Report Card Comments

As I was writing my reports today I came across this pretty neat site. http://www.lessonplansforfree.com/default.aspx provides examples of report card comments for Art, Language Arts, Science and Social Studies for the elementary grades.  All you have to do is select the subject, the grade level and the grade (A-D) and the site gives you examples of things to write.  You can even type in the students name in a box above and your students name will appear in the comment so that you can just copy and paste!  It was just the help I needed to get my comments sound a little bit better and not so repetitive. 

E-Learning for Kids

What a find!  Here is a site with dozens of games and lessons for students from kindergarten to grade six.  Subjects include the typical ones usually found on teacher websites like math, language arts and science but there are also games and lessons for life skills, environmental skills, computer skills and health.  Lots of animations grab the students' attention easily and are really fun.  It's a great resource especially for classrooms equipped with interactive whiteboards like SMART boards.  There are also lessons for english language learners.  Another neat thing about this site is that it is not only available in English but also in Dutch, Spanish, French and Portuguese. 

Website: http://www.e-learningforkids.org/index.html

Mr. Nussbaum's Interactive and Educational Games

This site is simply amazing!  Mr. Nussbaum is a young teacher who created this site to help students learn while having fun.  There are flash games for the main subject areas: math, language arts, science and social studies.  In each subject there are a wide variety of topics within them.  They are really fun games that grab students' attention and help reinforce the skills without them even realizing it.  Another thing I like about the site is that it's not seperated by grade level which makes it a lot more accessible for special needs students.  I taught math in a special needs high school and my students were able to play the games without having to feel bad that they were only playing elementary games.  There is so much on this site that unfortunatley I don't have room to describe it all.  It is definitely worth a look.

http://www.mrnussbaum.com/index.html

Youtube and Zamzar

There is a bigger and bigger push to bring technology into our classrooms.  Students are more engaged if we teach using different media.  I have found a ton of good resources on youtube.  There is so much that I can't even begin to describe it all.  These clips can be used to reinforce a topic (watching a caterpillar spin a cocoon for example) or watch animated version of favourite stories for younger students.  This must be done in advance, however, as there are also a lot of things that are not appropriate for the classroom! Another frustrating thing about youtube is that it is blocked on the computers in my school board so I have to download all videos from home.  In order to download them from home I go to Zamzar.com.  All you have to do is copy and paste the URL and this site emails you the download link.  You have one day to download it.  It's really easy.

http://www.youtube.com/

http://www.zamzar.com/url/

Centre for Energy

I came across this site from the Canadian Centre for Energy Information. It offers some free resources for the older grades (mostly high school) to teach about fuel (from where it comes from to the determination of fuel prices). All resources are offered in English and French.

http://www.centreforenergy.com/Education/K-12/TeachingResources/ByProduct.asp

CurrClick

CurrClick is actually a website for homeschoolers but I use it frequently to help me in my class. There are hundreds of units of study available for download. Another really cool thing about this website is the free units section. There are numerous units that are actually free! You can also sign up for the newsletter which offers a new freebie of the week. Other units also regularly go on sale and available for reasonable prices.

Website: http://www.currclick.com/

The Virtual Body

Here is a neat site to learn about the different systems of the body. It's especially cool if you have a smart board in your class because there are great games such as building a skeleton or putting the digestive tract back in order. Students can do it individually on their own computer or as a class on the smart board. Great visuals!

Website: http://www.medtropolis.com/VBody.asp

Tomatosphere

Here is a really cool activity for students to be involved in a real-life space experiment. Teachers can register their class on the website and they will receive two envelopes of tomato seeds. One of the packs of seeds have been exposed to a real space environment and the other packet is a control group of regular seeds. The tomatoes are labelled with just letters so that we don't know which seeds are which until we submit our results to the Canadian Space Agency. This is such an amazing way to teach about space, food, plants, nutrition... the list goes on! The website has many resources for the teacher and students as well as some video clips of the astronauts in space.

Website: http://www.tomatosphere.org/