TeachersFirst - Featured Sites: Week of Jan 15, 2012

Here are this week's features. Clicking the tags in the description area of each listing will present a list of other resources with this topic. | Click here to return to the Featured Sites Archive

 

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Alan Cooper's Homonym List - Alan Cooper

Grades
1 to 12
1 Favorites 0  Comments
Here you will find the most extensive list of homonyms ever seen! Download this PDF list of over 460 homonyms (words that sound alike but have a different spelling and ...more
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Here you will find the most extensive list of homonyms ever seen! Download this PDF list of over 460 homonyms (words that sound alike but have a different spelling and meaning) organized for us by Alan Cooper. If you've exhausted your list of homonyms to use with your students, check this site out. If you're still confused by which witch is which, use this site to cite the correct word!

tag(s): editing (91), homonyms (8), spelling (98), word choice (14), word study (60)

In the Classroom

Challenge your students to use both homonyms in a meaningful sentence. Each word's meaning should be obvious in the context of the sentence. Then give the students a fill in the blank test on the words where they have to choose the correct spelling of the word. Challenge students to put some of the more difficult words/homonyms on a poster using Automotivator, reviewed here. For a creative challenge, have students create simple animations distinguishing the homonyms using one of the animation tools from the TeachersFirst Edge. Award Homonym Oscars for the best animations.
 This resource requires PDF reader software like Adobe Acrobat.

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Thinking Mathematics! - James Stanton

Grades
8 to 12
1 Favorites 0  Comments
  
The goal of this site is to demonstrate the beauty of mathematics. The creator also wants to show the wonder and intellectual playfulness of math. Included on the site are ...more
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The goal of this site is to demonstrate the beauty of mathematics. The creator also wants to show the wonder and intellectual playfulness of math. Included on the site are many videos and essays exploring higher level mathematics. Titles include "How to Think Like a School Math Genius", "A Cute Finger Trick for Trigonometry", and "What is Zero to the Zeroth Power?". Most video titles are approximately 10 minutes in length. Also available on the site are two free PDF downloads: Guide to Everything Quadratic and Guide to Fractions. Be aware: parts of this site require some navigation (a few clicks) to get to your destination. But the "clicks" are well worth the time. At the time of this review, the link to "Curriculum Tidbits" was not active, but the Think Curriculum tab works. Although the author's books are available for sale on the site, there is plenty of free material available making the site worth exploring.
This site includes advertising.

tag(s): critical thinking (117), fractions (157), gifted (65), prime numbers (26), probability (97), puzzles (142), video (261)

In the Classroom

Use your interactive whiteboard (or projector) to view videos available on the site. This site is perfect for advanced or gifted students to use for learning new concepts or exploring different approaches to mathematics not typically covered in classroom materials. After sharing this site on your interactive whiteboard, allow students to explore the site on their own. Challenge your students to create their own videos demonstrating a tough math concept. Share the videos using a site such as TeacherTube reviewed here.
 This resource requires PDF reader software like Adobe Acrobat.

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Lyrics Gaps - lyricsgaps.com

Grades
5 to 12
5 Favorites 0  Comments
 
Learn a new language through music and lyrics! Choose English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Portugese, Japanese, Russian, Greek, Dutch, Danish, or Romanian. Register for FREE and...more
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Learn a new language through music and lyrics! Choose English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Portugese, Japanese, Russian, Greek, Dutch, Danish, or Romanian. Register for FREE and learn the new language. Each language has different activities: karaoke, interactive cloze activities, videos, and more. You can choose among three different difficulty levels. Some activities even have the option to "double click" to read a definition of a word. You also have the ability to submit your own songs and language activities to the site. Note that this site is fairly new and only ha a few hundred songs at the time of this review. Help contribute to the offerings!
This site includes advertising.

tag(s): cross cultural understanding (165), cultures (140), french (75), german (48), greek (32), italian (29), japanese (47), portuguese (22), russian (24), songs (44), spanish (106)

In the Classroom

This is a wonderful find for ENL/ESL and world language teachers. Teachers may prefer to do a class registration and use the offerings of the site with the entire class. Challenge your students to create (and submit) their own songs/activities in a new language. If school policy does not allow students to share songs on a site, have students create their own in-class presentations of songs and similar exercises using one selection from this site as a model.

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Mathispower4u - Video Tutorials - James Sousa

Grades
4 to 12
7 Favorites 0  Comments
  
Math Video Tutorials offers 5,000 free math videos organized by course and topic. And the offerings are constantly growing. Videos are hosted on YouTube and SchoolTube and are all 10...more
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Math Video Tutorials offers 5,000 free math videos organized by course and topic. And the offerings are constantly growing. Videos are hosted on YouTube and SchoolTube and are all 10 minutes or less in length. Content includes arithmetic, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, business calculus, and calculus. Each main topic includes links to the videos organized by more specific topics - for example, algebra videos are sorted by an introduction to algebra, rational expressions, equations and functions, equations and percentages, exponential and logarithmic functions, graphing, linear equations, and more. If your district blocks YouTube, the videos may not be viewable.

tag(s): area (52), business (51), charts and graphs (170), equations (119), factoring (25), functions (51), integers (22), measurement (124), operations (72), order of operations (28), percent (58), place value (34), prime numbers (26), ratios (47), test prep (68), tutorials (54), volume (34)

In the Classroom

Share videos on your interactive whiteboard as in introduction to a new concept or as review. Embed the links to videos of weekly concepts on your class website or blog. Create a link on classroom computers to current content for students to use as a review resource. Ask students to rate the most helpful videos they find and share their recommendations on a class wiki. Share this site with parents to use as a resource when helping students at home. Challenge students to create their own how-to video of math concepts. Share the videos using a tool such as SchoolTube, reviewed here.

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Games for Mathematics Education - Freudenthal Institute

Grades
K to 7
3 Favorites 0  Comments
This site offers several interesting interactives for practicing math concepts at the elementary level. Many games go beyond the standard rote-type practice and involve critical thinking...more
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This site offers several interesting interactives for practicing math concepts at the elementary level. Many games go beyond the standard rote-type practice and involve critical thinking skills. For example, Beads on a String asks you to create a bead necklace using a pattern, but then asks that bead number 102 be blue adding difficulty to the challenge. Other activities involve estimation, money, logic, and symmetry. Activities can be sorted by age (5-12). Parts of this site appear in Dutch and you may have to simply hit the "translate" button to see the instruction in English.

tag(s): critical thinking (117), estimation (34), logic (163), money (114), puzzles (142), symmetry (27), time (92)

In the Classroom

Create a link to this site on classroom computers for students to explore. Share a link to the site on your classroom website or blog for students to access at home. Display the site on your interactive whiteboard (or projector) to use as a math center. Be sure to explain how to translate the site into English (when necessary).

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