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Free Resources For Parents & Tutors
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Khan Academy - How You Can Use Khan Academy During School Closures
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I highly recommend this website/app as your starting point in an remote/home based teaching as it is comprehensive, easy to use, and student-friendly!​
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When you click on this link, you are directed to Khan Academy’s helpful explanation of 1) what is Khan Academy, 2) how to access its free content and 3) some of the additional free programming Khan Academy is providing such as live-streams, a kids Youtube channel, a no-ads no in-app purchases app in the Itunes, Google Play, and the Amazon App Store. Essentially, Khan Academy’s app provides students, teachers, and parents the ability to plan and execute lessons through the app, as well as access to standards-aligned lessons from kindergarten through early college courses (including AP and SAT preparation). The website is broken down into explanations for how to make a parent account, a student account, or a teacher account.
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2. Math Playground https://www.mathplayground.com/mathatthemall1.html
This is a free website that provides math related games for students in grades 1-6. The math games on the website are free and do not require a subscription to the website. Some examples of the games include “Penguin Jump Multiplication” and “Kangaroo Hop Shapes Recognition”. Also, there is an option for Math Playground premium as either a family or teacher account that allows access to even more engaging math related activities for this age group.
3. Math Snacks https://mathsnacks.com/teaching-with.html
This is a free resource for parents and educators to use for additional engagement in math for their students. By clicking on this link, you are taken to the ‘how to’ part of the website that explains 1) what math snacks is, 2) tutorials of other educators using these math activities to help their students and 3) which topics the different animations/activities cover. As you scroll down, each tutorial is available in English AND Spanish. There are also printable resources such as a teacher guide, learner’s guide, answer key, and transcript. The activities or ‘math snacks’ are aligned with the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM) and address the CCSSM Mathematical Practices when used as recommended.
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4. Geogebra https://www.geogebra.org/materials
This free website has a variety of math related apps to help students graph functions, solve equations, assess probability, and more! Not only are the games and problems related to math, but many of the material overlaps with science, especially in the more advanced topics. In the website there are both ‘activities’ as well as ‘books’. Activities are completed by the student and are interactive, meant to see what you do and do not understand. The books are meant to provide background in each of the subtopics. This resource is very thorough and is effective for reviewing for math tests!
5. Education World - Keeping Book Reports Fun! https://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/archives/bookreport.shtml
This website provides unique and engaging ideas for book reports in their large archive. As schools have been forced to teach remotely, encourage your child to complete one of these activities for a book they enjoy. Then over time, encourage them to complete similar activities for all types of sources. For example, some of the activities can be helpful when learning how to summarize articles, movies, or historical events!
6. National Geographic Kids https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/
This free website has been providing fun games, videos, and readings for learners of all ages. Specifically, the content is focused on nature, such as animals, the environment, and similar phenomena. This website is perfect for when your child wants to use the computer and play fun, silly games but you want to ensure that the content is educational. Learning about the environment is more crucial for the next generation, so help them get inspired!
7. Mathway.com
This free website assists struggling students by allowing the student or teacher to choose math related subject areas (precalculus, algebra, trigonometry, etc.) and then upload a problem they are having difficulty solving. The website allows students to upload a photo of their math question or simply type it using the keyboard. Once the problem is submitted, the program provides the steps to solve the problem! It is incredibly easy to use and can save you and your student a lot of time and frustration. Once you understand the steps as shown by the program, make sure to do a similar problem on your own to make sure you have fully grasped the concepts.
8. Into the Book https://reading.ecb.org/
This free website provides English and Spanish language lessons, activity guides, and student videos to assist learning. In order to use this website, you must choose whether you are a student or teacher. Then, it will provide you with a ‘key’ based on your name. Once you have a key, you are able to choose any of the 8 strategies to focus on during your activities: summarizing, visualizing, questioning, inferring, making connections, synthesizing, prior knowledge, evaluating, or combining them all together! This website is sponsored by PBS and is an incredible resource for encouraging your students and children to enjoy critical thinking and reading!
9. Storyline Online https://www.storylineonline.net/
This free website has a large number of popular children’s books read by celebrities. According to the website “Storyline Online, streams videos featuring celebrated actors reading children’s books alongside creatively produced illustrations. Readers include Viola Davis, Chris Pine, Lily Tomlin, Kevin Costner, Annette Bening, James Earl Jones, Betty White and dozens more. Storyline Online is available 24 hours a day for children, parents, caregivers and educators worldwide. Each book includes supplemental curriculum developed by a credentialed elementary educator, aiming to strengthen comprehension and verbal and written skills for English-language learners. Storyline Online is a program of the SAG-AFTRA Foundation. The Foundation is a nonprofit organization that relies entirely on gifts, grants and donations to fund Storyline Online and produce all of its videos.” This is an incredible, free and fun resource for families and children!
10. ESL English Language Learning via BITS http://esl-bits.net/
“The sole purpose of this site is to help students improve their listening and reading comprehension of the English language. 'BITS English Language Learning' is completely non-profit and contains no advertising. "BITS" is an online-only site. No links for downloading items are available and none will ever be provided.” This free online tool has audiobooks at 2 different speeds, novellas, short stories, and intermediate as well as advanced readings. This site also provides practice with the English language, such as using articles ‘a, an, the’, English slang and idioms, sing along songs, and test preparation.
11. Professor Garfield http://www.professorgarfield.org/
This free and VERY fun website is meant to provide “fun and educationally sound interactive activities and games where kids like to play (on the Internet) supplemented with standards-based resources for teachers, parents and mentors.” Using characters that children like, such as Garfield, and mediums that children are already drawn to, such as create your own comics and illustrations, children will engage with not only reading but also the processes behind creating a story, along with critical thinking skills and planning.
12. https://aacliteracy.psu.edu/index.php/page/show/id/6/
This free website has a lot of resources about pronunciation and reading for younger students or students with developmental disabilities. I recommend this website to be used as a resource page for teachers and parents attempting to provide additional support to their students learning to speak and read. This site explains in an easy to comprehend way how to assist your student through helpful strategies like shared reading, instructions to building reading comprehension and more!