Showing posts with label worksheets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label worksheets. Show all posts

Sunday, March 23, 2014

35 outstanding education websites to explore

Below you will find a collection of some the best resources I have discovered over the past six months. While there are many you may have seen before, I am confident that there are some that may be new to you as well. You will find lesson plans, videos, worksheets, graphic organizers, games, project ideas, and list goes on. Give yourself plenty of time because there is a lot to see. Enjoy.

Turtle Diary
Here at Turtle Diary, you can find a large selection of games, videos, worksheets all tailored for young learners up to 3rd grade. The site has hundreds of games that support learning in math, science, and ELA. All the resources on this site can be searched by age, topic, or type of resource. The site is free to join for teachers but there is a fee if you want to add students.

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EZ School
EZ School is an educational site with a wide variety of resources for most teachers. If you teach math, science, social studies, ELA, or a foreign language, then EZ School has resources for you. There are games, quizzes, worksheets, articles, and videos that students and teachers can access for free. The site is easy to navigate as their resources are categorized by grade, subject, and resource type.

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4Kids.org
This educational site is produced by the University of Kansas with the purpose of stimulating kids desire to learn. The site offers many fun educational opportunities with links to fun science, math, and history websites as well as a nice selection of games. They also feature current events articles for younger learners and allow kids the chance to write to the site about future publications, as well as an “Ask Amy” column which responds to questions submitted by readers.

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Game Classroom
Game Classroom offers lessons, videos, games, and worksheets for students up to grade 6. Their website states their goal is to provide students, parents, and teachers with the best interactive homework help the web has to offer. Students will enjoy the sites huge collection of math and language arts games while parents and teachers will find the site's library of lessons to be helpful. Teachers and parents will also enjoy their library of videos as well as their large selection of both printable and online worksheets.

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The Federal Registry for Educational Excellence (FREE) website contains a massive collection of education resources. Animations, primary documents, photograph collections, videos, maps, articles, and the lists goes on and on. If you have never visited this incredible collection of educational resources for all subjects and grade levels, then you really have been missing out. For all that our government does wrong, their collection of FREE educational tools and materials is quite extensive and very useful.
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There are many places on the web where you can find graphic organizers but it may take searching through several sites before you find the right one. The next time you need a graphic organizer, start here at this collection of graphic organizers from the Vermilion Parish. They have collected the best organizers from around the internet into one large collection for you to use.

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CK-12.org is a non-profit organization dedicated to education. Their website offers a large collection of resources for students and teachers like Brain Genie which I previously shared. The bulk of their resources are math and science centered where students can learn about chemistry, physics, algebra, and geometry just to name four. They also offer resources for other content areas as well including history, English, and SAT prep. Their website is free to join and offers a wealth of learning resources and activities. Their site offers articles, quizzes, interactive lessons, videos and students can keep track of their learning as they complete lessons and activities and members can upload their own resources to the site as well.

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History teachers will want to spend some time here at the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History website. It features great resources such as this American History by Era which allows you to learn about American history by era and or theme. There is also a section dedicated to primary sources which is also categorized by era. In their Programs and Exhibitions area there is an online exhibitions page which includes enhanced audio, videos and slideshows about history. The site also includes a multimedia section with hundreds of videos as well as a community section where members of the site can communicate and share information. Suffice to say that the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History  is a fantastic resource for history teachers and students.

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Chronicling America, from the Library of Congress, is a site that contains a huge database of historic newspaper pages from the years 1836 to 1922. Their homepage features "newspapers from 100 years ago today" but users of the site can use their extensive search option to look for year, state, topic, newspaper, dates, and even language. Here is a clip from a newspaper when I searched "World War I, New York, 1918."

Chronicling America could be a good tool for student research from a particular era or topic. If you are a history teacher you owe it to yourself and your students to take some time to browse around and see what the site has to offer.
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This website helps students develop close reading and critical thinking skills by offering current event articles with varying levels of text complexity. Lexile levels of an article range from 2nd grade up to 12th grade which allows for differentiation within the same classroom. The articles are categorized by war/peace, science, kids, money, law, health and arts. Many of the articles are accompanied by quizzes that provide quick feedback. Newsela is currently in beta and is free for all teachers. I think you will find Newsela to be a valuable resource for your students.

