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Sliding Block Puzzle Page Grades 1 to 12 Nick Baxter

Challenge basic counting skills and problem solving using classic sliding puzzles. Not only will you find numerical sliding puzzles, but also colorful shape puzzles. Java applets make an interactive version of each puzzle appear below the "goal" you are trying to reach. There is also a targeted number of moves to reach the goal. There are many different types of puzzles, some more familiar than others. Be sure to be patient as puzzles load. Sometimes the interactive (drag to slide) portion does not appear right away.
10414

In the Classroom:
Share these puzzles on your interactive whiteboard (or projector) as a mind-bending challenge. Help students develop problem-solving skills such as thinking several steps ahead by offering the link on your class web page. Higher level and gifted math students can try to determine a formula for calculating the number of moves it may take to solve a puzzle. Give awards to students who accomplish the "goal" in the stated number of moves, then ask them to explain their strategy or think aloud as they repeat it on an interactive whiteboard. Offer a puzzle club for your mathematical/logical thinkers or simply develop visual thinking skills by sharing these challenges.
 
Armored Penguin Grades 0 to 12 Armored Penguin

Create puzzles and other word games using this resource. Puzzle types include Word Search, Crossword, Word Scramble, Bagels (Interactive Logic Game,) and Math worksheets among others. There are also quotes, illusions, and more. Creating a log in is not required. Puzzles created remain for two months and can be saved as a pdf file on your computer. Many puzzles are already permanently archived and can be found by looking through the categories. Don’t miss many holiday and calendar-event puzzles! Search puzzles of the day to find new and interesting puzzles to use. Printable puzzle versions from this site require Adobe Reader. Get it from the TeachersFirst Toolbox page.
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In the Classroom:
Need a puzzle to reinforce the words in a particular unit? You may find one already created. If not, it is simple to create and save to your computer or share by URL (remember the online version is saved for two months). Use the "Quotes" page for great quotes of the day, the "Illusions" page for optical illusions, or the "Fresh Words" page to see what words can be made from a word, phrase, or collection of letters. Have cooperative learning groups create their own puzzle pages for a topic that they are researching or learning about in class and use them to challenge their classmates or another section of the course. Have students create puzzles as a cost-free, printable gift for families on special occasions such as Mother’s Day.
 
Must Pop words Grades 2 to 12 Bart Bonte

How quickly can you create words from letters? Challenge yourself with this simple and addictive activity. Note that when started, an advertisement plays. Click “skip this ad”! No login is required to play. Click on Play to begin. An information screen provides simple directions. As the "letter" balls fall, determine words that can be made from them. Receive points and watch the balls pop when words are created. Be aware: students are able to type inappropriate words as part of the game. Discussions of what is appropriate should occur prior to playing. Monitor student use during play.
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In the Classroom:
Challenge students to create as many words as possible. Alter games by creating rules (such as 5 letters or more per word) to make the game more interesting. Be sure to demonstrate this on your interactive whiteboard or projector. This is also a great way for students to practice keyboarding skills, vocabulary, and spelling skills together!
 
Frieze Patterns Grades 4 to 12 NCTM Illuminations

This site offers seven simple interactives that demonstrate various classes of Frieze patterns (patterns of symmetry). Students can experiment at this site with Glide Reflection and Rotation, Horizontal and Vertical Reflections, and Translations. Click on the small red circles to transform the figures, use the red "s" to stretch or shorten the pattern. Some of the terminology is even applicable in elementary math.

There is a link to a detailed lesson plan (including a few lesson plans, printables, and interactives). This site is aligned to national standards. The site requires both Flash and Adobe Acrobat. You can get both from the TeachersFirst Toolbox page.
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In the Classroom:
Share this site on your interactive whiteboard or projector during a unit about rotation and/or reflection. Have students work with partners to explore this site together. Have students create their own patterns using graph paper or a drawing program with lines of symmetry and simple “flip horizontal” or “flip vertical” commands. Take advantage of the ready to go lesson plans, printables, and more.
 
