Archive for ◊ 2007 ◊
Today, I would like to present a few online practice exercises about fractions for your students.
The first one is to help them better understand equivalent fractions. 
The second one will help them compare fractions. 
The third one will help them understand that a fraction is a part of a whole.
Finally, the last one is a practice at naming fractions.
Kideas is a great website if you are looking for ideas of for arts and craft projects. All the projects are simple and do not require complex material. In all, there are about 40 craft ideas. They all come with a pictures and a PDF giving all the material and instructions to do it.
There are also many colouring pages. For kids who prefer to be artistic with food, there is a “creative food” section. Finally, the parenting tools will be helpful for parents with tips and ideas such as how to make your own baby sling, how to prepare a weekly chore chart, a diaper and feeding chart of a homework log sheet and some lunch box notes!
A Kid’s Photos is a website that provides you pictures for you as a teacher or for your students. The photos are available in four main topics : animals, scenic, flowers and objects. They are not very high resolution, but for most student projects, they will be appropriate. The photos are taken by the two authors of the website and the terms of use state that you may use the photos in any of your projects under the provisions that you may not include the photos in another collection for distribution, you may not claim the photos as your own and you do not directly link to the photos. Even if the collection is not complete and will not answer all your needs for photos, it is a great resource and you may always opt for a membership at www.clipart.com if you need more.
“The Brain from Top to Bottom” is a great site provided by McGill University and it will cater to high school students as well as college or university students. In fact, when reading an article, you get to choose at what level you want to read: beginner, intermediate or advanced. You can also start to read it at the beginner level and if you understood most of it, you can re-read it at the intermediate or advanced level.
In addition, when the site title says “From Top to Bottom”, it also refers to the levels of organization. The reader can learn more about the brain at the molecular, cellular, neurological, psychological or social level. The website is useful for biology courses, but also for psychology and sociology courses as well.
The website is also divided by themes. Among the theme, you will find memory, pleasure and pain, emotions, evolution, movement, senses, mental disorders, development, language, sleep and dreams and consciousness. It is a gold mine of information in both French and English for high school teachers who refer to the brain in their classes.
WordChamp is a very incredible tool to let your students practice the vocabulary while learning a second language. In order to use this website, you will first need to register and create a class. Registering is totally free and I tried to find if they will charge you something at a later date, but I couldn’t find any mention of it. Wow! Registering is quick and easy. When creating a class, you need to indicate the main first language of the students and the language they want to learn. It is also possible to create more than one class with only one account if you teach students at different levels or if not all your classes are learning the same second language.
Once the class is created, there is an option to print and instruction sheet for the students so they know how to access the system. As a teacher, it is possible to create many vocabulary exercises and flashcards that may be used as homeworks and include a deadline as to when they need to be completed. You may create your own list of words or you may choose from the database included with the website. Homeworks created fall in two categories: vocabulary exercises and reading exercises. Vocabulary exercises include translation, listening comprehension, dictation, reading practice, flashcards and pronunciation. The interface not only include the written version or words but sometimes include some visuals as well as audio files to let the students hear how the word is pronounce in both languages.
WordChamp will also let the student visit a website published in his or her second language. Without providing a full translation, students will be able to mouse over some words and get a translation as well as an audio file to hear how it is pronounced. This site is produced by linguists and is truly amazing. You should register to discover its full potential. The site supports many languages including English, French, German, Spanish, Japanese and Mandarin as well as dozens of other languages such as Slovak, Swedish, Romanian or Flemish.
This is a quick and easy one. It is a very simple calculator. Obviously, it is not scientific or graphic, but it does the job in elementary school when students forget their own calculator.
This animation of the heart is a great way to teach your students how the heart acts as a pump. The students can visually see the systole and the diastole and the contraction of the ventricle. A graph pressure vs. time shows the pressure in different part of the heart at different time. There is also a graph of an electrocardiogram and of the heart sounds. It is a great resource for biology teachers.
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.
