grade3Links

=Helpful Resources by Unit - Grade 3=

It Doesn't Have to Rhyme

 * Suggested projects:**
 * Students could use the Read-Write-Think website to create Acrostic and Shape poems (Reminder: poems need to be printed when done, they can’t be saved easily).
 * Students can listen to poems being read at the Favorite Poem Project website.
 * Students can use the online Profile Publisher to create a profile of an abstract concept (ex., onomatopoeia).

[|1000 Images on the Tip of My Tongue] - This website presents idioms organized in categories in **English, French and Spanish**. After choosing a category, students see a list of matching expressions. They can hear the idioms pronounced and used in sentences. This site offers a new and different feature than most idiom sites: a link to an equivalent idiom in French or Spanish! The only idioms here are idioms with similar expressions in the three languages, though they are not directly translated. By clicking on Activities, students can see selected idioms in animated cartoons with sound.
 * Resources:**

[|Favorite Poem Project] - Americans saying poems they love

[|Shape poem maker]

[|Acrostic poem maker]

[|The Magic Key Adventures] - This site (created by the BBC) offers nine interactive language arts activities. //HMS Sweet Tooth//discusses "full stops" also known as the ends of sentences. //Lug and the Giant Storks// talks about capital letters, and there are several other topics. Once you click on the activity you wish to teach, you are presented with a choice of "Game, Worksheet, or Teachers Resources." The //Teachers Resources// include detailed lesson plans with standards (matched to UK standards), extension activities, and other classroom ideas.

[|Profile Publisher] - This tool creates professional looking profiles of students or for a character in a book, historical figure, animal, or scientific object/concept. Amazingly, you may choose to set up a profile for nonliving creatures or even abstract concepts. You simply type in the requested information into the boxes, and immediately, you have a perfect profile layout, ready for photocopy publishing. (Saving your profiles is not an option, so all must be printed immediately.)

[|Silly Books] - This site offers animated books with audio (some authored by children), jokes, cartoons, interactive games, and more. **Some books are in Spanish**. Hint: Have your promising writers submit books for possible publication at this site (with parent permission, of course!). SillyBooks does the illustrating and audio.

Healthy Living

 * Suggested projects:**
 * Students can use Kidspiration to group food in ways that make sense to them. At the end of the unit, students should group food again in its proper groups (assessment).
 * Students can use nutritional activities online, such as Food timeline and Monster nutrition.
 * Students can create and illustrate a food and activity journal using Word or Publisher.

[|Cool Food Planet] - Lots of nutrition information, for both kids and adults. Includes a nutrition quiz and information on reading food labels. **Available in five languages, including French, Spanish and English.**
 * Resources:**

[|Educalia] - Nutritional game where students have to sort food into its proper categories. **Only available in** **Spanish**.

E-learning for Kids - Check out this site offering free learning courses to students in science, language arts, English language, math, health and life skills, and computer skills. Choose from a wide variety of different learning experiences in the subject areas for earning in a fun and engaging way. Each subject area has countless interactives ready to go! Detailed instructions are provided for each activity. **Available in English, Spanish and French.**

[|Fast Food Facts] - Fast food nutrition facts by restaurant, food category, or specific food item

[|The Incredible Adventures of the Amazing Food Detective] - Nutrition game where students have to identify what each person needs to be healthier

[|Kids Health] - Articles about healthy living written for kids. **Available in Spanish and English**. Particularly useful articles are [|Be a Fit Kid]/[|Cómo ser un niño sano], [|What Being Overweight Means]/[|¿Qué significa tener sobre peso?], and [|Eating for Sports]/[|Alimentación para los deportes].

[|Nutrition Explorations] : [|Monster Nutrition game] - students identify food groups of certain foods and answer nutrition questions

[|Nutrition on the Web] - designed for teenagers, but has a lot of useful information including common nutrition myths, recipes, and a calorie database of common foods. **Available in English, Spanish, and German.**

Produce for Kids - "Produce for Kids" provides information and activities to promote healthy eating habits for children. There are online games like Curious George Juggling Produce which includes counting and healthy eating concepts. There are also a variety of kid-friendly recipes to try! There are links for Kids, Grown-Ups, and Teachers. The Teachers link includes lesson plans, activities, printables, and more. The “Kids” link includes about 10 interactives all related to good nutrition (and even some basic math skills).