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RSA Animate is a You Tube channel from RSA.org that contains a series of  thought provoking videos about education, economics and a variety of other important topics such as this one about human behavior and what motivates us. After watching this video you will want to share it with your bosses, managers, CEO's, politicians and other people in power. One of my personal favorites is  this one that describes the changing paradigm shift in education by Sir Ken Robinson. RSA Animate currently has 18 videos in their collection and I highly recommend you check out their collection of videos.

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The school year is more than half over and end of the year state exams are looming. If you teach science, social studies, math, or ELA at the secondary level then you should really take a look at Problem-Attic. With this site you can quickly and easily create review tests and quizzes as well as flash cards for your students to use. Problem-Attic has a test bank of over 80,000 questions from old New York State Regents exams as well as science, math, and social studies state assessments from around the country. It is free to join and so simple to navigate. You name your test, browse their huge question bank, select your questions, format the test, and you are done. Problem-Attic is a fantastic tool for teachers because it will help you save your most valuable resource, your time.

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Learners TV is an online resource that provides thousands of videos, lectures, tests, and animations on a wide array of college subjects and disciplines. The website currently has over 29,000 video lectures on topics such as biology, history, law, philosophy, and economics to name a few. This website is an excellent way for college students to support their classroom instruction and best of all it is free to join.

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Here is a website that allows you to draw a picture on their website and share it on your Facebook page. One advantage to Sketch Toy is their "graph paper" background to help you keep your art centered and symmetrical. They also have a feature that makes your art vibrate much like an old cartoon. If drawing is your thing, why not give Sketch Toy a try.


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Daily Infographic is a website that features the best and most dynamic infographics found on the world wide web. If you are searching for an infographic about a specific topic then this website can help you as well. You can use their search bar or just select the category that interests you and they will more than likely have the infographic you were looking for. If you really enjoy their site then you can subscribe to their site and have daily infographics emailed to you.
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Seems as though just about everyone uses some type of Google product these days. Google Tutor is a site that wants to be your resource for all things Google. They are one of the leading websites for news, tips, and tutorials for Google and their products and services They are not affiliated with Google, but are just huge fans of Google who want to share their passion with the world. If you have any Google related questions, go to Google Tutor and they should have the answer.


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This site has nothing to do with the C&C Music Factory song. It is a resource from a site called Sparky Teaching that challenges students to think and respond to a question. 365 Things is a good warm up activity or or writing prompt. Students can leave their response on the website or teachers can display the question and have students respond at their desks on paper. Either way, 365 Things to make you go hmm is an good resource for any teacher to spark think, writing, or conversations within the classroom.

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eQuiz Show
When I first discovered eQuiz Show, I knew I had to write about it on this blog. eQuiz Show allows you to create online Jeopardy style games which you can use in the classroom or students can play them from home to review. Creating the games is very easy and you can always edit them at any time. A password is required to edit any quiz so no other user can edit your quiz unless they have your password. Teachers, if you are looking for an engaging way to review with your students, then really should give eQuiz Show a try.

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Embed Plus is a tool that enhances viewing You Tube videos by giving you full control like you have with DVD players. Embed Plus allows you to fast forward, rewind, pause, instant replay/loop, play in slow motion, zoom, crop, and mark chapters. It is available as a Chrome extension or Word Press plug in and can also be embedded into a blog or website.  Check out Embed Plus and you will likely be changing the way you watch You Tube.


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Every Slide
With Every Slide you can turn your average presentation slides into an interactive educational experience for your students. You simply have to upload your presentation and then add polls that your students can respond to with their own devices. The polls can be text, true/false or multiple choice and you can add them ahead of time or as you go. Students can join the presentation by typing in a code which is visible at the top of your presentation. This is a powerful tool and best of all, it is free for teachers.

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Flip Quiz
Most teachers are always looking for ways to make formative assessments more fun and engaging. Flip Quiz (in Beta) allows you to create Jeopardy style review games and you don't have to possess any technical know how. Once you sign up you can easily create your first game in a short amount of time and your students will love playing along. Thank you Doug Peterson (@dougpete) for sharing this via Twitter.

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Populr
This site allows you to create a simple single page poster with text, images, and videos. Once you sign up (it's free) you simply add the elements and then publish the final product. Elements can be added from your computer, social media sites such a s Flickr, or added from the web. One of the best features on Populr is that it allows collaboration on a page which is great for group projects. Finished projects can be shared via email or your favorite social media sites.

