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Web Sites
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Math
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Math Cats:
This site was created by Wendy Petti, a mother and teacher. She created
the site for playful explorations of math concepts. It certainly does
this. Some of the areas included are math cats explore (thinking games),
micro worlds (interactive projects), and math crafts (applying math to make
fun things). The site is easy to manipulate and very colorful. Children
will enjoy using it. A+Math: Sponsored by several companies, this site offers a link to purchase a CDROM. Don’t let that deter you. This site is full of excellent math games. It is divided into four sections: Flash Cards, Game Room, Homework Helper, and Worksheets. Each section has activities using basic math facts. One can pick the type of math skill. Great for parents and teachers! Fun Math Games: This site is part of High School Ace site. Under More Fun Things to Do, one can find games for geography, math facts, and grammar. This excellent site has activities for K through 12 in just about any area you could want. This site is excellent for older learners who do not want to admit that they like to learn through games. Graphing: This site is sponsored by NCES, the National Center for Education Statistics. Students can select a graph type (pie, bar, line, area, or XY), input the data, label the sections, and then a graph is created. Students as young as K can work through a bar graph with adult assistance. Older students could create several types of graphs to see how the appearance changes. Excellent resource if your school does not have graphing software. Math Literature: Got books? This site will help you find literature connections to just about every many math concept (e.g.: number sense, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, measurement, time, geometry, patterns, and calendars). The site gives the title, author, and additional information about the book. The site is created and regularly maintained by a Computer Science teacher. Backing up to her home page will give you even more links to a wide variety of pages, such as, graphic organizers, authors, web quests, rubrics, and readers’ theater. Her home page does not seem to be very organized, but take some time to explore it. |
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Reading
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Writing with Authors:
This site created by Scholastic offers young writers a walk through the
writing process. Children can be guided through creating a folktale, a speech,
a poem, or a book review. Some of the works can even be published on
the site. Some of the highlighted authors are Jack Prelutsky and Rodom Philbrick. Writing as Fairy Tale Characters: This is actually a telecollaborative language arts activity, but if one goes to the section called details, one can find directions for an activity to write to a character. As an extension, older children can write back as the character. This would give great practice of including voice into a piece of writing. Write to Them! This site has links to children’s authors and illustrates that will respond back. The site lists some of the author’s works and then links to the author’s site. Featured authors include Judy Blume, Eric Carle, and Patricia Polacco. Unfortunately, there are not very many illustrators at this time. |
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Science
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Habitats:
AWESOME site for early elementary. It shows extensive information
on habitats and biomes. This site is through the ThinkQuest Library which
provides innovative learning resources for students of all ages on a wide
range of educational topics. Featuring over 5,500 websites, the library
is created by students from around the world as part of ThinkQuest competition.
The Habitats section will offer in-depth information about animals in the
area as well as the landscape. Great for fluent readers for research,
but teachers could use it to introduce the habitat areas. A world map depicts
the regions and shows the relative size of each. Another section, the
Virtual Zoo, offers information on particular animal groups. A great addition
is the inclusion of animal sounds. Enchanted Learning: This is a commercial site would like you to join; however, the free stuff is just as great. This link will take you to the Habitats Section. It features information about specific habitats including a description, the location, and animal inhabitants. There are also free printable pages about the animals. The bottom of the home page is organized to help locate information. The areas are K-3, Writing, Fiction, Biology, Physical Sciences, Languages, Geography, and Other Topics. Students could use this site to research many animals and teachers could use it to introduce concepts. Creature Feature: This child friendly site is created by National Geographic. This site features particular animals, and it gives information as well as other links. This is a great place for starting student research. Going to the home page, one can find Kid News, Games, and Activities. Under games, there is a section called Fill in the Blanks. This is similar to Mad Lib word games. This is an interesting way to integrate grammar into other subject areas. It would be fun to use with an interactive whiteboard. Can You See Me? This web site, from Earth Cam, Inc, has a variety of web cams. I used this for the animal sites to watch live animals; however other categories include adventure, nature, and people. |
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Social Studies
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Kids Bank:
This site is sponsored by Sovereign Bank. It is great place to start
an economics unit because students can learn about how and why money was
created, how interest works, why saving money in the bank is a good idea.
In addition, students can learn about checking accounts and their usefulness. Pilgrims: This site is created by the Smithsonian Institute and is a living history museum on line. It contains on line activities to promote an understanding of the settlers and the Wampanoag during the 1620s. It has primary sources from the time and the students can listen to an actor read the passage in character. You can travel back in tie and experience life as an early settler or Wampanoag. Primary Sources: This collection of documents is cooperative effort among National history Day, The National Archives and Records Administration, and the USA Freedom Corps. The site was created to get people to read and discuss critical documents of our time. It contains a list of 100 milestone documents starting with the Lee Resolution of 1776 and ending with the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Each document has information about it, pictures of the actual piece, and a printable transcript. This site is an excellent means to show students snapshots of our history. It also contains tools for educators including integrating the documents into your classroom. |
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