Watch it Grow
Grades: 3
Summary: Choose up to five different types of vegetables and watch them grow. Then see which part of the plant we are most like to eat and what part of the plant it comes from.
How to integrate: Shared, Independent
BBC - Plants
Grades: 3-6
Summary: Sarah Jane has been kidnapped by the Blathereen! Help grow the Rakweed to win her freedom in this plants game! There are four games in total. Complete each game with your plant knowledge.
How to integrate: Shared, Independent
The Life Cycle of a Plant
Grades: 3
Summary: There are three activities in total
1) Life Cycle Diagram - Place the labels and the notes in the correct locations in the life cycle of a plant diagram.
2) Flower Anatomy - Click on the various part of the flower to read about the name and the function. Then try to match the correct labels to the diagram.
3) Seed Dispersal - read each of the ways seeds are disperse and then complete a sorting activity.
How to integrate: Shared, Independent
BBC Plant Life Cycle
Grades: 3-6
Summary: MI High Agent, we need your help to stop the dangerous Hogweed plant from spreading. There are two games - one labeling and one adventure game on seed dispersal. The second game requires a keyboard to play and therefore not ideal for smartboard.
How to integrate: Shared, Independent
BBC - Helping Plants Grow Well
Grades: 2-3
Summary: Adjust the water and heat and watch how those factors affect the growth of the plant.
How to integrate: Modeled, Shared
The Weather Game
Grades: 2, 5, 8
Summary: A great review of concept taught in the air and water unit. Different levels get progressively harder.
How to integrate: Modeled, Independent
Water Cycle
Grades: 2
Summary: A visual way to show student the water cycle process. There is a simple animation or choose to click on word for each definition.
How to integrate: Modeled, Independent
Water Cycle Storage
Grades: 2
Summary: A great animation that goes through each stage one click at a time.
How to integrate: Modeled, Independent
Water Cycle Game
Grades: 2-4
Summary: Follow the water cycle by click and moving through the different stages.
How to integrate: Shared
Zoobooks
Grades: 2-5
Summary: Read all about your favourite animal and visit the virtual zoo. Find information about where they live, how they eat and what makes them who they are.
How to integrate: Shared, Independent
San Diego Zoo - Kids
Grades: 2
Summary: One of the best places to find out information about animals. You can watch animals live on the webcam, play games, and read all about different animals of the world. They are also activities to print out too.
How to integrate: Shared, Independent
Meet the Animals at the Toronto Metro Zoo
Grades: 2
Summary: Before you take a trip, why not read about the different animals there are at the zoo.
How to integrate: Shared, Independent
Discovery - The Dirt on Soil
Grades: 3
Summary: A site dedicated to everything you wanted to know about soil.
How to integrate: Shared, Independent
Great for reading together as a class or as a research source.
What's in your Soil IQ
Grades: 3
Summary: Take this quiz to find out what's in the soil around you.
How to integrate: Shared, Independent
A fun quiz to take together as a class or individually
Soil School
Grade: 3
Summary: Soil School is divided into two divisions. You can choose for challenge or work a little lighter. The challenge "digging deeper" is more appropriate for grade 3's. Find out information about soil and what makes up dirt.
How to integrate: Shared, Independent
A great site filled with great information.
Time Test
Grades:2
Summary: Drag and drop the items to classify whether they are a solid, liquid or a gas.
How to integrate: Shared
Work together as a class as a hook or as a review of common everyday items.
Change It
Grades: 2-3
Summary: Drag the different objects into the freezer and the oven to see what happens.
How to Integrate: Modeled, Shared
This is a great follow up to an experiment without having to use an actual oven/freezer.
HMH - Solids, Liquid, Gas Under the Microscope
Grades: 2-6
Summary: Discover what the molecules look like between the different states of matter.
How to Integrate: Modeled
This is a good illustration lesson for students to see a what molecules look like up close.
1) Cardinal Direction
Grade: 1-2
Strand: Canada and World Connections
Summary: Pearson designed a simple site for students to become familiar with cardinal direction. Students must steer the car using the cardinal direction, towards the parking space.
How to integrate: Modeled and Shared
Students will have a great time trying to direct the car by clicking on the directions on the Smartboard. Use it as a review of past knowledge or a quick hook.
2) Build your own Neighbourhood
Grade: 1
Strand: Canada and World Connections
Summary: Students can have fun building different parts of a community by dragging and dropping "stamps" or pictures onto the background.
How to integrate: Shared, Modelled
Design a neighborhood as a class. Have students work in groups to design a community as a class.
3) Map it Canada
Grade: 4
Strand: Canada and World Connections
Summary: A quick and easy way to test your students knowledge on capital cities, provinces, landmarks and animals that is unique to each province. Students must drag and drop the different topics to it's location.
How to integrate: Shared, Modelled, Independent
Turn this site to a great review of the unit by having students complete in groups to answer the questions.
1) Edheads Compound Machine - The Odd Machine
Grades: 3-6
Strand: Compound Machine
Summary: One of my favourite simple machine sites has another great companion site on compound machine and forces. Students are sent on a journey to find a plunger for the robot. Along the way, students must learn how compound machines work and which forces are working together to get the job done. There are twenty questions in all and students have the option to print out their scores at the end of the game.
How to integrate: Shared, Modeled, Independent
Some questions can be a little challenging (the target grades is from 2-6) but since it is multiple choice it is only a matter of time for students to answer all the questions. The questions also use a lot of terms that grade 3s might not be familiar with, therefore it could be more as a guided activity.
2) Lemelson Center's Learning Through Play - Tinker Ball
Grades: 2-4
Strand: Gravity
Summary: Use your student's engineering skills and simple machine knowledge to get a ball into a cup. There are a selection of simple machines that students can choose to use. Use one or two or all, the only objective is to get the ball into the cup.
