Teachers First - Thinking Teachers Teaching Thinkers

Engage young children in this colorful site, packed with songs, interactive audio books, art and music interactives, and emergent reading activities. Reaching a wide range of grades, this site offers over 50 different engaging activities. Visit the stories made by children. The free part of this site includes a great variety of topics: Boston Tea Party, alphabet, making mistakes, metamorphosis, Mars, a variety of popular children's songs, nouns, upper case and lower case, Beatrix Potter, jokes, Bach & Van Gogh, Mona and Beethoven, and much more! Some of the activities are also available in Spanish. Check out Teachers at the bottom of the page for Lesson Plans.
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tag(s): alphabet (53), independent reading (81), preK (270), sight words (23), songs (46), video (266)

Practice and learn basic words and vocabulary in Spanish, French, Italian, Arabic, Portuguese, German, Czech, and Russian. Imendi is a flashcard activity featuring various languages in a drag and drop format. Choose your language to begin. You can choose between a random lesson or select a lesson topic from the dropdown menu on the upper left corner of the page. The upper left is also where you can choose to look at different vocaulary lists or use the "all words" option. Match new language terms to the English word then quickly view results and start over with a new set of cards. These are quick and easy reviews. Use the non-English speaking option to translate from any included language back to English.
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tag(s): arabic (13), french (75), german (49), italian (31), multilingual (77), portuguese (22), russian (26), spanish (109)

Word Counter is a powerful, simple tool for anyone who writes. Paste in the text of your own writing (a paper, a blog post, a letter, etc.) and see how many times you repeat a word. Choose to include "small words" (the, it, etc.) in the count or not. Search your writing by roots and choose how many words you want the site to list. Repetition of words is boring for your reader and often shows "lazy" word choice. Try using this program and Big Huge Thesaurus, reviewed here, to spice up your writing. Make revision for word choice one of the steps in your writing process.
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tag(s): process writing (37), word choice (14), writing (325)

Vidtionary is a video dictionary defining words through images (and videos). The short videos include the word said aloud and shown in print, with sound effects or engaging music in the background. Browse entries using the search bar or view featured collections. Browse alphabetically or explore collections. Because of the wide range of topics and difficulty levels, these vocabulary words could be used with any age. Video lengths run less than one minute per definition, many as short as 10-15 seconds. Originally designed to teach English to speakers of Korean and Japanese, the visual nature of the site appeals to all language learners.

tag(s): dictionaries (47), multilingual (77), vocabulary (238), vocabulary development (94)

Use polltogo to create polls for student response during a meeting or class time. Connect with your audience in many ways. Create a question and select the type of answers, how long the poll will last, password or not, and more options. Receive notifications about your poll via your email. Each poll is free for twenty people to vote. Tweet about polltogo and receive another thirty credits so thirty more people can vote. Choose to receive results (via email) after every vote or at the end of the voting period. Interim and final results can also be viewed online. Another great feature is embedding the results link into a PowerPoint or Keynote slide to project results during a presentation. polltogo is a device-agnostic voting tool and will auto-adapt to display on any mobile or desktop device.

tag(s): assessment (147), Formative Assessment (74), polls and surveys (49)

Have fun creating sentences or short messages (like tweets) using drag and drop words at X (formerly Twitter) Magnets! X (formerly Twitter) Magnets calls them poems, though the length limit is a real challenge for poets! Choose from the words offered. Drag and drop the magnets into the message area at the bottom -- up to 120 characters. The tool keeps a character count for you. Need different words? Click the swap words link for new choices. Click submit to view your message/poem and decide whether to submit to X (formerly Twitter) Magnet's feed or not. You can also link to send from your own X (formerly Twitter) account. Note that clicking to see the Twitter Magnets feed will show you "messages" and poems created by the general public. Steer clear or preview to be sure these are appropriate in your setting.

tag(s): creative fluency (5), microblogging (14), poetry (193), Teacher Utilities (198), twitter (13), writing prompts (61)