Diffen Grades 2 to 12 Diffen

Do you sometimes just want to compare two things and not need a lengthy explanation of either? Diffen offers the simple goal of entering two terms and instantly receiving the similarities and differences in a table format. View simple definitions under the information table. Need more information? Wikipedia style entries of information area also available on the page. There is a Top 5 list. At the time of this review, the Top 5 included “Gross vs. Net,” “Affected vs. Effected,” “Meiosis vs. Mitosis,” “DNA vs. RNA,” and “Fruit vs. Vegetable. While not ALL topics are included, the variety is impressive. You can add your own comparison of terms to the list. You may want to discuss with your class the fact that the information here is only as reliable as the people who submitted it, and ask them whether they agree with the comparisons you find here. NOTE: If you explore some of the ready-mades or requested topics, there are some topics "compared" that are not school oriented, such as comparisons of popular television characters. Preview before turning students loose or simply direct them to a specific "diffen."
10042

In the Classroom:
The options are endless. Search the differences between two types of soils, mitosis and meiosis, presidents or those running for office, of geometric figures, artists or musicians, places to visit. As a way to build higher order thinking skills, this site is ideal, since comparison of attributes requires analysis.

Try creating some lists of your own as a class after using the ready-made ones here. This activity would be easy to do on an interactive whiteboard, with students hand writing the characteristics and dragging them into Similarities and Differences columns before entering them into Diffen. This site could be used in nearly every subject area. Share this site on your class blog or website, for students to access both in and out of the classroom. This is definitely one to save in your favorites.
 
Fantastic contraption Grades 3 to 10 InXile Entertainment

Use this physics mechanism creator to build amazing contraptions. Stretch your brain with the puzzles and contraptions to move the object in to the goal. Use simple URLS to share your fantastic creations with your friends. Follow the simple instructions and tutorial. Visit the forum for challenges and fixes to activities. This site requires Flash. Get it here.
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In the Classroom:
Share the tutorial on an interactive whiteboard or projector. Have students make a contraption and then discuss the simple machines used to create the contraption. Create a contest for the most elaborate contraption or for creativity in reaching the goal. Share the student created contraption (providing the URL) on you class website or blog. Have students write an explanation of their contraption on the blog or wiki, using terms from physics and Newton's laws. More able students can create several alternate machines to accomplish the same task and compare them.
 
Virtual Fish Tank Grades 4 to 8 Nearlife, Inc.

The business of furnishing your own fish tank lets students pick fish based on a series of environmental conditions, then see how the various fish interact with one another. Registered users you can create a fish, save the fish for later, and some other "extra" features. With creating the fish, students will learn more about the food chain, the hunger (mouth) of various fish, the eyes (fear) of various fish, interests of the fish, and the depth the fish typically will swim in the aquarium.

The site allows you to take a tour, or register for free. Registration requires about 30-seconds and you do not need to provide an email account or address of any form. This site requires ShockWave. You can get it from the TeachersFirst Toolbox page.
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In the Classroom:
This site is ready to go for your interactive whiteboard or projector. Have students work individually or with partners to create accounts and create their own fish. Then have the students share their creations on the interactive whiteboard or projector. This site offers some good research for projects about marine animals.
 
Up and Down Words Grades 3 to 10 Merriam Webster

In this activity, students learn word combinations and idioms. In a ladder sequence, students find the second half of a word combo by reading its definition and adding the second word.That, in turn, becomes the first part of the next answer. The goal is to get to the 7th word combo whose second half started the game. Clickable hints assist students with the first letter missing word. You are able to click on the clues (to get more letters) as often as needed to solve the puzzle. There are new puzzles every weekday and archived puzzles from previous dates. There are two difficulty levels. This site requires Flash. Get it from the TeachersFirst Toolbox page.
9378

In the Classroom:
Demonstrate this site on your interactive whiteboard or projector. Use this site for vocabulary enhancement and understanding of idioms. Speech and language teachers may want to use it to teach word combinations, as well. Students can easily play this game in pairs. Since teachers can also print the blank activity, you can use it for a desk activity or homework assignment. After students get used to this idea, have them make their own word ladders on the interactive whiteboard, as a sequence of animated PowerPoint slides, or collaboratively as a graphic organizer using an online tool such as Gliffy or Mindomo.
 