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Pastbook
Here is a terrific site for creating an online photo album or scrapbooks. This site also allows collaboration which make it ideal for group projects. Signing up does require an email address but no other personal information is needed. The site is very simple to use as all you need is to add pictures and then text to accompany each picture and the site does the rest. Once you are done the book can be downloaded as a PDF to be handed in or students can share the book with the teacher.

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Fodey
Fodey is very useful a website that allows you to write your own newspaper story and headline. The site also allows you to change the name of the newspaper as well as the publishing date which makes it a perfect tool for social studies projects. Once the story is completed you can download it to your computer or use a screen capture tool to save the image. While this is a perfect tool for history projects, this website is great for any subject area.

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Newspaper Generator
This newspaper generator by Homemade Gifts Made Easy is very similar to Fodey but it has several features that make it more a powerful tool. First, it allows you to add a picture to your story which helps to make the finished product more interesting to students. Second, there seems to be no limit to how much text you can write. The finished product can be saved as a pdf by right clicking on the image. However, the story you write will be accompanied by several "nonsense" stories that come with the site.

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This website (currently in beta) allows you to easily create a photo collage which can be used on a website or as part of a student project. Choose one of the 14 grids and then add pictures and the final product can be saved to your computer as a jpg file. This tool can be used along with the Newspaper Generator above by Homemade Gifts Made Easy to create a nice newspaper project. 

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Brother Creative Center
This powerful site by Brother allows you to generate posters, newsletters (mailers), calendars and brochures. Each type of document comes with a collection of dynamic templates which a simple to edit. Projects can be saved for later editing and then be printed or saved to your computer when they are done. This site is a great online alternative to Microsoft Publisher and it is free to use.

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Creating a movie poster is a great school project. With this simple website, the task is that much easier. Students simply upload an image, add a few details for the text and then share their completed poster with the teacher. This project works is a great for history, science, or as a final project after reading a novel.

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Here is another website to create great poster projects. With this site you can add many photos to create a collage or other types of posters. The site features many templates as well as a wide selection of other enhancements to make stunning posters.

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This site is better known for its photo editing but it also allows users to create photo collages. You select your layout, add your photos and then add text and your project is done. Final products can be saved to your computer, shared to Flickr or other social media sites.

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Yet another terrific site for creating poster projects for the classroom. The site is easy to use and navigate. Just select a template and change or add content as you desire. Every aspect of a poster template can be changed and you can add more pictures or text if you need. Once done there are a variety of ways in which the final poster can be shared including email.

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Mural.ly is a fantastic online tool that appears to be intended for business but would work really well in the classroom. The site allows you to create online poster like presentations by adding pictures, text, websites, documents, and a host of other bells and whistles. The site also allows others to collaborate on the poster with you by a simple email invite and then they can join in. Mural.ly is a great resource for group projects and it is free to join and free to use.


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Word Draw is a site that offers free professional looking templates for newsletters, flyers, labels, and resumes. The sites newsletter templates are categorized for education, business, family, holidays, and by month. The templates must be downloaded and are compatible for all versions of Microsoft Word.
These templates can also be utilized for a class newspaper, projects or even reports. 

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Tackk allows you to create online posters that can be shared via email, social media or be embedded onto a webpage or blog. As soon as you arrive on the website you can start creating your poster by editing their ready made template. You can easily add a title, body text, pictures, videos, and even songs. You can add content from You Tube, Instagram, Vimeo, Sound Cloud, Hulu, and Spotify. Creating an online poster with Tackk is so easy to do. 

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With Picovico, you can turn simple photographs into cool videos. Once you sign up (it's free) you begin by choosing a video template and then adding your pictures from Facebook, Flickr, or your computer. You can set the order of your pictures, add captions to them and add text slides if you wish. Next you add music, either from their library or add your own from your computer. Your last step is to add a video title and any additional text and you're done. Completed videos can be uploaded to You Tube or Facebook and can even be embedded into a website or blog. The site does have a 30 picture maximum but that is long enough for most people.


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Wednesday, December 25, 2013

29 great math websites for students of all ages

Over the past month I have shared many math based websites. Below, I have combined all the math websites that I have shared so far and have added seven new ones. Whether you have been following my blog, or if this is your first time, I promise you will find many great math resources for your students.

