UTWCIW

This Activity is currently (April 2011) running.  It is run by the Smithsonian and MIT.  It's part mystery, part science.  I don't know what comes next, but so far there has been code cracking and data collection.

On-line dictionary for ELL/ESL learners.

This website offers many manipulatives to help students understand, practice and review math concepts. I particularly like the fraction manipulatives. Some of my students have difficulty perceiving fractions and I believe this will be an excellent tool for exploration, practice and review.

The idea behind this website is very interesting to me, and after playing with it a bit, I did find some of the manipulatives useful. However, many of them I found to be quite cumbersome. I was really excicited about the base ten blocks manipulatives for helping my students add and subtract, and once I figured it out, it was great. However, I had to read the help directions to get to that point. If I was able to spend the time showing my students how to use these, I think it'd be a wonderful tool. However, I was hoping I'd be able to simply direct my students and their parents to this site so they could use it for help at home. I'm afraid that many of the parents would not take the time to read the help area to figure it out, and I know my students wouldn't (or wouldn't understand them if they did). So while I was initially impressed with the idea of this site, I might search for something a bit more user friendly.

Kids' Vid is a great site for students and teachers to find tips about creating videos. It takes students through the steps of planning (scripting), making the video, editing the video and then the final product. The great thing about the site is that it gives reasons why each step is important, which helps to back me up in the classroom.

Backchannel creates a temporary chatroom that lets participants talk to each other.  Sort of like twitter, only just for that event.

This site, like many PBS websites, has tons of ideas and activities to incorporate into science or tech ed lessons. There are excellent nonliguistic elements including interactive "labs" and other online activities. It also does a nice job of connecting the lesson ideas to real life. The site includes extensive lesson plan ideas and extra resources, although the videos are not free.

This idea is a real hoot.  A battery pack, a few LED's, and two kinds of home made play dough.  Little kids can build electronic circuits!

This resource offers math practice in a game format. Ratio Blaster Game is just what my fourth grade students need after completing their fraction and decimal unit. Advantage: students enjoy game formats. Disadvantages: some games lack error correction formats and students are exposed to lots of adds in margins of the window.

Membership cost is $29.99 a year but you receive access to software that allows you to create graphic organizers, rubrics, worksheets, certificates, etc.

"PrimaryAccess was designed for use in K-12 classrooms to aid in teaching content knowledge, critical thinking skills and even writing or storytelling skills. Teachers can set up and manage class activities and materials with ease using TeacherTools. Students then access the activities using MovieMaker and StoryBoard." This a great site to help students understand primary sources and their importance. This primary source website is an awesome tool for students to apply their knowledge on different topics and also expand that knowledge through the use of primary sources.

A list of citizen science projects, some of which may be suitable for students at various ages.

Playmusic.org was developed by the League of American Orchestras and allows students to meet and hear living musicians and composers and play numerous exciting games that build musical skills! My students love (and get addicted) to playing the ear training percussion memory game!

Google Sites allows you to create and share webpages. Google Sites is set up to help you create a web page (easily it states), collect your information all in one place, and control who can view it and edit it, which is a lot like Google Docs. There is also a learn more link where you can view a quick overview video to help get you started: http://www.google.com/sites/help/intl/en/overview.html This would be a great resource tool for collaborating on a group project.

Video modeling has long been used in sports. Educators can use video modeling and video self modeling (VSM) to address problem behaviors, daily living skills, reading fluency, articulation disorders, selective mutism, and social skills training. A Meta-Analysis of Video Modeling and VSM Interventions (Bellini & Akullian, 2007) determined that video modeling met criteria for an Evidence Based Practice. This website has links to steps for Implementation and and an implementation checklist. Using video, helps the learner focus his/her attention on instructional cues and salient contextual cues.

This site has lots of interactive elements and many resources. There are phonics games for practice and review, and "alphabet organizers" where students can make their own alphabet books, using their own words. There are interactive poetry tutorials that allow the student to easily create and print his/her own poem. I like that the site has literacy activities and ideas for students in middle school -- I've never met an ELL student that likes to do second grade work.

Students can use this site to find data and statistics on almost any subject. For example, a student could enter "Wisconsin" in the search bar and find out anything from population to the lowest point in the state. I even typed in my name, and found that there are just over 888,000 Sarahs expected to be alive today. This site is informative as well as interesting!

That sounds like a fun website. Possibly a great website for those students who may need to be challenged more than the others. I bet some kids would really get into this site! Thanks for sharing, Sarah!

This site has been created by the 2 Sisters, Gail Boushey and Joan Moser. They are responsible for the literacy approaches of The Daily 5 and The Cafe. The site has a wealth of free information, including videos, to help teachers implement the Daily 5 and Cafe techniques in their classroom. The Sisters also have a free e-mail tip of the week that you may sign up for. For even more information, teachers may subscribe to the site. The site does not provide activities for students to complete online, however, the Daily 5 and Cafe are designed to help students practice, review, and apply their knowledge of literacy skills in the classroom through the use of centers, small group work, and one-on-one teacher conferencing.

Laura, Thanks for reminding me about this site. I've been struggling with conferencing in a meaningful way with students, and also with assessment. There are some resources here I haven't seen. Are you doing CAFE?

Within the Child Development Unit, we discuss babysitting and list fun, educational activities that they can do with children when they are caring for them. Go under adventure in the interests coloumn; this is a good website For fun activities for kids.

This can be a great site for gathering a great deal fo information from and about students. It is very easy to create a survey about just about any topic. One potential use that I see is using it as a pretest.. I would have the students take the survey on survey monkey about general ideas of the upcoming unit. I would then post the big questions about the unit throughout the room. I would then post some charts showing the scores (aggregate) from before and after the unit, highlighting the learning that took place.

My student have really been struggling with making change. A huge advantage of this site is that students can first select the difficulty level. Most of my second graders would be using the Medium difficulty level, which uses amounts less than $5. However, I love that I can easily differentiate for my struggling students by having them select the easy level (amounts less that $1), and my advance students by having them select the hard level (amounts less than $100). They even have a Super Brain (big spender) option! This site would be great practice for all of my students and would be a good addition to our math centers activities.

Thank you for sharing this. I currently have a student who still struggles with making change, and she could use this site when working with her mentor. I like how it is leveled so she can start with easier amounts and then progress.