View a time line of findings and explorations into other habitable planets in the universe. View understandings, pictures, quotes, and other materials available from 500 BC to the present. Use the arrows that appear on the screen to scroll backward and forward. Audio and auto play can be turned on and off along the bottom of the screen. Click on the dots below the time line to jump to discoveries, technology, or thought and culture throughout the time line. Click on "Show Key Milestones" to see a bar graph type image showing key points.
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Fun and energetic about energy, this site features Tinker Bell's energy saving commercials as just one of the highlights that lower grade students would find enjoyable. The site also features links to energy lesson plans, games and activities about energy conservation, and basic information about renewable energy resources of biomass, solar, wind, and geothermal energies. One of the more engaging features in the games and activities section of the site is "Roofus'Home." The features are clickable and linked to information about how that feature is energy efficient.
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This animated video explains in detail how an acorn becomes a tree. The audio uses simple terms, however some vocabulary may need further explanation with younger grades. The slides can be advanced or reversed with the buttons provided on the pages. This is a modern version of the old fashioned film strip. The narration is also available in Spanish.
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Learn about safety hazards throughout the home. View sections of the house such as Kitchen, Hallway, Pool and Spa, or Backyard. In each section, find safety concerns for Falls, Poisoning, Burns, Fires, Suffocation, and Electric Shock. Each concern contains an audio file and/or written information to outline the danger.
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Take your students on a trip to the SUN! Look at the Sun closeup from the safety of your computer screen. Observe phenomena such as solar flares and specula's. Watch IMAX movie clips of various aspects of the sun and the chemistry behind the giant fireball. Some of the video clips are from YouTube, so you may have trouble accessing them from school.
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Become a smart online consumer and computer user. Use the Topics, Games, or Videos sections to learn Internet safety at home and through life. From Phishing to Computer Disposal and Health Online, find helpful information for all ages. At the topics link you will find information on Wireless Security, Social Networking Sites, Spyware, Kids Privacy, and many other topics. The interactive (games) are highly engaging and include “Online Lineup,” “Invest Quest,” “The Case of the Cyber Criminal,” and many other online topics. There are a few videos to view also. Click on Tools for other resources including subscribing to "Cyber Security Tips." Although this site is useful for teachers of all grade levels, if students are using this site independently it is best suited for secondary students.
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What is Watch Know? Short for "You Watch, You Know," it provides explanations for students. Finding bits of information to help students can be frustrating as resources are disorganized on the web and may be hard to find.” Watch Know” is a free site that organizes small video clips to help with the understanding of a variety of topics in subject areas. Search by age (3-18+). You can click and drag the age filter to the youngest and oldest ages to include. Videos are also organized by sequence of topics taught. The site is an ongoing project with input from educators and organizations interested in education of children. Registration is not required to view the videos. Creating and saving videos to the site, as well as commenting, require registration. You can monitor site recent changes and additions using the “Change Log.”
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This interactive and chatty site from RIF shares activities for the preschool and early childhood set, including interactive books read aloud (see Preschoolers and click on "read"), book and activity ideas (see "grownups"), audio songs and nursery rhymes with the words on screen, and much more. The entire site is available in Spanish by clicking Español at the top right. The interactive books then display with BOTH English and Spanish available! Many classic activities and nursery rhymes are included in the "Baby and Toddler" section but would work well in a kindergarten classroom, too. Monthly Activity calendars to promote literacy at home are available in both English and Spanish.
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RIF, the long-established organization for promoting reading, offers this site for school-aged readers and their parents. Young readers may join (or not) and access activities to do alone or with family (Activity Lab), book ideas (Book Zone), writing starters and contests (Express Yourself), and educational games (Game Station). Many of the activities are ready to go in a classroom or at home. Several of the activities are available in both English and Spanish. New writing activities appear monthly, including story starters for members to complete. Feature authors and new additions make this site worth a look every month.
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The celebrated RIF program offers this site for parents to support their children's literacy. You will find resources from infancy to the teenage years and some for the entire family. While there is more available for younger children (through elementary school), the Whole Family area and some of the activities are enjoyable for teens, as well. Click to find practical tips to support your growing readers, monthly features, interactive books, activities for family heritage, authors, polls, a personal bookshelf to collect book recommendations, and more. You can even search for activities by age and activity type.
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This eclectic site has something for everyone about the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. For younger students, be sure to meet the mascots of the site, view the interactives, and more. Students of all ages can use this site to learn about the schedule, view photos and videos, learn about each sport in the winter 2010 Olympics, trace the torch relay, view a spectator guide, meet the athletes, view the interactive map, and more.
