Resources You Can Use
Below you will see a variety of sites published by the Tech Department at University of Michigan. Many I have cited in the past, but the organization and presentation is so complete, I copied and pasted the whole list. I know many of you are already using some of these, but if you are looking for a particular reinforcement tool, you might find it here. Think about adding some of these to your toolbox.
Language Arts
- Into the Book
This site is great for learning about the many different reading strategies. - Starfall This site has a lot of learning activities for beginning readers. Students can listen to stories to learn vowel and consonant sounds, practice their ABC’s and lots more.
- BookPALS Storyline This site has a variety of popular children’s books read by different actors that students can listen to. It’s a great way to provide students with a chance to be read to by many different people.
- Dance Mat Typing This is a fun way to learn how to type correctly on a keyboard.
- Look Out Below This is a fun game where you get to see how many words you can make using a larger word.
- Critter Jumble This game helps you practice spelling different words.
- Voice Thread This is a great tool to use to create collaborative reading and writing projects and much more.
- Kerpoof Kids can create and share online stories, greeting cards, pictures and even animated movies with this tool.
- Comiqs This site allows you to create your own comics using either your own photos or the clipart and images provided on the site.
- SillyBooks Students can upload their own writing to this site and read stories uploaded by other students as well. Each month a student story is selected and then turned into an animated movie and featured on the site.
- Big Universe This site allows students to create their own online picture books as well as explore books that have been created by other users. You can embed your finished products in different websites and blogs once you are finished.
- Tikatok is another tool that allows you to write, publish and embed your on book online. You can also order a print copy of your book for a price.
- Lulu is another online publishing tool with an interesting twist. This site allows you to upload your story or book and then sell it either as a printed book that people order or as a download. They set the publishing price and you decide how much above that price you want to charge. You can actually make money by publishing your writing!
- LookyBook This site has a great collection of children’s picture books that you can view in full color online. You can embed the books in your own website or blog and virtually flip through the pages whenever you like.
- Shelfari This site allows you to create a virtual bookshelf where you can keep a list of recommended books for others to see. You can see what other people are reading and recommending as well.
- myWebspiration is an online version of the popular Inspiration tool. The one big difference with this online version is that you can easily collaborate with others to create maps and other graphic organizers.
- Scholastic Story Starters is a tool designed for 1st-4th grade students to help generate ideas for stories and guide them in their writing.
- You just can’t beat the School House Rock video library when it comes to finding ways to reinforce concepts from across the curriculum.
- SpellingCity allows you to create your own list of spelling words for your students to use to test and prepare for the ever popular spelling test…or celebration that takes place in elementary classrooms across the country each Friday.
- Roy the Zebra has a variety of interactive games to help kids learn and practice reading and writing skills.
- Pikikids is one of the many online cartoon/comic strip creation tools that students can use to make their own comic strips about a wide range of topics.
- PBS KIDS Island is a great tool for helping kids practice different reading skills. Kids get to play a variety of games that feature different PBS characters and you can even track their progress to see what they have accomplished.
Here are some sample books embedded from LookyBook and Big Universe.
Math
- Crack Hacker’s Safe In this game you have to find the pattern to open the safe.
- Test the Toad This is a fun adding game.
- Spacey Math In this game you have to solve the math problem in order to keep the alien spaceship from attacking.
- Tangrams This site has different tangram puzzles that you have to solve.
- Buzzing With Shapes This game is like Tic Tac Toe but you have to identify shapes to make 4 in a row. It works best to play with a partner.
- Counting Money This site will help you practice counting money.
- Money Practice In this game you drag coins to a cup to equal the amount shown.
- Math TV is a series of videos each of which first presents a problem and then goes through the process of solving that problem.
- HippoCampus has a great selection of resources for math, science and social studies that are geared towards middle and high school students. The material is arranged much like a multimedia textbook with narrative videos, timelines, images and more.
- Math Arcade from the Fun Brain site is a nice collection of math games for 1st-8th graders.
Science
- EdHeads Simple MachinesThis is a great site to help kids learn about simple machines and be able to identify simple machines in everyday life.
- Here is a link to a site that provides a panoramic view of the moon along with audio clips from the real astronauts as they toured the moon’s surface. http://www.fullscreenqtvr.com/moon/
- Google Moon is much like Google Earth but it provides images of the moon instead. You can find information about the different Apollo missions that landed on the moon and see pictures that were taken during those missions.
- The Volcano Explorer allows you to learn more about volcanoes by creating your own volcano and watching it erupt.
- This site has an interactive diagram of the rock cycle that you can use to learn more about the different types of rocks and how they are formed.
- Geo Mysteries has some neat scientific mysteries for kids to solve that include animations, photos, explanations and more. Check it out and see if you can help Rex the Dino solve some mysteries.
- The Solids and Liquids Module provides you with the chance to see what happens to different objects when you heat them up and cool them down.
- Click here to see a variety of cartoon animations that help to explain solids, liquids and gases and their different properties.
- Build Your Wild Self is a great site to help students learn more about different types of animals and their various characteristics. Students can design their own animal and even download an image of it to their computer.
- ARKive Education provides access to a wide range of modules on different science related topics. Each module contains images and videos pertaining to the targeted topic or concept. The modules download as complete Power Point files that you can use and modify as needed.
- TestToob is a YouTube style site that is focused on student created science videos. Students can upload their videos, watch and comment on the videos of others and even enter contests with their videos. The site is monitored for appropriate content.
- Fantastic Contraption is a great tool to use to help middle school students better understand physics. You use a variety of tools to build different contraptions in order to accomplish a pre-determined task.
- HippoCampus has a great selection of resources for math, science and social studies that are geared towards middle and high school students. The material is arranged much like a multimedia textbook with narrative videos, timelines, images and more.
Social Studies
- Virtual Earth is an alternative to Google Earth that doesn’t need to be downloaded but still allows you to do many of the same things such as search for different locations and view them as a map or satellite image.
- TerraClues is a tool you can use to create geography-based quizzes or scavenger hunts for students. You can create clues and tag the answers to different locations on the map or even have students create their own maps.
- Mapwing can be used to create virtual tours of different geographical or physical locations. You can upload your own images to use in a tour add comments at each stop of the tour and much more.
- CircaVie is an online timeline creation tool that students can use to learn about sequence of events and to create their own timelines.
- Dipity is another online timeline creation tool where you can include images, videos and text in your timeline. You are also able to embed your finished timeline and share authorship with others so that they can add events to is as well.
- AllofMe is one more timeline tool to check out.
- ILike2Learn provides many different map and geography based quizzes that you can use with students.
- This Lewis and Clark simulation allows students to travel along the same trail with the famous explorers and learn about their trip.
- Mapness allows you to create your own online travel journal complete with images and embedded videos. You can plot your route across the map and create a trip representing all sorts of journeys.
- HippoCampus has a great selection of resources for math, science and social studies that are geared towards middle and high school students. The material is arranged much like a multimedia textbook with narrative videos, timelines, images and more.