Here is a great quiz to teach your students the difference between physical and chemical changes. The quiz contains 20 questions including examples such as breaking glass, a rusting bicycle, spoiling food, bleaching your hair and burning leaves. Very simple but efficient.
The University of Victoria in British Columbia presents 200 vocabulary exercises for students learning English as a second language. The exercise is very simple and looks like a resource already presented on this blog : illustrated vocabulary. An image is presented to the student and he or she must select that proper word. The vocabulary words are in the following categories : furniture, school, office, home appliances, kitchen utensils, clothes, animals, coins and food. An interesting fact, the coin category is adapted to the Canadian audience.
If you need a periodic table, well layed-out and all in colour for your student, the one published by the National Research Council is great. It is available on-line as a website with an hyperlink for each element that takes your to a description and as a PDF, ready to be printed on cardstock and laminated to be used a reference in your students’ binders.
Still part of the “4kids” series, “biology4kids” delivers concepts in biology in a language easy to understand by students at the end of elementary school. Unlike the other ones, this one starts with the scientific method, reasoning in science, experimental evidence, logical reasoning, deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning. This content is interesting, but it is a bit surprising to see it only in the biology unit.
The content of the biology website is very well layed-out with many pictures to enhance students understanding of the concepts. The content includes taxonomy, the kingdoms, labels and naming, relationship between organisms (commensalisms, competition, mutualism, parasitism, predator-prey), animal and plant cells, organelles, cell functions, osmosis, passive transport, active transport, mitosis, microorganisms, microscopes, prokaryotes, eukaryotes, fungus, photosynthesis, plant structure, invertebrates, arthropods, vertebrates, mammals, systems as well as some human anatomy and physiology. For each section, there is a quiz for student to check their understanding of the concepts. There is also a slideshow for some sections presenting many pictures with comments. A great introduction to biology!
“Physics4kids” is yet another website of the “4kids” family. It presents physics concept in a language that most students at the end of elementary school will be able to understand. There are quizzes throughout the website as the student get acquainted with the concepts to test their knowledge. The site presents the concept of motion including simple movements and complex movements, forces, acceleration, mass, lever, vectors, the three laws of motion, instantaneous velocity, transfer of energy and work. Even as an adult, if all of this is just a big nightmare of your past when you were in high school, you can relax and read through it. You will realize that it is not that bad.
Other topics covered include : thermodynamics (energy transfer, expansion, heat, temperatures, first and second laws of thermodynamics, enthalpy and entropy), optics (electromagnetic radiation, visible light, light structure, reflection, refraction, lenses and lasers), electricity and magnetism (charges, conductors, electric fields, magnetic fields, current, resistance, Faraday’s law, Coulomb’s law, magnet and AC/DC power) and modern physics (nuclear physics, quantum physics, radioactivity, fission, fusion and reactors).
“Cosmos4kids” is part of the same series than the site I presented yesterday : Chem4kids. It is a great introduction to space and astronomy with a language that most students at the end of elementary school should understand. The website design is appealing and subjects covered by this website include :the origins of the universe, gravity, the vacuum of space and electromagnetic radiations. The site also talks about galaxies and stars, including the Milky Way, constellations, black holes and clusters. Students will also get information about the solar system and all the planets that are part of it and other solar system details such as the solar wind, the heliosphere, the heliopause, the asteroid belt, asteroids, the Kuiper Belt, Comets and moons. There is also a technology component that includes spacecrafts, probes and satellites used to explore the universe.
Now this is chemistry made easy! “Chem4kids” presents many different chemistry concepts in a language that most students at the end of elementary school and beginning of high school will understand. It is great to present the three states of matter and the changes from one state to another. Students can also learn about mixtures and solutions, alloys and amalgams. They also discover how neutrons, protons and electrons form atoms that can be combined to form molecules. They are introduced to the periodic table of elements. It also talks about reactions, stoichiometry, thermodynamics, equilibrium, catalysts and inhibitors as well as acids and bases. There is also an introduction to biochemistry. It is certainly too simple for advanced chemistry course in high school, but it is great for younger students who have an interest in the subject.
