Reference Center for Teachers
Curriculum and Lesson Plans for K-12
FunBrain
Featuring over Thirty Games (free) across eight subjects. Proton Don The periodic table can be elementary. Guess the Number Figure out the secret. Grammar Gorillas Monkey around with your grammar skills. Teachers: Gain access FunBrain's library of made quizzes for your students take online with Quiz Lab. Quizzes are automatically graded emailed to you. Tell parents you think. Share ideas with other teachers. Find research online.
New York Times Learning Network
Each school day, access a lesson plan based on the day's news. Print it out for classroom use. Share a plan of your own, or visit the lesson archive. Learn about our NIE program, or browse our list of recommended Web sites.
New Teacher Resources
Beginning Teacher's Tool Box
This site, by the veteran teachers of Inspiring Teachers Publishing Group near Dallas, Texas, USA, offers everything from an "Ask Our Mentor a Question" section where you can e-mail questions or concerns to a veteran teacher, to "Tips for New Teachers" (click "archives") that include inspiration, humor, and the top 10 things to do before school starts. Be sure to check out the Beginning Teachers Message Board where you can ask for, or offer, advice.
Teachers Helping Teachers
"By teachers, for teachers" is the goal of this site. Here, middle school teacher Scott Mandel and other contributing educators provide basic teaching tips to beginning teachers--things that they can immediately implement in the classroom. It offers lesson plans and has features like "Poem of the Week" and "This Week's Stress Reduction Moment." This site also has a list of education Web sites organized by subject area and topic.
Teachers.net: Mentor Support Center
Beginning teachers will definitely want to check out the "Mentor Support Center" from Teachers.net. This feature (click "chatboards") brings together educators in category-specific chats, such as the chatboard specifically for beginning teachers. The site also includes lesson plans, live meetings, a bookshelf with a list of useful resources, and a newsletter.
I Love Teaching.com
Designed to encourage new teachers and those studying to be teachers, I Love Teaching.com offers the experiences and wisdom of a veteran teacher. Click "Tid-Bits" for a list of things a rookie teacher wishes that she had known before stepping into the classroom.
What to Expect Your First Year of Teaching
The U.S. Dept. of Education offers this FREE online book (in PDF format, requiring an Acrobat reader): a compilation of award-winning first-year teachers' experiences, challenges, and successes. It includes tips on how to have a successful first year, advice from veteran teachers, and a discussion about the things for which no training could have prepared new teachers.
Art and Music
A Lifetime of Color: Network Nuggets
This site has activities for all aspects of creating art. Various topics include: Create Art, Study Art, Play Art Games, and Teach Art. Interactive student activities explain the elements and principles of Art in fun ways that the students will be sure to remember. This site would be useful for students studying any elements of art, design, or drafting. I found it a useful background resource for reviewing those teaching concepts we sometimes don't get around to covering in Art class. A Lifetime of Color is hosted by Sanford and is suitable for students in grades K-12.
Art Safari
This site prompts kids to explore paintings and sculptures from the Museum of Modern Art. A series of questions guides children to write about what they see. Then, kids are encouraged create and submit their own art. Grade Level: Elementary Content Area: Arts (Visual Arts), English (Writing)
ArtsEdge
ArtEdge aims to bring together and organize the best of ideas, information, and resources from the arts and from education. Includes news, links, curriculum, and more. From the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts (with additional support from the U.S. Department of Education).
Health and Physical Education
Healthfinder -- US Department of Health and Human Services http://www.healthfinder.gov/
This site, recently opened by the Department of Health and Human Services, acts as a "gateway consumer health information web site." In addition to DHHS agencies, 12 other federal agencies provide health-related information. At the heart of the site is a searchable and browsable interface of available resources. Users can browse resources alphabetically by using a simple drop-down menu search form, or by selecting from any of 31 major subject topics to find annotated organization and/or web resources. The "pubs" section features key word searching for online publications and contains a large list of publications catalogs as well as pointers to seventeen medical dictionaries and glossaries. The "news" section contains press, DHHS, and selected state health department news. The site provides one-stop shopping for a vast array of consumer health information.
History and Social Studies
HISTORY: Atlas of the 20th Century
The Historical Atlas of the Twentieth Century is a wonderful reference for historical trends, systems of government, events, cities population and urban growth, wars, specific events, world governments, disasters, nobel prizes and olympic games.
