TeachersFirst: Resources for K-12 Teachers

Mental Maths Grades 2 - 7

At this "mental math" site, the main topics include doubling, using inverses, rounding numbers, multiplying and dividing by 10 and 100, and breaking down numbers. The site includes an "interactive" mental math machine (with audio)! Explicit directions for the activity are provided, and a full screen option is available. You are able to play again and again - provided with new questions and answers. This site also has a Revision Bite which provided a detailed review (or introduction) of all of the mental math skills needed at this site. The final feature of this site in an online quiz. The entire interactive is embeddable by copying/pasting the code into your class web page or wiki. Flash is required; you can get it from the TeachersFirst Toolbox page.

IN THE CLASSROOM: Use this site as a lesson plan for your class. Use the Revision Bite to introduce any new mental math concepts to your class. Share the "Bites" with your student on an interactive whiteboard or projector. Have students work with a partner to explore and complete the interactives available at this site. (Don't forget headsets!) And then have students work independently on the review quiz. Share this link on your class website or simply embed it there as you assign this activity. You can switch to another embeddable BItesize option for the next unit!

Mashable: 50+ Places to Buy Groceries Online Grades 4 - 12

Looking for a way to teach real shopping lessons without actually going to a store? This blog post includes links to online grocery shopping from all over the U.S. Since the stores are in business to make money they will, of course, include advertisements on their sites. Teachers will want to discuss advertising links and why students should avoid them to stay on task.

IN THE CLASSROOM: Use these virtual stores to teach real-world lessons in math, FCS, ESL, ELL, and economics lessons. Special Ed teachers may also want to use these sites to help students with life skills. Have students compare pricing in online venues vs. bricks-and-mortar stores. Use the pricing to teach unit pricing, comparison shopping, percent, and more.

Discover Primary Science Grades 0 - 7

Come to this site to view animation videos, practice online science activities, and learn about science at this interesting site. The videos bring many important science topics alive, including the physics of motion, structures, and more. Examples of movies include "Cleaning Dirty Water," "Exploring Lungs," or "Bouncy Custard Balls." Topics vary from pollution to the human body to levers to making homemade bouncy balls! Print Activity sheets that correspond to the movies as Adobe pdf documents. This site requires Flash and Adobe Acrobat. Get both from the TeachersFirst Toolbox page..

IN THE CLASSROOM: View the movies to gain background information and learn basics. Share the interactives and video clips on your projector or interactive whiteboard. Use related lab activities or research to to reinforce the topics with hands-on experiences.

Keyboarding Sites Grades 2 - 9

This site offers a compilation list of MANY keyboarding sites. Although TeachersFirst doesn't usually highlight a "list of links," our editorial staff found this one to be spectacular! At the time of this review, the list included over sixty sites that offer FREE keyboarding activities. There is quite a variety; you may want to spend a few minutes exploring your MANY options. Some are more elementary: spelling basic words or easy enough for young students. Others are complex and geared towards middle school and beyond. Some of the activities are actual lesson plans, while others are educational interactives. Nearly all of the sites require Flash. You can get it from the TeachersFirst Toolbox page.

IN THE CLASSROOM: Use this site for your students to practice keyboarding. Set up a learning station at a computer cluster for students to "try their hands" at the keyboard activities. If individual laptops are available, demonstrate the site on an interactive whiteboard or projector, and then have students try the activity or lesson themselves on laptops. Save this site in your favorites. Be sure to list this site on your class website for students to practice keyboarding both in and out of the classroom. Allow them to choose their best tool for learning and use it consistently. Maybe track improvement to compare the various tools?

NS Teens: Making Safer Online Choices Grades 5 - 12

If you teach teens, then you need to remind them continually of internet safety and protocol. This cool, upbeat site is fully loaded with teen-friendly music, videos, comic strips, and more, all communicating the need for internet responsibility. If you want general internet safety information, visit the sister site to NSTeens, NetSmartz Workshop: (reviewed here). ESL and ELL teachers will love the Spanish version of this site (including Spanish downloads). This site requires Flash.

IN THE CLASSROOM: Teachers, you will find plenty of resources for teaching net safety to teens when you click on teaching materials at the bottom left of the homepage (this takes you to the sister site NetSmartz Workshop). Videos, fact sheets, lesson plans and activities await you there. Use your interactive whiteboard or projector to share the video clips or comics. Have students create their own internet safety videos and share them using a tool such as YouTube or TeacherTube (explained here). List this site on your class website for students to access both in and out of the classroom. You will also want to share it with parents.

Web elements Grades 8 - 12

This is yet another terrific online periodic table. Click on an element to learn about basic information, properties, and history. View different information about the element by clicking on topics above the periodic table. For example, topics include "Chemistry," "Biology," "Bond enthalpies," "Crystal structures," and "Isotopes." There are some advertisements on the site, and students should be cautioned not to click on these. Many of the activities at this site require Flash. You can get it from the TeachersFirst Toolbox page.

IN THE CLASSROOM: Have groups of students view different topics through the periodic table to view the trends and offer explanations why. Teams of students can then present to the class and provide practical examples for understanding. Include this link along with other online periodic tables and ask students to decide which is the best tool to help them understand major chemical concepts.

