Weekly Core Subjects Resources

Hope everyone is having a great President's Day.  Our district will be in session because we are using it as a snow day make up, so no celebrating George Washington's birthday for me.  If you are off, then take this time to check out some great resources for the subject area that you teach.

English
1.) VocabAhead has a great Study Room where students can go to learn about critical vocabulary that you would see on the GRE, SAT, and ACT test.  The Study Room provides a short video providing the definition of each word and a real life example of its use.  There is also the text available for the video for students with special needs.  A great resource and possibly an even better tool for Bellringer activities.

2.) Readability is a web & mobile app that zaps online clutter and saves web articles in a comfortable reading view. No matter where you are or what device you use, your reading will be there.  It does cost $5.00 a month to use the service, but for those of us that read on the web a lot, it would be a great add on.

Mathematics
1.) Math-Drills.com is a site that provides various worksheets for mathematics classrooms.  There are several to choose from and are available in links at the top of the page.  Each worksheet is available in PDF format.  Another option is The Math Worksheet Site.

2.) Math TV is a website for sharing video tutorials for explaining various math concepts.  You can choose from videos for basic math, algebra, geometry, calculus, and trigonometry. 

3.) AplusMath is a site for students who need a little extra help learning math.  There are several activities, games, and even a homework helper.  There is even a flashcard creator. 

Science
1.) The Apollo 13 Mission Transcripts is a site that provides all students would need to know about the Apollo 13 mission.  You can get the transcripts that are divided into 6 difference phases of the mission.  An excellent personal and primary document resource.  The site Spacelog also has transcripts for other missions as well that are worth checking out.

2.) The Encyclopedia of Life is a valuable resource for science teachers and students in the science classroom.  Students can learn about the various species as well as get the latest news on life sciences. 

3.) The Arthropod Story takes you on a tour through the amazing evolutionary history of arthropods. Along the way, you'll get a healthy dose of taxonomy, paleontology, natural history and principles of evolution.  Looks like a great webquest from the Understanding Evolution website that has other valuable resources for science teachers.

4.) The Plant List is a working list of all known plant species. Version 1 aims to be comprehensive for species of Vascular plant (flowering plants, conifers, ferns and their allies) and of Bryophytes (mosses and liverworts).

5.) The Science Museum provides a great website with resources, activities, interactives, simulations, and games that students can participate in to learn science concepts.  There is an educators section that has classroom resources, one if which is a game called Thingdom, a fun game about genetic inheritance and selective breeding – adopt a thing, care for a thing, make baby things!

Social Studies
1.) Time Zone Converter is a valuable tool when teaching geography to help students understand time.  It is always a struggle for students to understand how it is a different time and day in other parts of the world.  This would be a great supplement. 

2.) 65 Twitter Feeds for History Teachers is a great blog post for teachers looking for ways to integrate Twitter into the Social Studies classroom.  A great list of hashtags and usernames. 

3.) The CIA World Factbook and Google Earth are great resources for teaching Geography.  Now thanks to a one man project by David Tryse he has combined the two into the KML Factbook.  Awesome is an understatement.  You might be interested in checking out his other Google Earth Projects.

4.) Legistalker is a great website for staying up to date on what legislators are up to.  Always good to see current events in real time.  A great resource for studying government trends and happenings. 

5.) The Reading Like a Historian curriculum engages students in historical inquiry. Each lesson revolves around a central historical question and features sets of primary documents modified for groups of students with diverse reading skills and abilities.

Fur.ly

Fur.ly is another site offering users the ability to shorten multiple URL's into one.  You can find previous posts where I discuss these services.  Fur.ly is not much different.  You copy and paste several URL's and then it provides you with one short URL.  When you visit the URL it created you then view each website in a slideshow fashion. 

Fur.ly does allow you to open links you shortened in a separate window and it also provides a drop down menu to each long URL you provided.  An added bonus is that you also receive stats to determine how often they have been viewed.  These stats will help you determine whether students are accessing the links that you have provided them.

Psykopaint

Personally, I was never really that good at art.  I remember one time doing a stencil drawing of a still image and being impressed with my skills...after that, it all went down hill.  Needless to say, my artwork at 4 was better than at 14.

Psykopaint is a website for those of us that have a limited ability to think abstractly or understanding colors and shading.  We also might struggle understanding the different styles of art.  With Psykopaint you can upload and photo and turn it into a fascinating work of art.  From the picture the software knows what colors go where, you just determine the style.  When you are finished you can pay to have your artwork put on a canvas, thus making it a great gift idea.

So what about classroom use.  Psykopaint would be a great way for Arts and Humanities teachers to discuss the various styles of art, both modern and contemporary.  It might be a neat way to take images that you share in class and change the appearance and then have students guess what they are looking at, and then reveal the original, especially famous people. 

The site still takes some artistic creativity, but at least you can start with something instead of a blank canvas....but the site also allows you to use a blank canvas if you so desire.  Just visit the front page of Psykopaint and see the samples and play around with the samples.

Kideos - Videos for Kids

"Kideos is the premier destination for kids to safely watch videos online. Each video on Kideos has been screened by our Video Advisory Council before it makes it onto our site. Our goal is to empower parents to feel comfortable allowing their child to spend time on Kideos, while also making sure children have a thoroughly entertaining experience." 

Kideos provides videos for various age groups from 0-2 to 9-10.  There are various channels that you can search through to find videos that you are looking for as well as the ones that are rated most popular.  Think of Kideos as a combination of YouTube and Hulu.  There is also an iPhone App available so kids can watch videos on the go.


I know I normally focus on Secondary resources, but this seemed too valuable to pass up...especially since my wife teaches 3rd grade.

Cosketch and FlockDraw

Cosketch is a multi-user online whiteboard designed to give you the ability to quickly visualize and share your ideas as images.  It can be integrated with Google Maps, so if you are doing a Google Trek, this would be a good resource to use.  What I like is the ability to upload a photo and then draw/sketch on top of that photo.  This would be a great way to take a screen shot of a Power Point Slide or other document and have students take notes, make edits, etc on those images.  If you use a blank canvas it would be a great way to teach Geometry concepts because students could participate in the drawing of Geometry concepts. 

With Cosketch, everything that you sketch shows up in real time as it is happening.  With one click you can save your sketch to embed on a blog or forum, providing students more ways of communicating concepts.  There is also a chat feature so that you are not limited to just drawing.  There are several drawing tools to choose from. 

The Internet is truly providing new ways for students to collaborate on projects in the classroom.  There are several options for students to create stories in sections and students finish them.  Cosketch could be used to draw a story that students complete in segments.

FlockDraw is another option for online whiteboard collaboration.  Flockdraw is a free to use web based painting/drawing tool. It makes it easy to draw with multiple people for fun or business. You can have unlimited people in a room and it updates in real time. Uses different colors, shapes and text. Save your work to our gallery and show it off!