Hooda Math
If you are searching for math based games then look not further than Hooda Games. They have dozens upon dozens of math games for kids of all ages. Their huge games collection can be searched by math topic or by grade level. The site also has a  nice selection of math tutorials from the site's You Tube channel.


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Get the Math
Get the Math is a site dedicated to algebra in the "real world." Visitors to the site can watch videos showing how math is used in music, fashion, video games, restaurants, and other professions. You can also try interactive challenges that are related to those careers.


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TV411 - Math
TV411 offers videos lesson in math and a variety of other subjects. The lessons are grounded in real world applications to show students how math will help them outside of the classroom. Along with the videos, the site also offers worksheets that can be downloaded and printed.



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GCF Learn Free - Math Basics
GCF Learn Free offers a collection of math lessons for younger learners on basic math, percents, fractions and money. Each lesson contains examples, videos and quizzes to check understanding. GCF Learn Free also has a math based game that students can play.





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Toy Theater
Toy Theater is a collection of activities for young learners preschool to third grade. Their activities are all game based with a focus on strengthening basic math skills. Toy Theater is a great website for teachers to use to help reinforce math concepts in a fun and engaging way.



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Math Slice
Math Slice offers a wide range of learning opportunities for many different levels of learners. Their page is overflowing with lessons, games, and other activities to help strengthen math skills. They also have math online worksheets, quizzes, and other forms of materials to help math students.



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Absurd Math
Absurd Math is a game that consists of a series of interactive mathematical problems. At each level players have to complete a set of math based tasks that increase in their level of difficulty. Each challenge is identified as an episode of which there are currently four. Absurd math is an ideal game for middle and high school level learners.


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Mathway

Math was always a struggle for me in school and it still gives me nightmares. If only there was a site that could help me with difficult problems and show me the step by step process afterwards. It would be awesome if this site could help struggling math students with basic math, algebra, trigonometry, and even calculus. To top it off, it would be fantastic if this site had a worksheet generator for teachers. Well such a site does exist and it is called Mathway. This site is just what math students and math teachers need. My long nightmare has ended.


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Free Math Help

Free Math Help offers a variety of free tools to help students with Algebra, geometry, trigonometry, calculus, and statistics. The site has a simple interface with color coded tabs identifying their four categories which are lessons, calculators, games, and forums. The sites over 100 lessons are easy to follow and include examples to help learn the concept. The site also includes five calculators as well as four games which are targeted for younger math students. Free Math Help is a useful resource that parents and students can utilize to help with learning.



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Math Warehouse

Math Warehouse is a web portal that offers a variety of tools and resources to support math teachers and students. The site has a wide array of math games as well as an interactive practice page. There is a section dedicated to printable math worksheets that are free to use as well. The site also has a large collection of lessons for various math concepts and levels. To top it off there are two different online calculators that students can use. Math Warehouse is another great resource for students, parents, and teachers to utilize to help support learning at home and in the classroom.



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Graphing Stories

Graphing Stories is a series of "real world" videos by Dan Meyer and Buzz Math that have a graphing measurements theme. Why in the world would you want to show graphing videos? While that may sound boring, the videos and accompanying graphing worksheet are actually an engaging way to demonstrate these important math concepts. The videos cover topics such as height, distance, time and elevation and students get to see how these math concepts work in their world. The Graphing Stories videos are free to download and as mentioned before, they come with a generic graphing worksheet for you to use.



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Math 10

Math 10 offers a wealth of tools and resources that is incredible. The site explains math concepts like a text book and has sections to do practice problems and practice tests. There is a scientific calculator and there is a math games sections. It also has discussion boards, a section about the history of math and two universal problem solvers. Math 10 is certainly worth bookmarking if you are a math teacher or student.



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Mathispower4u
  
Mathispower4u provides over 3,200 free mini-lessons and example videos that are connected to the site's YouTube channel. The video tutorials are organized by course and topic and range from basic arithmetic through calculus III and beyond. The videos with the yellow background are mini-lessons. The site also includes videos for both financial and medical fields as well as SAT prep. The site also offers links to other math resources such as text books and calculators.



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Math Live

Math Live provides video lessons for students K - 12 and is produced by LearnAlberta.ca. The lessons, which are animated, are both engaging and informative. Each lesson come with a printable worksheet and assessment as well as guides for parents and teachers. This sites animated approach to math may seem more user friendly to students of any age.