Find high interest, leveled news articles (and lessons) for English language learners. Although this site was designed for ENL/ESL it could be very useful in any elementary classroom looking for informational texts that can be differentiated for various reading levels (great for meeting Common Core standards). This tool could be used with any readers to increase comprehension, fluency, and vocabulary skills. There are three difficulty levels. Complete a reading test by selecting the Test tab on the far right of the top menu bar and find out what level will be best for you. Many of the lessons include audio and practice exercises. In addition, interesting pictures pique the students' interest. The same story is presented in all of the various levels. The vocabulary at lower levels repeats at the higher levels with more vocabulary added as the level increases. Definitions for the vocabulary words, below the reading, assists with English meanings. The audio is hosted on YouTube. At the time of this review, most of the news story content was fine for all ages. However, please preview the story before you share it with your class to be certain it is appropriate.
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tag(s): differentiation (84), guided reading (33), multilingual (77), news (228), reading comprehension (149)

This Youtube channel is designed for English Language Learners. Find a variety of subjects: beginning and advanced English, pronunciation, various grammar points, vocabulary, writing, punctuation, slang, language notes, and more. You can proceed through a series chronologically and build from one lesson into the next. You can also view individual lessons. This collection, started in 2007, continues to grow steadily and offer a great variety. The explanations on the videos are clear and easy to understand. Teachers and parents can subscribe to receive more offerings and assistance as well as updates. If your district blocks YouTube, then they may not be viewable.

tag(s): grammar (137), video (266), vocabulary development (94), writing (325)

Discover a comprehensive YouTube channel of ENL/ESL videos at Learning English With Mister Duncan. This channel includes over 75 videos at the beginner through intermediate levels. Subjects include survival English, grammar, travel, the history of linguistics, and more. Videos vary in length from just a few minutes to over 30 minutes. Mr. Duncan is a British series, so American English speakers may notice some slight differences in pronunciations. Mr. Duncan claims to offer a new video daily! If your district blocks YouTube, these videos may not be viewable.

tag(s): cultures (180), grammar (137), multilingual (77), punctuation (25), slang (15), video (266)

Just as the name says, Online Voice Recorder allows you to record your voice from your computer and save the file. With no membership required, this is a free and simple recording treasure! Simply push the record button and follow screen prompts to ALLOW the application access to your computer's microphone. Talk as long as desired. Then listen to the recorded playback. Trim and edit the length using easy sliders as desired. Save your finished version in MP3 format using the link.
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tag(s): blended learning (37), communication (129), fluency (26), preK (270), speech (69), spelling (98)

Get one scoop of ice cream for each noun and verb correctly identified. There is an ugly monster standing nearby waiting to scoop up the missed answers, in the form of ice cream scoops. If you get ten scoops, you get to play a bonus round. This round consists of moving the ice cream cone under the falling scoops to get as many as possible. You can select three different types of games: all nouns, all verbs, or a mixture of nouns and verbs.
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tag(s): grammar (137), parts of speech (39), verbs (26)

Help your ESL/ELL students with vocabulary using this interactive site! The site offers 34 categories of vocabulary words. Clicking on any category leads to many words in each category, visuals for the words, sounds for the words, matching games, and crosswords. This site was created in the United Kingdom. American English speakers may notice some different pronunciations and even vocabulary words.

tag(s): vocabulary (238), vocabulary development (94), word study (59)

Duolingo is a free, online language learning class. Sign up with email. Make a selection from Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, Japanese, Arabic, and many others. Earn points on different levels as you work towards mastery. Practice provides both seeing and hearing the words. Your responses require choosing the English translation and also spelling the words in the "new" language. Put your knowledge to work in the immersion section and translate a document or even upload a document of your own. Check the vocabulary you have learned and your progress toward mastery. Track your weekly progress. The discussion section answers individual questions. Duolingo is free for schools. There are free iOS and Android apps for Duolingo.