[|The Food Timeline] - shows what people have been eating from 17000 BC to the present day

Track Your Progress - This site, created and maintained by the American Heart Association, is a great place to organize a successful walking plan. Our reviewers even wanted to start after exploring the site! The registration is a short, three minute process requiring name, email address, etc. Students can use their school email address to register.The site has excellent status tracking features including walking progress, an activity diary, and a nutrition diary. This would be a great resource for physical education and health classes. Also, it serves well as part of the school district's wellness policy in an attempt to increase the health of all the members of the school community.The site has a short, ten question quiz that helps diagnose where an individual should start with their level of walking to prevent burnout and increase the chances for success. The site is easy to navigate and has minimal advertisements.

People on the Move

 * Suggested projects:**
 * Students can explore online map puzzles, to get a better sense of where countries are located.
 * Students can exploration the world using Google Earth, to see where their families have moved from and to. Advanced users could create their own tour showing the migration of their families.
 * Possible tie-in with math – 2D and 3D shapes with Google Earth
 * Students could create a diary of a person (real or imaginary) using Word who traveled a long distance.
 * Students could create a flyer using Publisher for someone who is moving, with pointers of how to make the transition to a new city easier.
 * Students could do a Graph Club project where students graph the results of a family survey.

[|BeelineTV] - This online TV resource offers instant streaming of TV news, sports, music, and cultural programs from **up to 400 different countries in many languages**. With a Windows Media Player or other player (downloading directions given at the site), teachers can have television on classroom computers instantly. Foreign language teachers can show programs featuring their language group. English language TV comes from the U.S. and the U.K. Some examples of “TV” places include Dubai, France, Jordan, Kuwait, Japan, Korea, China, Poland, Denmark, Russia, and countless others.
 * Resources:**

[|Gold Rush]

[|Interactive Online Maps] - includes map puzzles as well as maps of the world and individual countries

[|Make Your Own Flag] - T his site tickles students' creativity by having them create flags all about themselves. Students choose colors, hobbies, pets, sports, climate and/or location, letters, and numbers to represent their personality and life. Once the flag is completed, students are able to print the flag, start over, or send to a friend.

[|National Geographic World Atlas for Young Explorers] - activities that go along with the print atlas of the same name

[|Smithsonian Images] - This website contains a huge collection of images from the Smithsonian, from such categories as [|Air and Space], [|Art], [|Cultural History], [|Technology History], [|Military History], [|Natural Science], [|Political History], and photographs on [|the National Mall].

Matter

 * Suggested projects:**
 * Students could create a picture book or slideshow showing the changes matter can go through.
 * Students could do a Kidspiration grouping activity, grouping the different states of matter.
 * Students can explore Matter websites, such as Change It! And Solid Liquid or Gas?
 * Students could be put into small groups, each concentrating on a different form of matter. Each group could create their own dance showing how their form behaves. These performances could be videotaped and shown to parents in the evening or hosted online.

[|Building Blocks of Matter] - matching and concentration games dealing with Matter vocabulary. Also includes a Word Search and Flashcards. Also, take a look at the [|Characteristics of Matter hangman game].
 * Resources:**

[|Change It!] - an interactive activity where students can place items in a virtual refrigerator or oven and see how the object changes (example, ice cream in the oven melts, changing from a solid to a liquid).

[|Characteristics of Materials] - an interactive activity where students can test different materials to determine if they are flexible, strong, transparent or waterproof. There is also [|an activity] where students can group different types of materials (glass, wood, metal and rubber.

[|Chem4Kids: Matter] - a good resource for teachers to use when planning lessons, this website explains the states of matter and phase changes, then goes on to mixtures and compounds. The website has a decent amount of useful pictures and a quiz on every subsection.

[|Discover Primary Science] - Come to this site to view animation videos, practice online science activities, and learn about science at this interesting site. The videos bring many important science topics alive, including the physics of motion, structures, and more. Examples of movies include "Cleaning Dirty Water," "Exploring Lungs," or "Bouncy Custard Balls." Topics vary from pollution to the human body to levers to making homemade bouncy balls!

[|La materia que nos rodea] - **Available only in Spanish**

[|Les états de la matière] - **Available only in French**

[|Particle Adventure] - The fundamentals of matter and force. **Available in English, French, Spanish and Dutch.**

[|Properties of Matter] - developed by the National Science Resource Center, this website explains the properties of matter including density, temperature, mixtures and solutions

[|Solid Liquid or Gas?] - a game from Encyclopedia Britannica, where students have to match phases of matter to items in that state (example, liquid to orange juice)

Adaptation

 * Suggested projects:**
 * Students could create a PowerPoint presentation of their particular animal and its adaptations. Students could also do this creating a completely new animal adapted to particular habitat.
 * Students could create a dramatic presentation (skit, song, dance, etc) showing an animal’s adaptation journey. These performances could be videotaped or performed live at the culmination of the unit. Students could utilize different media (specifically images and audio) during their presentation.

