Teachers First - Thinking Teachers Teaching Thinkers

A Canadian site focused on five "first nations" central to Canada's history, Four Directions Teaching, uses technology to create a visually beautiful site about the Blackfoot, Cree, Ojibwe, Mohawk, and Mi'kmaq tribes. There are also extensive teacher resources, sorted by challenge level, to download, a photo collection, audio narration, and printables. These resources are appropriate not only for use by Canadians, but also for understanding the development of Native American culture throughout North America. (The Native Americans preceded any national boundaries!).

tag(s): canada (22), cross cultural understanding (160), cultures (131), native americans (92)

Find a collection of wonderful math resources for elementary students related to the Olympic games. Although the blog was originally created in 2008, many of the activities and sites have been updated. Find word games sorted by event and grade level (such as Summer Olympic Swimming for grades 1 and 2). Many of the lesson plans include national math standards. Some great research ideas are also offered, such as exploring the Olympics through time. Explore previous medal counts before predicting this year's medals through the Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger link.
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tag(s): charts and graphs (169), data (147), estimation (34), logic (163), mean (19), median (16), mode (13), olympics (40), operations (72), sports (80)

Find extra practice for a wide variety of English topics, especially for ESL/ELL. Many of the worksheets and activities would be useful to any student learning the basics of the English language (adjectives, adverbs, etc.). Although it is not visually exciting, the practice comes in a great variety of formats: PowerPoints, Bingo games, mazes, and grid activities. Especially interesting is the Attributes section where vocabulary is described by function rather than definition, a helpful approach for language learners. Don't miss the combined word list section.

tag(s): antonyms (13), grammar (133), idioms (32), questioning (35), synonyms (16), verbs (27), vocabulary (237)

Students will have fun while improving their writing and grammar. At the time of this review, noredink's grammatical categories include apostrophes, subject-verb agreement, comma issues, sentence fragments, run-on sentences commonly confused words, phrases and clauses, and a lot more! The program provides differentiated instruction based on the questions students answer right or wrong. Click the "Product" tab on the top menu to read about more features. There are interactive tutorials to help students correct mistakes. Sign up with name, username, email address, gender, school name, and a password.

So, what's fun about learning this type of grammar? noredink asks students to pick their interests from Sports, TV shows, Musicians, and Miscellaneous. They will also be asked if they want them to use your friends from Facebook. When students are practicing or are taking quizzes, the program will use their interests and friends, and generate the questions around their interests and friends. The hope is that the content will be more interesting by including sentences with favorite celebrities, hobbies, TV shows, or even personal friends. Be sure to watch the introductory video. The program works on iPads as well as your regular computer.
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tag(s): assessment (149), capitalization (9), classroom management (122), differentiation (88), grammar (133), homonyms (8), homophones (6), punctuation (25), quiz (66), quizzes (91), sentences (22), Teacher Utilities (156), verbs (27)

Knovio takes the pain out of PowerPoint presentations by bringing them to life with webcam and audio enhancement. Create a PowerPoint or Keynote presentation, upload the file, press record, and present to your audience. If you are camera shy, disable the defaulted webcam to just audio! Share with people you select through the site's private spaces or share to the world via your social network. When sharing through private spaces, you will need your audience's email addresses. Additionally, when your recipients view your presentation, you will receive an email confirmation of when the presentation was viewed. The free plan offers a 3 video limit and 30 minutes of storage.

tag(s): slides (42), video (260)

Review and practice for Chemistry Regents exam with this site that contains over 1000 questions with answers and explanations. Choose from previous exams beginning in 2002 on up to current exams. Questions are displayed, answers are provided in the same color as the background making them invisible when first viewing the page. To find some answers, you must click a link, depending on how new the practice test is. Highlight the answer or explanation box to see the correct response along with are short explanation. Each page contains 10 questions. Be sure to follow links to view all of the questions from each exam.
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tag(s): test prep (67)

Where's George? lets you track the travel of dollar bills through circulation. Enter the serial number on the bill, enter a current zip code, and learn where their bill has been. Choose from two options on the site: find out where a bill has been or enter a current bill to begin tracking from its current location. Finding where a bill has been gives a list of known cities, states, and countries. It also includes travel time, distance, and speed of its journey. Email registration is necessary to follow the travels of a bill and receive notification of current location. One word of caution: it may be wise to enter serial numbers of bills before sharing with the class in case they have been in locations that may need to be screened. Also, be aware this site contains advertisements. At the time of this review, there was a questionable advertisement. Please preview and OPEN, before sharing with your class .
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tag(s): currency (14)