If you want your students to use the internet for research, but find that sites such as Wikipedia can overwhelm students and contain too much information - then you might like to take a look at the Simple English Wikipedia.
The Simple English Wikipedia uses simple English words and grammar to explain topics.
There are 70,000 articles on the site, a fraction of the 3 million articles that are on the main wikipedia page, but enough for most students. Check before you send kids towards the site that it contains the topics you want them to research. If it doesn't you could always create a page and add the information yourself - or make it a goal for the research project to write a page!
An excellent tool for ESL students. When putting in a word or phrase into the box, and pressing submit, it pronounces the word in english. Can also translate that word to any of 40+ languages
PicLits.com is a creative writing site that matches beautiful images with carefully selected keywords in order to inspire you. The object is to put the right words in the right place and the right order to capture the essence, story, and meaning of the picture.
Fantastic for secondary English
This is a great series that students will love which breaks history down into nice little bitse sized chunks you can flesh out in the classroom. I really hope you enjoy going through this with your students. A word of warning is that some of the language and content may not be totally appropriate to younger students.
VocabularySpellingCity provides the following sets of correlations to standards:
U.S. Standards by State
Common Core Standards for each States' Implementation
Australian Standards by State
Canadian Standards by Province
English National Curriculum Standards
This site too is linked to Brainpop jr, but it is for older students. Again excellent site (but costs) click on the 'free stuff' icon to see what you can use for free. Very suitable for Stage 2 to Stage 3, perhaps even Stage 4
This site is great , but unfort to access all content there is an acct fee. However, there is lots of great free stuff on it. Just click on the free stuff link.
An interesting writing tool, no sign up. When finished read others writing on the same word.
"simple. you'll see one word at the top of the following screen.
you have sixty seconds to write about it."