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Maths Frame

Mathsframe is an educational site out of the UK that offers a wide range of interactive math games. The math level of the games is targeted toward younger students, ages 6 - 11, and includes basic functions, fractions, decimals, and percentages. Students outside of the UK may find the money category confusing since it is done in pounds, not dollars. Many of the resources are free to use but a paid subscription is required to use all the site has to offer. Mathsframe is a good support tool for students, teacher, and parents.



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Mathmoves u
Mathmovesu is a website dedicated to making math and science more fun for middle level students. The site offers three interactive games that help teach math concepts in a way that student will enjoy. In addition to the games, the site also offers a large collection of math worksheets. While registration is not required to play the games, kids will probably want to in order to save what they accomplish on the games. Mathmovesu is a product of the Raytheon Company.


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Johnnie's Math Page
Johnnie's Math Page is rich with math content for students, teachers and parents. The site has a clean layout and is easy to navigate. Johnnie's Math Page has games, activities, puzzles and worksheets galore and the site's range of topics apply to preschoolers on up to middle school.

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Math is Fun
Math is Fun has been around since 2000 so the site is hardly new. Visitors will find a wide array of resources such as worksheets, quizzes, games, activities and a math dictionary. While the site's appearance make it look like it is built for younger students, they do have content that applies to secondary learners. If you haven't been to this site recently, perhaps it is time to check it out again.

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Another website that has been around since 2000 is the Math Fact Cafe. This slick looking site is a powerful worksheet generator for elementary math teachers and parents. The site offers pre-made worksheets or you can create your own by clicking a few boxes to set your parameters and presto, a new worksheet. You can also practice math facts with their flashcards and there are even games available.

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Mr. Nussbaum's Math Lab is a teacher created website containing a huge amount of fun and educational content. The site offers math based games, videos printables, and activities called "workshops." When exploring this site visitors have 25 categories to choose from so there is a lot to see and do. Mr. Nussbaum's Math Lab has a target audience of K-8 students and teachers.

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AAA Math
AAA Math is a site with thousands of interactive math lessons for elementary and middle school students. Each lesson provides immediate feedback for the student and each lesson set also contains a quiz so students can test their progress. To navigate the site you simply select the math topic or grade. AAA Math makes an excellent resource for math students.


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Math-Aids is a worksheet generator that provides free printable worksheets for over 77 math topics for grades K-12. You choose your topic and are presented with previews of each worksheet. Every selection also give you the option of printing an answer key. Math-Aids also has a selection of math videos by going to their educational videos page.


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Math Goodies offers a wide range of resources for math students and teachers. Visitors can find interactive lessons, a worksheet generator, games, puzzles, calculators and more. Navigation is done by using their search bar or by clicking one of the categories just below their search bar. Math Goodies has been around since 1998 and if you haven't been here recently, it may be time to check it out again.

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Math-Play
If you are looking for a great source for making math fun then Math Play could be your answer. Math Play has a wide variety of fun math based games that can be played online. The age level for most games is from elementary to middle school levels. All games are organized by grade level, game type or by content.

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Math TV
Math TV produces high quality tutorials for math instruction. The videos are sorted by topic and often have several videos by different instructors and video instruction is in both English and Spanish. The site offers additional services with a paid subscription.
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lluminations
Illuminations is the product of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and features a nice collections of resources. The site contains over 700 lessons and activities to help students better understand math concepts. They also have a game section with more than a dozen games that allows players to challenge the computer or other players.


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Soft Schools 
Soft Schools is a great math website where you can find worksheets, games, and quizzes to help students improve their skills. Their extensive collection of resources are good for both elementary level and middle school learners. The site is very easy to navigate as everything can be accessed from their home page.


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Math Drills 
Math Drills offers thousands of math worksheets that can be printed and used in the classroom or at home. Their extensive selection is categorized by topic and it is easy to find what you are searching for. Each worksheet also comes with an answer key to ensure the work is being done correctly. 


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Math Maven Mysteries  
Math Maven Mysteries from Scholastic is a fun way to reinforce concepts by solving mysteries using the power of math. There are 27 mysteries and each is categorized by concept and level of difficulty. Each mystery is supported by printable sheets as well as audio to assist with new and struggling readers.