Sketchcast Grades 0 to 12 Richard Ziade

TeachersFirst Edge Entry: for moderately adventurous technology users. This simple-to-use online tool allows any user to create a "recording" of a drawing without without narration. Simply draw on a "whiteboard" space on the computer screen (and, if you wish, record yourself talking as you draw). The finished product is available as a mini-video (recorded in Flash) that can be shared via URL or embedded in a blog or wiki, much the same way people share YouTube videos. See a sample created by the Edge editorial team with some ideas for ways to use a Sketchcast. Requires FLASH.
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In the Classroom:
Skills needed: Join the site (free). Membership requires an email address, but appears to work just fine with a "made up" address (warning: email notifications for forgotten passwords will not work if you pretend!). Watch the sample sketchcast, if you wish. Create a sketchcast (be sure to plug in a mike and check "with voice" if you want sound. When finished, name it, and publish it. You can copy/paste the URL from the page that shows the Sketchcast to share it, click to email it to someone, or copy/paste the code they provide to embed it in your blog. Edit or delete from the My Account page.

Some concerns: there is no way to keep your sketchcast private. Any visitor to the Sketchcast site can see it or link to it. They can also COMMENT on it--possibly a problem as you try to protect students. Also, your students can see any Sketchcast that has been made on the site, so content may NOT be appropriate to all classrooms. (Stick figures can be suggestive or scary, too!). There is a link to report any abuse of the site. The Edge team recommends some combination of a student-user agreement, signed by parents as well or close monitoring if you choose to use this in class. The safest way to SHARE Sketchcasts you make for students is to embed them in your blog so they will not "see" the rest of the Sketchcast site. NEVER allow students to create user names or Sketchcasts that are identifiable by unscrupulous outsiders. One other limitation is the difficulty of drawing with a mouse. If you have access to graphics tablets, these would really help. You might also try "drawing" with your finger with the site open on an interactive whiteboard!

Ideas to use Sketchcast: allow students to submit assessment quizzes using sketchcast instead of written essays (especially those with writing disabilities); create teacher-made explanations of concepts or math processes for students to access and play from your blog for review; Allow young ones to draw and talk about animals they have learned about (on the interactive whiteboard, then embed their videos in the class blog; have students talk about musical notes or symbols as you draw them and record for later review; allow students to do prewriting for assignments in Sketchcast; challenge students to create a visual explanation of an abstract concept, such as democracy or energy. The options are endless.
 
Fake Out! Grades 0 to 8 Education Place Houghton Mifflin

Fake Out! is like an ongoing online game similar to "Balderdash." The game provides unusual (but REAL) vocabulary words that are categorized by grade levels: K-2, 3-5 and 6-8. Students choose a word and attempt to define it by choosing among several definitions provided. If students choose the wrong definition, they are given the correct definition as well as a tally of how many times others chose each definition that is listed. Students are also given an opportunity to "create" a definition for a word and submit it to Fake Out! Student-created definitions may show up in the definition list for others to choose from.
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In the Classroom:
Use this site as a discussion starter for word study-- what clues can help you guess what an unknown word might mean (prefixes, suffixes, roots, etc). You can also use it to reinforce dictionary skills by having students write definitions in a credible-sounding format. Take the site one step further and have students complete activities such as creating a story with the word, using the word in a sentence, acting out the definition or drawing a picture of the word. If you have a class wiki, allow students to add favorite new words to a wiki glossary throughout the year. Teachers of gifted will love this challenge for their highly-verbal
 
Inventing Modern America: Games Grades 5 to 12 Lemelson-MIT

Students dream about becoming an inventor. This site shows that even the smallest item in life, such as the paper clip, was once invented by 'someone.' You can promote creativity and encourage 'thinking outside the box' through this site. Play the 'Which Came First' game at this site to see if you can guess which invention came first, especially in conjunction with a social studies class on the inventors and industrial revolution. (Warning: It's harder than you think!) Or you may opt to play the 'Invention Connection' game, a challenging activity that builds higher level thinking through attribute listing and looking for common characteristics of diverse inventions. For pure information and inspiration, click on the five featured inventors to find video footage and other information about their lives and inventions. You will need the Shockwave plug-in to play the 'Invention Connection' game.
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In the Classroom:
Use an interactive whiteboard to play the games in science class as you talk about inventions, engineering, and the inquiry process that drives them or as an interdisciplinary connection in your lessons on inventions and the Industrial Revolution.
 
