231 mind-stretchers results | sort by:
return to subject listingEdsitement - EdSitement
Grades
K to 12In the Classroom
Use Edsitement for lesson ideas in language, history, literature, and cultures. Find multiple sources to give a deeper comprehension on the subject matter. In history classes, keep the ongoing calendar in your favorites to celebrate an important historical day every day. Lesson plans cover multiple grade levels in many different subject areas. Resources can enrich, or even to give further explanation to current topics of study.You must be registered and logged in to add items to your favorites.
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Inference Riddle Game - Phil Tulga
Grades
1 to 4This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
Bookmark and save this site to use as a bell ringer or for a quick center activity. Display on your interactive white board and allow students to try to solve the riddles with as few clues as possible. Use these riddles as models for students to create their own riddles to share with classmates. Beginning raders will need help spelling their responses, so try partnering them with a stronger speller.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Tesla - Master of Lightning - PBS
Grades
4 to 12In the Classroom
Add intrigue and mystery, to your science unit on electricity, motion, or inventors as you study the life and accomplishments of Nikola Tesla. Excellent lesson plans include a concrete understanding of potential energy, mechanical energy to electrical energy. Use on an interactive white board to begin your unit or create a "Who Dunnit" with electricity or radio. Follow the structure of ideas presented to create an online "famous scientist" wiki, blog or PowerPoint to add to your class website. Use a Socratic seminar to debate which scientist should get credit for the induction motor, radio, and even the Industrial Revolution. Use the readings for older students, advanced readers, or gifted students, as they are far above the reading level of elementary and early middle school students. In language arts, writing topics could include "What a shock electricity is in my life" and "Will the true inventor of electricity please stand up?" The ideas and resources are electrifying!Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Reading Rockets - WETA Washington D.C.
Grades
1 to 6This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
Reading Rockets is a fantastic resource for teachers, librarians, parents, and principals. Be sure to sign up for the newsletter for the latest information, blogs, thoughts, and ideas for teaching reading. Use this website as a resource for your classroom, library, or even with you school action committees. Provide a link to this site on your class webpage. Install widgets for reading, and find the latest apps to support literacy. Join reading blogs, and add widgets to make your reading strategies complete. If your district blocks YouTube, the videos may not be viewable.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Spreaker - Spreaker Online Radio
Grades
1 to 12This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
Enjoy a live radio show from your classroom! Publish written pieces of writing, science reports, social studies reports, and any other reports you would like to share. Create a New Book or Book Review podcast for the media center. Link to your podcast URL on your class website. Publish directions to projects, explanations for difficult concepts, or even a radio show of you reading your favorite books for your students. Have upper elementary students take turns reading aloud for a podcast aimed at little reading buddies in kindergarten. Allow students to podcast to "pen pals" in faraway places. Record your school choir, orchestra group, poetry club, or drama club doing their best work or dramatic readings of Shakespeare soliloquies. Take your school newspaper to a new level with recorded radio articles. Be sure to include interviews with students, teachers, principals, parents, authors, artists, and almost anyone. In younger grades, use to save an audio portfolio of reading fluency, expression, or to aid with running records or even include writing. Be sure do this regularly throughout the year to analyze growth. Have fun at Halloween with your Halloween station filled with favorite spooky stories! Welcome your students to a new school year by sending them your message. Create messages for classmates who move away. Bring your foreign language classes an extra resource of your pronunciations whenever they need more practice. ESL/ELL, special education classes can often benefit from the extra explanations, practice, and elaborated instructions given at their own pace. The possibilities are endless! The site itself is a "web 2.0," social networking style site, so some schools may have it blocked. Ask about unblocking just YOUR teacher account so you can have students access it while at school and under your supervision.Edge Features:
Parent permission advised before posting student work created using this tool
Includes Interaction w general public/ public galleries with unmoderated content
Includes social features, such as "friends," comments, ratings by others
Requires registration/log-in (WITH email)
Premium version (not free) includes additional features or storage
Products can be embedded
Products can be shared by URL
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Cut The Rope - ZeptoLab
Grades
3 to 12In the Classroom
