search and Research–a lesson plan for K-8
Lesson Plans
Resources/Research
- BrainPOP–Bring learning to your fingertips™ with the BrainPOP® Featured Movie app
- Kids Picture Dictionary
- Primary Source Documents
- SparkVue–collect and display live data from iPhone etc to the iPad
- Talk to Books–research your topic based on books
- TED app–TED’s official app presents talks from some of the world’s most fascinating people
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How to Keep Learning Fresh Over the Summer
Teachers have known for decades that ‘summer learning loss’ is a reality. Studies vary on how much knowledge students lose during the summer months–some say up to two months of reading and math skills–and results are heavily-dependent upon demographics, but the loss is real.
To prevent this, teachers try approaches such as summer book reports, but students complain they intrude on their summer time. When teachers make it optional, many don’t participate. The disconnect they’re seeing is that students consider these activities as ‘school’ rather than ‘life’. They haven’t bought into the reality that they are life-long learners, that learning is not something to be turned on in the schoolhouse and off on the play yard.
This summer, show students how learning is fun, worthy, and part of their world whether they’re at a friend’s house or the water park. Here are nineteen suggestions students will enjoy:
Math
- Youngers: Take a picture of making change at the store. Share it in a teacher-provided summer activity folder (this should be quick to use, maybe through Google Drive if students have access to that). Kids will love having a valid reason to use Mom’s smartphone camera.
- Any age: Take a picture of tessellations found in nature (like a beehive or a pineapple). Kids will be amazed at how many they find and will enjoy using the camera phone. Once kids have collected several, upload them to a drawing or photo program where they can record audio notes over the picture and share with friends.
- Any age: Pit your math and technology skills against your child’s in an online math-based car race game like Grand Prix Multiplication. They’ll know more about using the program and will probably win–even if you do the math faster. You might even have siblings compete.
- Grades 2-5: Set up a summer lemonade stand. Kids learn to measure ingredients, make change, listen to potential customers, and problem-solve. If you can’t put one up on your street, use a virtual lemonade stand.
- Any age: If your child wants to go somewhere, have them find the location, the best route, participation details, and other relevant information. Use free online resources like Google Maps and learn skills that will be relevant to class field trips they’ll take next year.
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What You Might Have Missed in April–What’s up in May
Here are the most-read posts for the month of April:
- Tech Tip #90 Doc Saved Over? Try This
- 18 Things Teachers Do Before 8am
- Earth Day Class Activities
- How to Create a Paperless Classroom
- 11 Online Resources About Physics
- Online Reading for National Library Week
- Human Body Websites for 2nd-5th Grade
- #32: How to Use Art to Teach Grammar
- Tech Tips #170: Cover your webcam!
- How to Stop Hating Your Computer
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Human Body Websites for 2nd-5th Grade
In my school, 2nd grade and 5th grade have units on the human body. To satisfy their different maturities, I’ve developed two lists of websites to complement this inquiry. I put them on the class internet start page so when students have free time, they can visit (check here for updates):
2nd-3rd Grade
[caption id="attachment_5364" align="alignright" width="212"] Place organs where they belong[/caption]- Blood Flow
- Body Systems
- Build a Skeleton
- Can you place these parts in the correct place?
- Choose the systems you want to see.
- Find My Body Parts
- How the Body Works
- Human Body Games
- Human Body websites
- Human Body—by a 2nd grade class—video
- Human Body—videos on how body parts work
- Inside the Human Body: Grades 1-3
- Kids’ Health-My Body
- Matching Senses
- Muscles Game
- Nutrition Music and Games from Dole (more…)
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Online Reading for National Library Week
National Library Week is April 23-29, 2023. It allows us to promote our local libraries and their workers. Find more about here at the American Library Association.
Because I know most of you online only, I thought I’d share my favorite online libraries with you (click here for updates to the list):
For Children
- Aesop for Children–collection of fables
- Actively Learn–add PDFs of your choice to a library that can be annotated, read, and shared.
- Audio Books–apps for books purchased through Audio Books (and free ones)
- Bookopolis–focused on student reading
- Books that Grow–read a story at many different reading levels
- Class Literature
- Epic–a reading library for kids, 15,000 books; most digital devices
- RAZ Kids–wide variety of reading levels, age groups, with teacher dashboards
- Reading Rainbow–library of books; free to try
- Tumblebooks (fee)–focused on student reading
For All Ages
- Free Books–download any of our 23,469 classic books, and read
- Actively Learn–add PDFs of your choice to a library that can be annotated, read, and shared.
- Bookopolis–focused on student reading
- Books that Grow–read a story at many different reading levels
- Class Literature
- Epic–a reading library for kids, 15,000 books; most digital devices
- Free Books–download any of our 23,469 classic books, and read
- Great Books Online by Bartleby
- Gutenberg Project
- IBooks–amazing way to download and read books.
- International Library
- Internet Archive— Internet Archive offers over 12,000,000 freely downloadable books and texts. There is also a collection of 550,000 modern eBooks that may be borrowed by anyone with a free archive.org account.