Toy Theater Grades 0 to 5 Toy Theater

Memory puzzles, comic stories, action alphabet and math flashcards are just a few features at this site. Art, music, reading, math, puzzles and more are accessed through easy dropdown links. The difficulty ranges from simple primary skills to more challenging puzzles. Use these great interactives to teach music composition, practice with numbers, letters, and colors, do paper cut-outs like Henri Matisse, or practice math and reading skills. ESL or elementary spelling teachers will like the simple "crossword" vocabulary interactive. All links are interactive and require Flash. Get it from the TeachersFirst Toolbox page.
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In the Classroom:
Use these activities as a center, with partners, or on an interactive whiteboard. Turn up the speakers for sound on the music portions.
 
Activities: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Grades 4 to 8 TeachersFirst

TeachersFirst offers a chapter-by-chapter set of activities for "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows." Designed to be used after each chapter, the activities include science searches, writing, and art projects suitable for individual or group use. The ideas and activities ask students to respond, extend, discuss, create, and more. There is simply no better way for students to try new “After Reading" strategies. Don’t miss this great collection as a way to encourage your students to get the most from reading and re-reading a new favorite.
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In the Classroom:
Share the link on your teacher web page or in a parent newsletter, if you don't have time to do all the activities at school.
 
Braingle: Brain Teasers, Puzzles, Riddles and More Grades 3 to 12 Braingle

Exercise your gray matter by solving one of the 12,000 'braingles' at this site. It purports to be the largest collection of puzzles, riddles, mind games, etc, on the Internet. Once you explore the site, you trust their word. The site is mobile phone and wii-friendly. Don't miss the section with SAT vocab (in Mentalrobics). There are articles on study skills and strategies such as clearing your mind before studying, "chunking" when reading, or various strategies to memorize material. Engage students into math and reading exercises through the endless riddles and puzzles at this site. They won't even be aware they are 'reading' or 'solving math.'
8429

In the Classroom:
Start class with a "warm-up" brain teaser. Or include this link on your teacher web page (with a caution about parental supervision for younger ones). Site creators claim the entire site is family-friendly, safe for classroom use. Portions of the site require membership, and the membership level that displays ads is free. You may want to set up a CLASS account and use it under controlled circumstances since there are forums and chat rooms, however. Or ask your tech folks to block the portion of the site that includes "community" in the URL (http://www.braingle.com/community/) to avoid having to deal with forums, chat rooms, etc.(If you are lucky enough to have such helpful tech support, make them cookies once in awhile!)
 
MoneyBEE Grades 2 to 6 Brandeis Engaged Education

Finally, a way for student to practice with values of money and use mental math, all in en engaging, active practice environment! In this interactive game site, opponent players create money problems for each other. Games involve counting coins, adding up values, and figuring out different ways to achieve the same money total. The "opponent" is known only by a nickname and could be from around the globe! The game was designed by developers at Brandeis University to anonymously follow how students behave and learn as they challenge each other. For you and your students, it means a way for every student to be engaged and actively learning at a level appropriate for the individual. If there is no opponent available, the site tells them to try later or try a practice game. If you have several students online at a time, they can be opponents for each other. This site requires JAVA. See full technical information on the parent site, BeeWeb, FAQ page.
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In the Classroom:
This site works best under an established teacher account. Teachers will want to read the directions in the teacher info carefully so they can set up their classes within the tracking feature. (Click to register, and click "Teacher" to learn more). Teacher registration lets you follow your students' participation and achievement (tracked anonymously and SAFELY). This activity will work well for classrooms with a single computer (as a center) or a computer cluster, since students can play against others outside your class, and you can "see" their progress at any time. Demonstrate the site on a projector or whiteboard before turning your students loose.

