Teachers First - Thinking Teachers Teaching Thinkers

The Young Scientist Lab features materials for parents, students, and teachers to explore a world of scientific innovation and opportunities. Materials for teachers include lesson plans, interactives, and challenge support materials. For students, the site provides activities and features on scientists at work. The Family Activities section consists of several engaging experiments to perform at home for students in grades K-8.

tag(s): careers (139), data (147), forces (37), light (52), magnetism (36), recycling (46), rockets (11), sound (74)

Imagine Forest offers free Writing Resources, tools, and ideas to create stories. Begin right away finding inspiration by exploring the blog. Example ideas from the blog are Creating Comic Strips and 70 Fantasy Writing Prompts. Explore the Story Crafts for PDF downloads of craft patterns for stories like Red Riding Hood, Pirate Treasure Island, and others. Though Imagine Forest is not accepting new accounts, you can still access the free resources found on the site and the ideas in their blog.

tag(s): creative writing (121), digital storytelling (141), writing (315), writing prompts (58)

Explore your world through videos and interactives offered by The Lawrence Hall of Science. Videos feature a diverse array of topics ranging from features of a new penny to watching a spider build a web. Take part in activities including building a bridge from paper, hunting for bugs, and testing materials to clean up an oil spill. If your district blocks YouTube, then they may not be viewable.

tag(s): animals (281), bridges (11), measurement (126), money (119), oceans (147), oil spill (14), olympics (40), plants (145), STEM (263)

Scholastic presents eleven interactives introducing and reinforcing topics including food webs and symbiosis. Scroll through the page to select an activity. Each lesson includes a video, vocabulary terms, and a short quiz.

tag(s): biomes (113), ecosystems (73), food chains (17), population (47), water (102), water cycle (22)

kidcyber contains a collection of text resources targeted explicitly to K-6 students for research and inquiry into science content. View collections of material under eight different content headings. In addition to age-appropriate text, this site also includes images and some ebooks. The diverse range of topics includes sports, technology and inventions, space, and more. The site was created in Australia, so some of the pronunciations and spellings may differ from those in American English.

tag(s): aircraft (16), animals (281), australia (26), dictionaries (48), earth (185), inventors and inventions (71), nutrition (134), planets (112), space (213), sports (77), stars (66)

Read, review, and discover the best books for all ages at Toppsta. Use the keyword search to find books or search for ages up to 18 years old and young adult. Each book title includes a summary along with reviews submitted by site members. Reviews indicate the age of the reviewer and number of reviews. Login to Toppsta to save books to your wishlist or create your own book reviews. This site was created in the UK, so some of the pronunciations and spellings may differ from those in American English.

tag(s): book lists (161), independent reading (85), preK (255), reading lists (80)

Not just for summer! Enjoy learning at home all year-round with PBS Kids Summer of Possibilities. Download the free Summer Activity Book for new daily adventures such as using bath time to explore math or learn how to make a bird feeder. Scroll through the site to find reading charts, map skills, activity booklets, themed collections such as Observing Nature, Sharing Your Creativity Through the Arts, and much more. Did you find this site too late for summer? No worries, there are plenty of activities to do throughout the entire year. Be sure to check the bottom of the page for the "What's On Today" PBS shows.

tag(s): calendars (40), literacy (110), preK (255), reading lists (80), summer (28)

StoryBots is a collection of classroom learning tools for pre-K and kindergarten children, their parents, and teachers. There are plenty of free videos and activity sheets to use without registration. Register to create an online classroom and assign learning materials to individuals, small groups, or your whole class. Assign videos or games aligned to Common Core Standards. Upload your own lessons or assign StoryBots' lessons teaching math and reading skills. Share your class code with parents for at-home use.

tag(s): commoncore (75), preK (255)

Zearn Math is a complete math program that provides Common Core aligned math lessons, personalized to individual learners, and based on Eureka Math / Engage New York. Lessons focus on three critical components: deep understanding, fluency, and problem-solving. Self-paced lessons allow for mastery of concepts before unlocking lessons providing the next level. Math Chat lessons provide video instruction similar to a small group lesson. Lesson Labs include drag and drop activities followed by quiz questions. Zearn currently offers K-5 lessons. Test the student lessons and teacher resources for a whole module with NO sign up required. Create a class account and add students using an Excel sheet or manually input student names to receive custom reports on student progress.

tag(s): addition (128), classroom management (128), data (147), decimals (84), differentiation (84), division (98), fractions (159), geometric shapes (136), measurement (126), multiplication (122), numbers (119), operations (72), subtraction (109)

Freckle Education is a Common Core-aligned program with resources for math, ELA, science, and social studies for K-8 that adapts to individual student skills. Freckle has over 50,000 math questions matched to all math standards and more than 500 ELA non-fiction articles that often cover social studies and science standards as well as all ELA standards. There are five reading levels offered for each article. Sign up to create a class account and add student information. Students login in through an iPad app or with the online web version and the class code. Students complete a diagnostic pre-test and then begin working at their individual level. Awards of coins for completion of levels promote student engagement and enjoyment of the program. Freckle also promotes student collaboration through their inquiry-based, cross-curricular lessons. Other features include a scratch pad for working through problems, virtual manipulatives, and individualized printables for practice. Receive detailed analytics and student reports on your dashboard. You may encounter a warning about how Freckle may not work on your browser and to use the Chrome app. For this reviewer Mozilla FireFox and Microsoft Edge seemed to work fine for a student pre-test and the teacher dashboard. This program is great for supplementing your instruction, differentiating, blended learning classes, and remote learning. Freckle was titled Front Row.
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tag(s): collaboration (87), differentiation (84), independent reading (85), inquiry (24), reading comprehension (143), Research (83), Teacher Utilities (146), writing (315)

Need kid-friendly online news? This safe site, written for kids, by kids, offers news from a younger point-of-view. You can create a class page where you can load a variety of articles, add a book list, a calendar, favorite sites list, add lesson plan instructions, monitor student comments, and more. DOGOnews is kid-friendly, colorful, and flexible. After all, DOGO means young or small in Swahili. You can select articles from a number of categories (Social Studies, Science, World, Current Events, etc.). There is an integrated dictionary for challenging words and maps for geographical context. Some of the articles include short video clips. Students may leave brief comments about each article (no login required). Also, typing the word "video" in the search box will bring up the Video of the Week for the past several weeks. The videos reside on YouTube. If your district blocks YouTube, the videos may not be viewable. In addition, find a Book and Movie section with a brief summary for the book or movie, and comments. You don't have to join to read the articles, but you do need to join to create a class page. There are many benefits to creating a class page, and it's all free! Don't want to create a class page? You can also embed articles on your current web page.

tag(s): journalism (72), news (229), reading comprehension (143), sports (77)