Use this game on classroom computers for a logic or problem solving center. Encourage students to share strategies that worked and didn't work and to consider the causes of each. Have them chart the various strategies they test and the results. If individual computeres aren't available, share this site on your interactive whiteboard or projector. Share a link to the site on your classroom website or newsletter for students to try at home.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Steve Spangler Sick Science Videos - Steve Spangler
Grades
K to 12This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
Show a video on your interactive whiteboard (or projector) as an introduction before conducting an experiment in class. Stop the video before the ending and have students predict what will happen. Have students journal their thoughts to the science at work in the video. Have students create their own comics to explain a topic using comic-creation tools from this collection. Share this site as a resource for science fair projects or for a school science night.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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edublogs - edublogs.org
Grades
K to 12This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
Save this site as a favorite for all of your blogging needs. Find very informative instructions on blogging, and follow the student blogging challenge lesson plans. Use this tool easily in your Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) classroom since all students will be able to access it for free, no matter what device they have. Peruse through the various subjects and discover how other teachers use blogging in their classrooms. Using the given PDFs on blogging start up, parent guidelines, incorporating into subject areas, and adapt to make them suitable for you. Look at a variety of examples to help devise your own unique style to meet your students' needs.Edge Features:
Includes an education-only area for teachers and students
Parent permission advised before posting student work created using this tool
Includes social features, such as "friends," comments, ratings by others
Requires registration/log-in (WITH email)
Premium version (not free) includes additional features or storage
Products can be shared by URL
Multiple users can collaborate on the same project
Includes teacher tools for registering and/or monitoring students
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Tetris N-Blox - Tetris.com
Grades
2 to 8In the Classroom
Help students develop computer skills and reasoning skills through playing this game. Tetris teaches visual thinking and two-dimensional awareness very helpful for geometric reasoning. Create a classroom chart and challenge students to post their highest scores and levels achieved. Have students write journals describing how they feel as they play the game, and strategies used to progress through levels. Display this site on an interactive whiteboard to use as a learning station.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Thunks - Get Thunking - Ian Gilbert
Grades
4 to 12This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
Display a Thunk on your interactive whiteboard (or projector) as a discussion/debate starter. Have students choose a response and defend their answer. Allow students to discuss their answer throughout the week and survey responses again. Have students create their own Thunks to be discussed in class. Create a bulletin board and allow students to post comments and reactions to the question posed. Use a Thunk as a journal writing prompt. Make this page available for students who are "stuck" thinking of something to write about.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Wondermind - Tate Liverpool
Grades
4 to 12In the Classroom
Create a link on classroom computers for students to try the challenges and then view videos on your interactive whiteboard together. Check out the learning resources link to view a video with additional ideas for visual perception games and activities. Use as part of your Alice in Wonderland or Lewis Carroll units. If you teach psychology, anatomy, or health, this exploration will offer a new angle into how the brain works. Use the game and video about memory during a unit on study skills and discovering how students learn best. Teachers of gifted may also want to explore this site as part of a unit on the gifted mind. Learning support teachers may also want to use portions to help students better understand why their minds operate differently -- not "badly." Bright Asperger's students might be fascinated by the portion on the prefrontal cortex and how we learn self-control.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Jumble Kids - Tribune Media Services
Grades
3 to 6In the Classroom
Use this site as a classroom word-building center either on classroom computers or your interactive whiteboard (projector). Have students use examples from this site to create their own word jumbles for others to solve. Use a site such as Web Poster Wizard (reviewed here).Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Brain Metrix - BrainMetrix.com
Grades
4 to 12This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
Enjoy your new workout routine! Share the activities on your interactive whiteboard or projector. Challenge your gifted students (or ANY student) to strive for tiptop "brain shape." Use as a way to prove to struggling students they can improve with practice to gain confidence. Provide this link on your class website as an enrichment site.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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World Science - World Science
Grades
4 to 12This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