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If you are looking for a general informational site about the 2010 Olympics, this is the site for you! Learn about the sports (alpine skiing, curling, freestyle skiing, snowboarding, and more), view video clips, watch a countdown (with days, hours, minutes and seconds), and more. Be aware this site does include unobtrusive advertisements.
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Although this site isn't highly interactive, it does offer some theme based printables, crafts, and more. The three main links include: Olympic Crafts (Bingo Cards, Olympic Torch, and others), Sports Printables, and Q & A with Julie Foudy. This site is geared more towards families (and moms in general), but many of the activities would be ideal in the elementary classroom.
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Although some of the printables are available to members only, this site does includes some excellent FREE information on the history of the Olympics, maps, flags, Greek alphabet, writing activities, graphic organizers, "Invent a New Olympic Sport" challenge, and more. If nothing else, the printables offer some great ideas to implement in your classroom (for example, "Write a Sentence for Each Sports-Related Word").
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Join the movement to urge citizens and lawmakers to take steps to reduce global CO2 levels to the number 350. Click on the "About" tab to learn the science, hear about the actions, and view media. Participate in activities such as "Days of Action." Register and sign up for email and text messages. Tip: rather than using your personal or work email, create a free Gmail account to use for memberships. If you plan to have students register individually, you may want to create your own Gmail account with up to 20 subaccounts for each group of students (by code name or number) within your classes. Here is a blog post that tells how to set up GMail subaccounts to use for any online membership service. Learn from people around the world about how they are spreading the word about climate change.
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This collection of downloadable pdf documents provides lesson plans, handouts, and text readings to accompany the twelve units in Daniel Boorstin's A History of the United States Daniel (Needham: Prentice-Hall, 1989). Though the materials are very traditional (paper, pencil), the concepts demand a more thoughtful, sophisticated approach to U.S. history via essential questions. The units are intended to serve as support materials for debates in one of several formats explained in the Overview document.
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Teachersfirst Edge Entry: for anyone who can click and type! Trailfire is an online tool for making "trails" for others to follow on the Internet. You can also find "trails" created by others willing to share their work. Simply by clicking the various "stops" along your guided trail, you can add notes telling people who should stop here or what they should do, comment on the pages' content, etc. Click "explore" to browse or search (by tag or keyword) the many trails already available. Click "Learn" in the tag cloud to see examples of "how to" trails. There is even one on how to make lesson plans! Navigate the "trail" with small blue arrows at the very top and read the creator's comments as little pop-ups that look like sticky notes. As with any public site, there are topics NOT suitable for the classroom, so preview, preview, and preview. Buried among the trails are some created by teachers, such as the Great Pumpkin Adventure or this sample trail by the TeachersFirst review team. Trails YOU make can be shared by URL or kept private to share with your selected viewers. NOTE: the site seems a bit sluggish at times, so resist the urge to click into "mouse panic."
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See a visual timeline of the worldwide economic crisis beginning in 2008, from the point of view of a non-U.S. source. Reuters shares 365 days of upheaval beginning in fall, 2008 via pictures, captions, videos, articles, facts, and more in a highly interactive timeline.
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There’s plenty to see in this educator’s page from the long-running RIF program. There are useful tips and resources for teachers and others interested in fostering reading, writing, and literacy skills in young children and elementary students. There are lesson plans in pdf format, links to activities on RIF's Reading Planet site, downloadable literacy activity calendars (English and Spanish), and much more. Especially useful is the Activity search for lessons and more for different curriculum strands and ages. Though many are geared for younger children (preschool and primary grades), there are some options for upper elementary, as well, including interdisciplinary lessons to include music, etc.
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TeachersFirst Edge review: for social networking technology users who love literature, reading, and writing. This online eBook and literary discussion tool allows you to read collaboratively with others using an online eBook reader that is built into the site. The site is open to the public, so teachers should preview with their students' maturity level in mind and guide them carefully into constructive and safe use of its tools. Our editors found no objectionable texts available at the time of review, but these change. Those interested primarily in reading and discussing selections offered by Bookglutton can read the books from any computer, but you will want to set up a membership to keep track of what you are reading at the very least. The books offered include free texts that are in the public domain (no longer under copyright), user-submitted books, and fee-based purchases offered by publishers who sell their books in online form. More savvy users can embed the book-reader tool in another web site or wiki, as well. Readers who are logged in can discuss a text live (chat style) with others they "meet" on Bookglutton or with a specific group. They can also leave comments on pages or passages so others can respond later. Your comments (annotations) can also be kept private for viewing just by you, just like marking up the margins in your paperbacks. Works available include those from Bronte, Dickens, and many traditional classics of the high school curriculum.
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