Note: This site is part of a larger project, BEEWeb, and your teacher log-in and student log-ins will transfer among the various sites. See our reviews of SpellBEE (their first project), PatternBEE, and GeograBEE. Coming soon: CalcuBEE and MeloBEE(music).
 
Inventing Modern America: Invention Connection Grades 4 to 10 The Lemelson - MIT Program

This website helps to "connect" the dots of inventions. The "Invention Connection" challenges students to trace the paths and interconnections of many inventions. Students can complete this activity over and over again and learn about new inventions each time. The text portions may require some explanation to elementary students. This site requires Flash, get it from the TeachersFirst Toolbox page..
8352

In the Classroom:
Use this wonderful resource during your inventions/inventors units. This activity helps students to understand the connections between numerous inventions and forces then to think about unusual commonalities between unlike objects. This invention activity is perfect for an interactive whiteboard. You may want to have a separate window open to "look up" some of the more esoteric inventions that show up, since they may not be familiar to you and your students.
 
From Cave Art to Your Art Grades 5 to 12 Sanford

Challenge your students' creativity and personal reflections about art: both their own and art through the ages. Use this site to CREATE their own videos with images from their own artwork, text, and video clips provided by the site. There are suggestions for structured video topics or you can suggest other ideas. The site provides clear, step-by-step instructions for students to complete their videos. The files can even be downloaded and played on any computer. Art teachers and computer teachers alike will love the possibilities of this project-site. If your students maintain electronic art portfolios, they will certainly want to add a video from this online production studio. REQUIRES FLASH!! Get it from the TeachersFirst Toolbox page..
7213

In the Classroom:
Demonstrate the skills and steps on an interactive whiteboard or projector, or simply allow your "digital native" students to work through the directions. Since no two computers are alike, it is strongly recommended that you or a student-assistant try a "practice run" to make sure your computers have all the right plug-ins and permissions. Then watch your students go to town! Share the products on a projector or burn them to CD. We were unable to find information on the site about copyright and whether you have permission to share them on a web page. This is a TeachersFirst Edge entry, though it is not difficult to use. Skills needed: drag and drop video elements, follow directions in Help, downloading files, unzipping and saving (directions provided)
 
Analytical Problems And Puzzles Grades 3 to 12 folj.com

This very simple site, created by an anonymous puzzle-lover, is a treasury for logic problems and lateral thinking puzzles to use in your classroom or beyond. Click on the puzzle type you want. Use them as brain warm-ups in a math or science class before venturing into problem-solving or inquiry process or simply to engage the brains before starting any activity. There are different levels of logic and different types of lateral thinking puzzles, each with a hint before revealing the complete answer. These puzzles would also be useful for gifted enrichment.
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In the Classroom:
If you don't have time to spend on these in class as often as you would like, print out a single lateral thinking or logic problem each week for your bulletin board and let the students argue about it all week. Or include this link on your teacher website for the students to access outside of class. This site is a life-saver for your study hall the day before a vacation!
 
Jigsawdoku Grades 2 to 6

If you're just learning to play or need something more kid-friendly than traditional Sudoku, try this online version. Click on the "Options" tab to adjust the game by difficulty level and grid size.
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In the Classroom:
Before turning students loose to try it on their own, project this game in your classroom, and work through a basic-level Sudoku game as a class to illustrate the purpose and strategies.
 
Scrabble Grades 5 to 12

The challenge and creativity of the original board game comes alive in this virtual version. Review the available tools that can undo, redo, withdraw, sort, and even save an uncompleted game. Although this "solitaire" Scrabble game misses the group interaction of the traditional version, it provides a great opportunity for creative, independent thought related to spelling and vocabulary.
6501

In the Classroom:
This "just for fun" activity can be utilized as a meaningful reward for completing class work early. Channel students to this site for some vocabulary building during down-time.
 

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