If you are looking for a very large collection of on-line education games, Primary Games Arena has to be one of the largest I have ever seen. It is a compilation of hundreds of Flash based education games about Math, English, Science, Physical Education, Music, Spanish, German, French, Religion Education, ICT, History, Geography, Art and Design, Citizenship and Technology. All the games are also sorted by grade levels (based on the UK educational system) or game types. The games are not necessarily hosted by the Primary Games Arena, but they link to only kids-appropriate games. The API let game developers feed scores from their games straight onto Primary Games Arena. I strongly recommend this site if your students need to learn while playing.
Archive for the Category ◊ Language ◊
Educational Videos dot com is a site devoted to finding you the best educational videos on the web. It includes a collection of videos about arts, science, environment, geology, health, history, language, mathematics, music, psychology, sports and technology. They are only few videos available in each category right now, but the number is growing. Even though the videos are already available on YouTube and they are simply embedded on this website, they are better organized on this website for use by educators. The videos are intended for students of all ages.
If you are already using Google Earth and you want some ideas on how to better integrate it in your classroom, “Google Earth Lessons” is a great blog with many lesson plans. The lessons are divided in four categories. The first one includes “Google Earth How To’s” to let you learn the basis of using the application. All the “How-To’s” are presented in the form of a QuickTime tutorial. The second category includes lessons where the student controls the application himself to learn various concepts. The third category focuses on teacher controlled lessons suitable for lectures, presentations and whole class discussions. The last category is a list of mini-lessons that you may use as starters for longer lessons in your classroom. The site will let you search for lessons by specific subjects such as social studies, math, science and language arts. Nice little icons are used to indicate whether each lesson includes a QuickTime video, a Word file, a PDF document or a WMV video. I hope you will use this blog to get more acquainted with that great application that will let your students travel right from their computer.
Here is another great resource to give a chance to your students to get a little bit more practice in math, language or geography: That Quiz! The tool is totally free to use. It includes a series of randomize quizzes in arithmetic, about fractions, probability, time, money, measure, place value, graphs and geometry. Most quizzes can be configured to increase or decrease the level of difficulty and students get immediate feedback. When it comes to languages, students can practice English, Spanish, French and German. The language quizzes include definitions, translations and verbs. In geography, the students can get quizzes for the Americas, Africa, Europe and Asia. The quizzes include countries, rivers and capitals all with an actual map of the continent. It is an excellent way for your students to get unlimited practice when studying. It is perfect for parents who want some “extra work” to do with their children. I hope you like this site.
This resource is a little treasure for all teachers and their students! The visual dictionary is now available on-line and is entirely free! It is not an imitation here. It is the real one published by Merriam-Webster and that is also available on paper and on CD-ROM. I already own the version on CD-ROM of this dictionary and I find it very difficult to always have to reinstall it when I reformat my computer or when I switch computer. Now, all I have to do is to bookmark the visual dictionary and it is available from any computer.
This is a very useful tool for students, especially those who better understand when looking at a picture. The dictionary is also useful when we can think mentally of an object, but we have no idea how to call it. As it is the case for the CD-ROM version, the dictionary is divided in 15 major themes such as plant kingdom, animal kingdom, house, food, science, arts, etc. The dictionary also include the audio version of each word, which is very useful for students who don’t have English as their first language. I hope you will add a shortcut to this site on your computer desktop on in your web browser.
The Kids’ Lab present reading workouts that are designed for parents and teachers to work with students who need some practice with their reading skills.
They are designed to be done with an adult because the student can get confirmation when he or she is right and may be corrected when there is a misunderstanding. The reading workouts are available for these grade levels : kindergarten, first grade, second grade and third grade. The workouts put the emphasis on vocabulary development, phonics and phonemic awareness and reading comprehension. The workouts are not easy to find on the website at first. You need to use the “GO” menu in the top left corner of the screen.
If you teach in Ontario in grade 9, 10 or 11 in one of the following subjects, this “Curriculum Material for the Ontario Curriculum” website will certainly be very valuable for you : Science, Language, Physical Education, Technology, Mathematics, Native Studies. The website contains Unit Plans, Worksheets, Assignments, Organizers, Rubrics, Checklists & Scales, Tests & Exams and more. All the documents and worksheets are available in MS-Word Format, so you can easily modify them to suit the needs of your students. For some of the courses, almost all the units are covered, but some courses are incomplete. As an example, the geography grade 9 course has over 50 photocopy ready worksheets. Even if you don’t teach in Ontario, you may find some documents that will be useful and will match the curriculum in your state, province or country.
“Graphic Organizers” is a great website offering printable graphic organizers in Word or PDF format. Using those tools, students will be able to better organize their ideas when writing text. They can also use those graphic organizers to sort their knowledge in mathematics, science and social studies. There are over 70 organizers that you may download for free on that website.
Graphics organizers may be used to sort information, to compare and contrast, to research, to study, to sequence, to create a hierarchy, to determine cause and effect and to present concepts. Some of the organizers available on this website include : Two-Way and Three-Way Venn diagrams, Spider Web, Who/What/When/Why/How/Where, Compare and Contrast Charts, Comparing Maps, T-Chart, Source Cards, Boolean Search, Research Planning, Division of Labour Chart, Cycle Chart, Event Sequencing, Branching, etc.
E-Pals is a great way to foster literacy, language and critical thinking skills in a fun and safe environment. It is a network to match classrooms around the world for students to have penpals. It is a great tool for classroom-to-classroom for project sharing. Educators around the world can also connect using that service. When searching a classroom, it is possible to enter criteria such as city, province, country, age group, language and special categories (such as preschool, gifted, special education, undergrad, etc). Using that free service, it is possible to connect with over 7 million students and teachers from 191 countries in a safe online environment.
Dr. Janice Skowron is an educational consultant specializing in differentiated instruction and reading and writing development. She has her own website to advertise her services and workshops. She also provides free resources on the web available as word files about “Literacy development”. If you are interested in increasing literacy in your classroom, there is information on vocabulary development and reading comprehension strategies.
There are also rubrics to help you with the assessment of informational essays, journal writing and story writing. Although Dr. Skowron is located in Illinois, the rubrics follow the four levels used in Ontario, so they may be used easily by Canadian or American teachers. The following documents are also available: How and Why Graphic Organizer, Brain Chain Organizer, Read Reflect Connect, Quick Write Organizer, Understanding Connecting Explaining. All the documents are in Microsoft Word format, so they may be modified to better suit your needs. On her website, she also advertises her book including: “Differentiated Instruction: Guided and Independent Learning for All Students” and “Understanding Stories”.