World Science empowers your students to recognize that they too can ask questions, and they too can understand the latest science questions and answers. Inspire thinkers to find questions and seek answers. Set as your home page and always captivate your students. Use as a reference site to add the latest science news. Subscribe and send to each of your students emails. Reinforce the scientific method in everyday research. Have your classes create their own science news on your website. This is an excellent site for inspiring critical thinking skills and creative thinking. Be sure to include this site as part of your current events and curriculum in gifted and advanced classes.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Syvum - Syvum
Grades
4 to 12This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
As a teacher, get a free membership with some capabilities to manage your class such as creating your own quizzes and monitoring class progress. This is the sure-fire way to increase problem solving and creative thinking skills through gaming. Use as a whole class activity, individual, or reward time options. Expand the way gifted and advanced classes think! Put a link to this site on your class webpage, wiki, or blog.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Smarthistory Art History Conversation - Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker with Khan Academy
Grades
3 to 12In the Classroom
A must for any art classroom, Smarthistory adds an extra dimension and deeper understanding to any history, social studies, or cultural studies classroom. Use the Smarthistory videos on YouTube to engage and enhance student learning. If the videos aren't viewable in class assign students to watch them at home; that's perfect for the flipped or blended classroom. If you are going to require students to watch the videos from home, consider using edupuzzle, reviewed here, to add your own voice or add questions within the video. Use in writing workshops to provide insights to art and culture and to into thoughts and feelings. Study written works alongside the art of past time periods. Bring unlimited, world-class resources to each class. Gifted classes will devour this website. Provide this link on your class website to offer students extra challenge and exploration.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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NobelPrize.org - Nobel Media AB 2011
Grades
4 to 12In the Classroom
Inspire your students to strive for excellence! Show students original, creative, thinking. Let students know they can understand the ideas awarded by trying the educational activities offered. Follow each year's announcements and award ceremonies. Use as an inspiration when beginning your own Nobel Prize winning awards competitions. Encourage students to use critical thinking skills to form opinions based on facts. Substitute pen and paper in your class by having students blog about what they are learning and understanding using Telegra.ph, reviewed here. This blog creator requires no registration. Extend learning by inviting pairs or small groups to use a tool like NoteJoy, reviewed here, to take notes and share links, documents, and images to organize for an interactive poster. Use Adobe Creative Cloud Express for Education, reviewed here, for the poster. Gifted programs can easily incorporate many of the ideas into the curriculum. Lead your students to Nobel Award winning thinking.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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PBS Learning Media - Physical Education - PBS
Grades
K to 12In the Classroom
Find more details and teacher information under "Customization for States and District" to align the offerings here with your state's standards. Check this site for an introduction to a curriculum topic or unit or when looking for support activities to reinforce concepts. Use this site as the starting point for individual or group projects. Share the interactives as a learning center or on your interactive whiteboard or projector. This is one that you want to save in your favorites.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Mind42 - IRIAN Solutions Vienna
Grades
1 to 12In the Classroom
This free organizational tool can be used in classrooms at every level. Teachers can use this tool to help organize learning units and share the orgnanization on screen so students see how pieces fit together. Share the unit map with other teachers, students, or parents, to highlight goals, objectives, learning tasks, assessments, and resources. Share before your unit and expectations become very clear. Use as a yearly overview for parents showing units with resources at the beginning of the year at Open House. Let parents see the multiple ways their child will be assessed through the year. Students can use this tool for direction in problem based learning situations. Use this tool in science for collecting data, experiments, or science fair outlines. Use the tool in writing class to make writing guides for narrative or expository writing. In reading, use for predictions, sequencing of stories, inferences, or organizing genres of books each student has read. Have students map multiple ways to solve a single problem in math class. Have students keep daily requirements or schedules with readily available resources as links. Let students enjoy taking notes from content based classes. Have a student scribe create the notes each day and share with the class. Have student groups map the current unit before the test as a review activity.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Mathispower4u - Video Tutorials - James Sousa
Grades
4 to 12In 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.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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