As I looked through Earobics I found many activities that were great. This site is geared towards younger children, so when I look at it, I am thinking about my son, who is 3 years old. One activity I liked for my son was the 'Paw Park Alphabet Bears'. This gets the children to put letters of the alphabet in order by looking at the first letter of a word on the bears' shirt, then place the bears in order. It gets the children to think of the letters from the alphabet without singing the entire song to know where they go in order.
When I looked at Starfall, I thought of my son as well, since the students I teach are 14 or 15 years old and in grade 9. I really enjoyed the activity that shows the letters of the alphabet and the sign for them in sign language. I think it is so wonderful for children to learn sign language, especially at a young age, like this site is for. It is a neat activity where you just click on the letter and the picture shows you the sign for the letter, as well as the sound for the letter.
http://ca.ixl.com/
The first website I am going to talk about is IXL. This is a math site that gives students help with math skills and math literacy. The first thing I like about the site is all the outcomes are available from Kindergarten to Grade 9. You just have to click on your province to receive them, along with activities for each outcome. You can track the progress of your students as they are working through practice activities on the site, which is a great tool. My school is involved with accelerated math. It is a program that we purchase and it allows the students to work at their own pace and level. It tacks their progress as well, and I find that is such a great tool to have in a program for teachers to use with their students. Something that makes tracking and marking easier is a treat! IXL is a great tool as well because of the ease of clicking on an outcome and getting an activity for the outcome. One problem with the site is it only goes up to grade 9. Searching through sites and finding a select few that hits the grade 9 level allows me to see the challenge in locating technology for the grade I teach. If I taught at the high school level, this site would not be very helpful to me or my students.
http://www.storylineonline.net/
The next website is Storyline Online. This website is interesting because books are read aloud by famous people. As the book is read, the picture from he book 'come to life' and move around as the story goes on. Having the stories read by actors, especially, gives animation to the story. There are activities to go along with the stories, which is a great way to check for understanding. The one problem would be younger children would not necessarily know who the people are that are reading the stories, which adds to it for me. However, for a child who may not know the famous person, it would not have the added effect.
http://www.vocabulary.co.il/
The third website I looked at was Vocabulary Games and Resources. This website seems to be a website that can be for younger and older children, depending on their individual level. There is a lot of games that have to do with vocabulary, to make it fun for the students. Some of the games include: ESL homophones, ESL suffix meaning, English Spanish vocabulary, unscramble, word search, build words, match game, crosswords, slang game, quiz, etc. I used to teach ESL and I wish I came across this website at the time. The Slang Game is great for ESL because so many ESL students do not understand when it is not literal. I teach a few exchange students and one is not advances well with English and cannot function that well within the classroom. I think I will introduce her to this website. A problem with this site may be if you are an ESL student and are starting at a very low English vocabulary level, it may be difficult to navigate around the site and games.