tag(s): arabic (13), chinese (45), DAT device agnostic tool (147), french (75), game based learning (205), german (49), hebrew (16), italian (31), japanese (47), multilingual (77), OER (43), Online Learning (36), portuguese (22), russian (26), spanish (109)

The Mathematics Enhancement Programme is a comprehensive resource full of free math curriculum resources for all grade levels. Materials include lesson plans, practice materials, printable number lines and cards, and student activity sheets. Click any key stage level to download an entire year's worth of course materials. In addition to printed materials, interactive tutorials (offered in a fairly basic-looking computer style) offer lessons and remediation for many math topics. The site was created in the UK, so some of the pronunciations and spellings may differ from those in American English (as well as the type of currency used for money problems). The site dates back a ways, so the actual "look" is a bit old fashioned.

tag(s): counting (60), data (151), fractions (160), functions (52), geometric shapes (134), money (113), number lines (33), number sense (69), numbers (120), percent (59), prime numbers (26), probability (99), time (91)

Make quizzes from ready-made quiz show templates or create your own using this free tool. NO membership is required, but you will need to remember the password you add to the quizzes you create so you can return to and edit it. Templates can be edited to suit your purpose. Some of the general topics include most subject areas (history, math, science, social studies, languages, and technology). There is also an area related to sports and games. It is helpful to know some html code to make your quiz look the way you wish it to (boldface, etc.), but there are reminders at the side to help with this option. Note that the quizzes do NOT score your results and are intended to be played orally (Jeopardy style).
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tag(s): quiz (67), quizzes (90)

Create your own cloze quizzes out of any piece of text. Paste the text into the box and select how you want the cloze test made. Select different sentence functions. Choose to have every few words eliminated, or choose your own items to be removed for the cloze. Participants can choose either interactive or text only quizzes. The missing words appear at the top of the quiz. With the interactive quiz, the player types the missing word in the blanks. The site has a lot of flexibility in creating cloze tests. The site will work with world languages as well, but instructors have to choose the every few words option since the site will not recognize, for example, prepositions in another language.

tag(s): quizzes (90), reading comprehension (149), reading strategies (96)

Science 101 is a science Internet portal. Although rather "plain vanilla," this site has a LOT to explore. After choosing a subject area: astronomy, bacteria, biology, books, calculations, chemistry, data, earth, electronics, or ethics, find articles or website links for further information. This site includes over 30 subject areas on a variety of science and math topics. Use as a resource to begin explorations. Some links may lead to flash activities, not all browsers support flash.
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tag(s): resources (83), science fairs (20), scientific method (48)

Find engaging, challenging units to begin your Common Core journey. Intel Education Units are complete and include assessment tools. Search by grade level or subject. Find the basics for planning units. Also find sequencing maps, sequencing activities, classification charts, and prioritizing listings. Instructional Strategies include activating prior knowledge, graphic organizers, cooperative learning, and questioning strategies.

tag(s): literacy (122)

Find a complete listing of places to learn many, many languages, including free apps and websites. Among the languages one can study for free are Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, Greek, Hebrew, and Hungarian as well as many others from around the globe. Each language has different offerings available. The language lessons are available in many different formats including Youtube videos, MP3s, feeds, apps, iTunes lessons, text, and websites. Since there is a variety of resources for most languages, pick the one that offers the way you are the most comfortable learning. Although most of these resources were developed with secondary students (or adults) in mind, a few are appropriate for upper elementary grades.
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tag(s): chinese (45), french (75), hebrew (16), italian (31), portuguese (22), russian (26), spanish (109)

StoryToolz offers many different tools for authors: story generators, word count meters, a readability analysis, a random conflict generator, a title generator, a cliche buster, and more. Choose any of the topics to begin. Story generators offer suggestions for conflict within a story or half a title. Choose from random title beginnings and endings to generate your title. Don't miss the Readability area: paste up to 5K of text in the box to check the readability of any source. Registration isn't required; however, it offers the opportunity for additional resources within the word count meter section and a larger portion of text for analyzing in the readability section.

tag(s): creative writing (124), readability (5), stories and storytelling (58)