Our Gold Rush Community
Created by students and staff of Deer Creek School in Nevada City, this web site tells about the rich gold rush history of this California community. Students can explore the people, community, mining, and transportation of the Gold Rush era as well as view photos and a timeline. This is an outstanding example of collaborative learning, coordinated by teacher C. Mendenhall. Grade Level: Elementary, Middle School Content Area: History & Social Studies
US Geological Survey Water Resources Applications Software
The USGS offers fifty software programs (at present) that are freely available. The programs can be browsed alphabetically or in five subject categories. Each program is accompanied by computer platform requirements, a summary of the program, readme files, pointers to decompression utilities, and documentation information (including selected downloadable user's manuals). Summaries contain pointers to other related programs, when available. Note that most software packages are available on AViiON DG/UX or UNIX platforms at present, but selected packages are available for other platforms as well.
Peace Corps: Kids World
This Peace Corps site for kids is designed to educate and entertain children about world geography and the cultures of other countries. Children can also send electronic postcards, read folk tales from around the world, download coloring pages and test their geography savvy with an interactive game. Grade Level: Elementary, Middle School Content Area: History & Social Studies (Geography & Cultures) [Dewey #900]
Archiving Early America
Documents from our nation's early years, crossword puzzle and daily listing of what happened on this day in history in early America
Internet and Computer Technology
California Instructional Technology Clearinghouse
For fifteen years, the California Instructional Technology Clearinghouse has assisted California educators find the highest quality electronic learning resources. 900+ trained educator evaluators contributed to a searchable online database of over 3,000 recommendations. Be sure to see the Top Ten lists for language arts, social science, physical education, science, arts, and world languages. Grade Level: Early Childhood, Elementary, Middle School, High School Content Area: Technology (Software) [Dewey #600] Application type: Reference/Tool
Harnessing the Power of the Web
This tutorial shows K-12 teachers how to harness the power of the World Wide Web for classroom use. Grade Level: Adult/Professional Content Area: Education (Educational Technology), Technology
Language Arts K-12
Academy of American Poets
April is National Poetry Month and the Academy of American Poets website will provide all the details. Founded in 1934, the Academy supports American poets at all stages of their careers and fosters the appreciation of contemporary poetry. Follow Poetry Exhibits to Current Exhibits for poetry selections. The Calendar of Events, Academy Readings, and Residencies can assist in locating public events near you. However, the highlight of the site is the Listening Booth, offering RealAudio renditions of fifty poems (at present) by their authors. The site is searchable.
Cinema: How Are Hollywood Films Made?
Inspired by programs from the American Cinema video series in the Annenberg/CPB Multimedia Collection, "Cinema" explores the creative process of filmmaking from the screenwriter's words to the editor's final cut. Includes interactive activities from writing dialogue for a scene to managing the production of a film. Grade Level: Middle School, High School Content Area: Arts
Pilkey's Website of Fun
Children's author, Dav Pilkey, aka Sue Denim, has a unique and amusing website about himself and his stories. Also included is a section on jokes, interactive acitivies that include printable coloring sheets and games, and a section for teachers on how to use Dav's site as a teaching tool. Grade Level: Early Childhood, Elementary Content Area: English (Literature, Reading), Arts (Visual Arts)
Favorite Poem Project
"Reading a poem silently instead of saying a poem is like the difference between staring at sheet music and actually humming or playing the music on an instrument," says U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky. His Favorite Poem Project shares audio and video of people reading their favorite poems, and invites readers to send in their favorite poems with a few sentences about why it is special to them. Students are invited to participate, and this could be a springboard for classrooms to develop their own favorite poem web sites. Grade Level: Elementary, Middle School, High School, College Content Area: English (Literature), English (Speaking), Arts (Performing Arts)
ART Capades
This site has easy, fun, educational activities for young students (K-3), including monolingual Spanish speakers. The site distributes the activity to the student without linking to external sites. Hypertext links provide flexible navigation within the application for browsing and art selection and elaboration.
Purdue Writing Lab
Handouts and activity sheets to print out for class use
Mitsuharu Matsuoka's Home Page
A teacher at Nagoya University in Japan created this site with links to literary sites throughout the world
AJR Newslink
Links to newspapers and magazine websites around the world
Carol Hurst's Children's Literature Site
Collection of reviews, curriculum ideas and activities organized by grade level
American Folk: Folklore & Popular Culture
Stories about real people
Little Planet Times
"Dateline, Little Planet. Yesterday, in the meadow at the edge of the Old Forest, two friends were pulled apart just before they were going to fight. And what the two friends were ready to fight over was ..." You'll have to visit this site to find out what made Porky and Dorky so mad. This original web site encourages kids to read and write with The Little Planet Times, a newspaper created by and for kids. Top stories creatively present monthly themes, like conflict resolution. Readers can find out what's new in the "School Spotlight" or check out the Entertainment section for movie reviews or sports news. "Creative Corner" invites readers to view work of others or submit original poems, stories or artwork.