How to integrate: Shared, Guided, Independent
This is a fun game that will get your students thinking about how simple machines help us do simple tasks. It is also a great game to start adding challenges to - for instance, challenge your students to create a path using the least number of parts, or the most number of parts, or use time to see if your students are up to the challenge.
3) Roller Coaster Simulation
Grades: 3-6
Strand: Friction and Gravity
Summary: In this "what if" simulation, students must decide which factors they want to change in order to make a great roller coaster. The factors include, hill size, mass of the cart, speed, friction and gravity. By exploring different combination, student will be able to do identify how each force is important in roller coasters.
How to integrate: Guided, Independent
Give the students a chance to do what they want and make crazy fly-off-the-rails coasters. Then slowly tell them to change on factor at a time to see what changes happen. Eventually, students should be able to maximize the forces and make them work together to create a successful roller coaster.
1) Simple Machines
Grades: 1-3
Summary: This site gives a short summary of each of the six simple machines, the lever, wheel and axle, inclined plane, wedge, pulley and screw. Each machine includes an example and a video of real students using these simple machines in their daily lives.
How to integrate: Shared, Independent
This site is great as a introduction or a recap to the unit. Students can also use it for review at home as well.
2) Museum of Science+industry Chicago- Simple Machine
Grades: 2-3
Summary: What better way to apply your simple machine knowledge than to help a robot! Twitch is a robot that works in the museum. He needs to find parts around the museum to help fix a broken friend. Students needs to complete 4 stages and find the missing parts, but to get each part they must use a simple machine to help.
How to integrate: Independent
This site is so fun and engaging that students won't even know they are "learning". Unfortunately it won't be too effective on the Smartboard due to the need to use the arrow keys for moving Twitch.
3) Edheads
Grades: 1-3
Summary: Edheads is a great site to show students where we use simple machines in our everyday lives. There are two sections, the house - simple machines, and the tool shed - compound machines. There are four rooms in each section where students must identify the machine and then cite what the machine is.
How to to integrate: Shared, Independent
A classic site that should be used for anyone teaching simple machines. It is also a great site to use on the SmartBoard or any interactive board due to it's "click" feature. Also great for reviewing and checking for understanding.
1) Factors Affecting Growth
Grades: 1, 3
Summary: In this virtual animation experiment, students test whether water, light and temperature affects whether the seed will grow into healthy plants. There are four parts of this activity, each testing a different factor. The fifth part is a quiz.
How to integrate: Shared, Guided
This is a life-saver when the plants you have grown in your classroom isn't working or you are running out of time to test each factor in the time allotted to complete the unit. This is also a good review for the end of the unit test.
2) Parts of the Plants - Activities and Lessons
Grades: 1,3
Summary: This site includes a selection of activities designed to help students develop their understanding of plants. The activities are based and designed to reinforce the understanding of the parts of the plants: stem, petal, leaf, root, stigma, stamen and sepal.
Each of the three activities also include answers.
The activities are divided by four sections:
a) The Starter Activity - Buzzard Game
Summary: In this interactive game, students learn to identify parts of the plant and the functions by matching the two set of cards. Each students can stand on the side of the Smart Board and press the button when the cards match to gain the points.
How to integrate: Shared
A fun review game for students to practice their knowledge. Not too challenging but a good warm-up.
b) The Main Session - Rating the Parts of the Plant
Summary: Students must rate five parts of that plant in order of importance. They must also include one or two sentences as to why they choose that part.
How to integrate: Independent
This is a great game to get students not only to identify the function of each of the parts of the plant but also synthesizes their knowledge by rating which one is more important and why.
c) The Plenary - Parts of the plants
Summary: Here students must think about what would happen if the plant didn't have one of the following parts. There is a section for students to type in their answers, along with a diagram of a plant.
How to integrate: Independent
This is another great activity to get students to think about what they are learning and how each part is connected and how they work together.
1) Animal Groups
Grades: 2, 6(review for diversity of living things)
Summary: Ever wanted to find a good text to read as a class? This great site goes through all the important characteristics of each animal group,
How to use it: Shared
This would make a great shared reading piece during literacy. It is also a great review before the test.
2) Animal Characteristic Game
Grades: 2, 6
Summary: Drag and drop all the characteristics that apply to that animal. Great for any interactive board.
How to use it: Modeled, Shared
Now that you have read all the characteristics of each animal group why not show your understanding with a drag-and-drop game. It's a great check-for-understanding game as well as a review before a test. It wouldn't take too long to complete and thus not that good as an independent lab work game.
3) Interactive Life Cycle
Grades: 2
Summary: Comparing the life cycle of the frog to the butterfly by clicking through each stages. At the end students can put in order the life cycle.
How to use it: Modeled, Shared, Independent
This is another great shared reading site, it has a nice follow-up activity after wards to allow students to show their knowledge.
4) Magnetic Fridge Poetry
Grades: 2-4
Summary: Create poems just like on the fridge. Words are based on animals. Great for any interactive board.
How to use it: Shared, Independent
Makes a great literacy center or a center when students are finished their work.
As the curriculum continues to evolve to include the environmental issues (Earth Day, Earth Hour, Eco-Schools etc), here are a few sites I've used and how I've integrated them into my program.
Zerofootprint: Kids Calculator
Grade: 3-5
Summary: The Zerofootprint helps calculates how much carbon footprint each of us make on a daily basis. It takes into considerations where you eat, what you do and how you get to school.
How to use it: Independent
I use it in my graphing unit. Then I issue a challenge to the students to reduce their carbon footprints before the end of the unit. The class can graph the data in various charts and graphs.