ArtScope Grades 2 - 12

Explore a collection of 3500 pieces of artwork from the San Francisco Museum of Fine Art by clicking on one of the thumbnail pictures displayed on the screen or by entering a search term. Dragging the lens over the thumbnails highlights the artist, year, and information about the piece. You can zoom in further and further to see the images up close. This site requires Flash. You can get it from the TeachersFirst Toolbox page.

IN THE CLASSROOM: Use this collection to choose pieces of artwork for students to critique or compare. Students can reflect on their choice or conduct an oral critique on your interactive whiteboard or projector, describing techniques, styles, and more. Start class with a one minute artstorm by having a student randomly click on a thumbnail on the interactive whiteboard and having the class brainstorm characteristics or thoughts about the piece as you zoom in closer and closer. Ask them to caption it, compare it, or outline the movement of its design in the air during your one minute display. You could even ask them to debate whether or not they consider it to be "art."

Simplybox Grades 0 - 12

TeachersFirst Edge Entry: For moderately adventurous technology users. Simplybox is an online space for collecting pieces of content from throughout the web: parts of web pages, images, recipes, passages of text, entire web pages, etc. Each box can hold and arrange a mixture of contents and can include comments from those creating the box and those who see it. Everything moves by simply selecting and drag/drop. You can also create boxes that are shared among many Simplybox member/users, with each being able to add content and comments. You can publicly share boxes and allow comments by sharing the URL. See a sample, publicly shared box created by TeachersFirst Edge editors here. This site requires Flash. You can get it from the TeachersFirst Toolbox page.

IN THE CLASSROOM: Skills needed: Requires Internet Explorer 7 or Vista. Join the site (free). This requires email and must be validated by clicking on a link in the email. Once registered, be sure to watch the short video that explains Simplybox and its terminology and functionality. You can watch this while you wait for the email! You may need to check your junk mail folder to find the validation email. Do this in advance before using the tool in class! Our editors waited at least 30 minutes for the email to arrive. The email will provide a link to download and install the Simplybox toolbar. If your school machine is locked down, you may want to install it at home to create sample boxes to demonstrate to your tech folks why they should permit and/or install the toolbar. After you install, you will need to open Internet Explorer afresh for the toolbar to appear. Log in and add things to the stuff box they provide for you at the start. You may want to use separate tabs or windows for selecting items and arranging your simplybox so you can collect things quickly. Tips: Open a web page, then use box and save on the toolbar to turn on the selection tool and grab portions of a web page. Our editors found that pages with a frameset did not box very well. Box items inside the frame without the frame itself. Find the tools to arrange (view) the pieces, add comments (click on an item to edit it separately), delete an item, rename the box (edit menu), etc. The zoom control at the RIGHT is very important to obtain more space in the box. Items seem to display with the newest on top when overlapped, and you cannot rearrange the order. Model and require ethical use of web content by showing students how you document the sources of the items within a box. Note that the link they show for the source is the home page of that site. To be more accurate, copy/paste the actual URL for the specific page into a comment, along with bibliography information. You can use comments to provide full documentation as you collect items or retrieve the data later by using the link from that item back to its original source. Since items retrieved in the past may link to a newer version of the web page, so it is wisest to collect source information as you go. The tools do record the date when you boxed the item. Once you have created a box you like, Share it with others. If the others are members of Simplybox, they can edit and add to the box, too. If not, they can add comments on the items in the box you share by providing the URL. Safety/security concerns: If you plan to have students use individual Simplybox accounts, check your schools policy on accessing and sharing student email. Another option is to use your teacher Gmail account and set up subaccounts for up to 20 students to register (by code name or number). Here is a blog post that tells how to set up GMail subaccounts to use for any online membership service. Possible Uses: Share teacher-created collections of web resources using this visual tool. Even non-readers can click on an image to access the page and use it. Share a collection of sources on the same research topic for students to compare for bias, leaving their comments on which they would trust the most. Assign students (must be members) to create their own collection of information on a research topic, annotating each with comments. Imagine having each group present their findings on genetic engineering, including links, images, and commentary, making the box available during oral presentations on the interactive whiteboard and also sharing the link on the class wiki for others to comment. Allow individual students to collect a box of resources they would like to use for research on animals or cultures, commenting back to them about their choices. Learning support, ESL and ELL, or reading teachers can collect passages from various web pages for comprehension practice, placing questions in comments and asking students to respond in comments. If your students are members, assign each group a series of images that they must explain and re-order as they learn about the stages of insect development using the source pages of the images. Have student groups illustrate the sequence of urban development using a simply box and comments. Provide a digital trunk show of an era and ask students to research and write about what they learn, adding their own comments and reactions. Then ask them to create their own trunk show." Art teachers can collect images to demonstrate design concepts, then assign students to make their own annotated collections of images with analogous color schemes or good examples of texture, etc. Have students turn in current events boxes showing and explaining different angles on a single event from different cultural perspectives. Have students collect snippits of language from many web pages illustrating figures of speech such as metaphors. Let them add images to show the metaphor. Have students create visual poems using text from a poetry page and the images it generates in their mind, explaining their choices in comments.