- Kindle–read ebooks, newspapers, magazines, textbooks and PDFs on an easy-to-use interface.
- Librivox–free public domain audio books
- Loyal Books
- Many Books–Over 33,000 ebooks that can be browsed by language, author, title.
- Online Books Page
- Open Library
- OWL Eyes–for the classics
- RAZ Kids–wide variety of reading levels, age groups, with teacher dashboards
- Reading Rainbow–library of books; free to try
- Tumblebooks (fee)–focused on student reading
- Unite for books (free) — gorgeous, easy-to-navigate site.
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18+ Easter Websites and Apps
Many Christians celebrate Jesus Christ’s resurrection on Easter Sunday. To non-Christians (or non-traditional Christians), that event signifies a rebirth of spring that is filled with joy and gifts — and chocolate! Overall, it is America’s most-popular holiday with Christmas a close second. The date depends on the ecclesiastical approximation of the March equinox. This year, it’s April 9, 2023.
Here’s a good mixture of games, lesson plans, stories, and songs that can be blended into many academic subjects (for updates on this Easter-themed list of websites, click here):
18+ Interactive Easter websites
Preschool-2
This website includes a colorful collection of Easter (and Spring) games and information that is visual and enticing to youngers. Games are Easter Math, Easter Egg Hunt, Easter Egg Dress-up, Easter Word hunt, complete-the-sentence, and more. Also, viewers will find websites about the history of Easter around the world.
ABCYa Easter Egg Hunt
Preschool-Kindergarten
Like all of ABCYa’s games and activities, Easter Egg Hunt is a colorful and intuitive educational game for young children. It is easy-to-understand, playful, with favorite Easter symbols and energetic music that will engage children. The five Easter-themed games are easy-to-understand (no directions required) with a countdown clock to motivate activity. Nicely, it also aligns gameplay with the national standards met.
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What You Might Have Missed in March–What’s up in April
Here are the most-read posts for the month of March:
- 11 Online Resources About Puzzles
- Software vs. Online Tools
- 19 Tech Problems Every Student Can Fix
- 25 Sites to Add Rigor and Authenticity to Word Study
- How to Compare and Contrast Authentically
- 6 Ways to Make Classroom Typing Fun
- AI and ChatGPT in Education
- Use the SAMR Model to Energize Class Tech
- Beginning Graphs in MS Excel
- Invention Convention 2023 is coming
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Invention Convention 2023 is coming
Invention Convention Worldwide is a global K-12 invention education curricular program mapped to national and state educational standards that teaches students problem-identification, problem-solving, entrepreneurship and creativity skills and builds confidence in invention, innovation and entrepreneurship for life. Signups for the annual Raytheon Technologies Invention Convention US Nationals (2023) start March 31st.
Here are websites to help you and your students learn about the excitement of inventions:
- A Guide to Inventions
- Famous Inventors
- How Inventions Change History (video)
- How the popsicle was invented (a TEDEd video)
- Invented by accident I
- Invented by accident II
- Inventions from the Military –crazy ones
Check back here for updates on this list.
More about inventions
- Teach About Inventions with PowerPoint
- 5 Ideas for Teaching Students the Most Important Skill They’ll Need
- 5 Fun Science Experiments Kids Do at Home
Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 30 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-12 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.
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17 Online Chemistry Resources
Here are popular online resources about Chemistry:
- Beaker–a digital beaker app
- Chemistry collection from Carnegie
- ChemCapers
- Chemistry instructional videos
- ChemmyBear–resources for Chemistry and AP Chemistry classes
- CK12 Chemistry simulations
- Collisions Chemistry
- Concord Consortium–chemistry, earth science, engineering, life science, physics
- Crash Course: Chemistry (videos)
- EMD PTE — periodic table
- Interactive Periodic Table
- Molecules–Molecules is an application for viewing three-dimensional renderings of molecules and manipulating them using your fingers.
- Periodic Table of Elements–interactive
- Periodic Table videos
- PhET Simulations for chemistry and physics
- Reactions–short videos on chemistry topics
- Slow Motion Chemistry — videos on chemistry
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Websites that add sparkle (and learning) to Spring
Spring websites, lesson plans, printables, activities:
- 7 Science Experiments that Teach About Spring
- Books from Scholastic about Spring
- Life cycle of a snake
- Life Cycle Lesson Plans
- Life Cycle resources
- Life Cycles
- Life Cycle Symbaloo
- Plant life cycle
- Spring Puzzle
- Spring Garden–click to find flowers
- Spring Games
- Spring Vocabulary (video)
- Spring Word Scramble
- Spring Word Search
- What Happens in Spring (video)
- What Happens in Spring–PS (video)
Ideas from TeacherVision:
Printables
- The Very Hungry Caterpillar Activities Booklet
- Butterfly Life Cycle Worksheet
- Baseball Fun
- May Day
- Butterfly Facts and Questions
- Butterfly Life Cycle Quiz
- The Very Hungry Caterpillar Poster & Activities
- More Spring Printables
Lesson Plans