Math and Science
General Chemistry Online
This rich resource for students and teachers of introductory chemistry includes interactive course guides and tutorials, an exam survival guide, reference tables, self-grading quizzes and exams, a searchable glossary, a question & answer board, answers to over 300 frequently asked questions, and a chemical trivia quiz. Created by Dr. Fred Senese, chemistry professor at Frostburg State University in Maryland. Grade Level: High School, College Content Area: Science (Chemistry)
Animals of the World: Network Nuggets
Are your primary students studying animals, birds, insects, arachnids, reptiles, amphibians or fish? This site gives a brief description of each of these topics, and then has various guessing games that allow the student to select the correct responses to the clues. The vocabulary is appropriate for the age group, and the graphics are colourful and accurate.This site would be useful for any animal unit you may be working on with your students. Your students may get fast at guessing the answer but having the textual clues will allow them to gain more information in a fun yet educational way.
Weather Underground
Weather Underground is a GREAT weather resource. Weather Underground provides extensive information on current weather conditions and forecasts for any city, state, zip code or country AND also provides historical weather information for many cities back to 1994.
Learning Planet
Learning Planet provides interactive Shockwave games to enhance learning for kids preschool to sixth grade. Kids will enjoy these counting, ordering, alphabet, and math games. Grade Level: Early Childhood, Elementary Content Area: Mathematics (Arithmetic)
CalPhotos
This UC Berkeley Digital Library Photo Collection includes over 35,000 images of California plants and habitats, animals, and Department of Water natural resources. Browse or search by common or scientific names, by location or subject (natural resources), or even by predominant plant color. Grade Level: Elementary, Middle School, High School, College, Adult/Professional Content Area: Science (Life Science)
Scott's Botanical Links
Professor Scott Russell of the University of Oklahoma Department of Botany and Microbiology maintains this meta-site, which is really two sites in one. It contains a "link of the day" archive (five days a week), consisting of rated and annotated sites, available via the web page and a mailing list. These links are then incorporated into a subject hierarchy (Site Index) in over forty topics including cell biology, horticulture, dendrology, and phytopathology, among others. Particularly authoritative sites are marked with an exclamation point. The site is searchable. Aimed at an "advanced high school (AP-biology) and college level" audience, it has a somewhat whimsical tone, but the time and care that went into selecting, annotating, and rating hundreds of sites is evident in the quality of the final product. To subscribe send email to: listserv@ou.edu In the body of the message type: subscribe botlinx firstname lastname
Waterford Press
This site offers free print-based instructional materials to support elementary natural science curriculum. Grade Level: Elementary, Middle School Content Area: Science
The Evergreen Project Adventures
This attractive site features What's It Like Where You Live? (resources on biomes and aquatic ecosystems for students in grades 4 and up), Partners For Growing (plant investigations for primary students), and WebWorkShops (online credit courses for teachers). Produced in collaboration with the Missouri Botanical Garden. Grade Level: Elementary, Adult/Professional Content Area: Science
Thunk.com
presents kids with a fun and educational web based activity where they make their own secret messages. Kids also learn about secret codes cryptography and how secret codes are used in real life. Grade Level: Elementary Content Area: Science (Computer Science)
How Stuff Works
A great place to come to learn about how things work in the world around you. Have you ever wondered how the engine in your car works, or what gears do, or what makes the inside of your refrigerator cold? Then How Stuff Works is the place for you! A new article gets added every week, so visit often and sign up for the HSW Newsletter to get the latest news.
Mrs. Glosser's Math Goodies
A free educational web site featuring interactive math lessons. Our innovative lessons use a problem-solving approach and actively engage students in the learning process. Educators like our lessons because they aspire to the NCTM Standards for Teaching Mathematics. Kids like them because they are fun and easy to use.
Garbage: How can my community reduce waste?
"Garbage" is inspired by programs from Race to Save the Planet, a video series in the Annenberg/CPB Multimedia Collection. At this project site, students can learn about the waste disposal habits of the average American and solutions to solve problems related to garbage in the environment. Included are an interactive Hazardous Waste quiz, problem-solving exercises, related resources, and much more. Grade Level: Elementary, Middle School Content Area: Science (Environmental Studies)
Particle Data Group
Introduces the Standard Model theory of fundamental particles and forces and includes materials to support classroom activities
Carolina Coastal Science
Iquiry based science activity uses the Web to explore science in coastal Carolina. A guide for educators provides a variety of teaching suggestions.
Geologylink
For anyone who has ever been interested in "the world's daily geological rumblings," Geology Link is a "must see" site. You'll find breaking news on geologic events all over the world, the latest news and discoveries, hot topics, virtual field trips, interactive forums, an image gallery and more. From Worth Publishers, this site has something for everyone, from preschoolers to professional geologists.
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