[|Animal Fact Guide] - has some great information on some common types of animals, though it is not terribly comprehensive
 * Resources:**

[|Animal Needs]- this website encourages students to think about the kinds of adaptations animals have made to their environment

[|Build a Food Web] - Come to this site to learn about food webs with skunks, plants, mice, insects, lizards, and other animals. This interactive site challenges you to connect the lines to demonstrate the order of the food web. Extend the activity by having students create a web of their own from scratch using clip art or free images from Flickr or PowerPoint. [|Build Your Wild Self] - Unleash the creativity and the wild self in your students and learn about animal adaptations and species in the process. Use this free site to add different animal parts to create a new “wild self.” No registration or logins are required. Enter a name, choose boy or girl, and add various body parts. Use body parts from a variety of other animals. View the names of the animals as you mouse over each part. When done, click finish and view what is "wild about you." Paragraphs describing the body parts of the animals chosen are very informative and a species name is also generated for your creation.

[|Critter Cam] - A field trip to the reefs off Belize? A chilly trip to see polar bears? Grizzlies? This may seem far-fetched, but these trips are only a few clicks away on your computer. This site, created and maintained by National Geographic takes students to LIVE video of many animals and places throughout the world. 24-hours a day and year-round, you can watch the “WildCam Africa.” The “Wildcam Belize Reef” and “Wildcam Kakadu are both available year-round, but only during daylight hours (where the camera is located). There are also seasonal cameras LIVE showing Polar Bears, Seals, Cranes, and Grizzlies!

[|Human and Animal Habitats]

[|MARE's Build a Fish] - MARE provides an opportunity for young scientists to create their own fish with features and adaptations that are appropriate for a specific habitat.

[|Squish the Fish] - Help Squish the Fish change his appearance to avoid becoming a meal for Big Tooth Blob. This interactive activity will introduce or review how animals use camouflage, body armor and defensive behaviors to avoid being eaten by predators. There are links to the Shedd Aquarium website to view fact sheets and photos of the fish in the activity. Site includes coloring pages that can be downloaded using Adobe. **Also available [|in Spanish].**

[|Wildlife Filmmaker] - create your own animal video by using clips, sounds, music and captions  Working on the Food Chain - Follow this animated story to learn about the different food chain roles and the animals of the Savannah that fill these roles. Read the words and watch the organisms move across the screen (and even listen to the sounds of a few -- so turn up the speakers). Follow the story to the end and be sure to click on the joke. Not only is there more information but a knee-slapper pun of a joke as well.

**__Animal Pictures__**
[|Animal Photo Gallery: National Zoo] - sorted by type of animal and habitat. Can also search by animal name.

[|Animals Public Domain Images] Hundreds of animal images nicely organized in folders, free for any personal and commercial use.

[|Animal Planet: Animals A to Zoo] - this website is made by Discovery and includes descriptions and photos of many different kinds of animals

[|Encyclopedia Britannica] - can search by animal name and then click on Images to view all available photos of that animal

[|National Geographic Kids] - can search by animal name or view photos by type of animal

[|National Geographic: Creature Feature] - can view animals by species, by habitat, or can just scroll through a large list of animals

[|Picsearch] - searchable image gallery, all pictures are supposedly kid-safe

[|Pics4Learning] - copyright free images and all safe for kids!

[|Animals Images] Hundreds of free animal images.

(if all else fails) [|Flickr: Creative Commons] - this is a searchable inventory of all pictures available on flickr that are licensed through Creative Commons, so they are available for educational use. I strongly recommend a teacher previews searches before letting students use flickr, as pictures are not currently filtered by content (though WIS's filter will get rid of most offending images).

The Story of Money

 * Suggested projects:**
 * Students can use money and math websites that help students work with cash and change.
 * Students pick a job and research the salary for that job. Students then pick a house and make lifestyle choices and a budget dependant on their salary. Could use Excel to tally up the budget.
 * Students can invest in a virtual stock market

Cash Out - Strengthen money skills using this interactive about making correct change. Select game play options including difficulty level (there are 3 levels), whether hints are displayed, and if the amount of change can be displayed. Players try to sell as many items as possible and making change along the way before the time runs out. Animal customers buy items and players click the coins to make the correct change and then click "give change."
 * Resources:**

[|Changemaker] - Choose a difficulty level and a national currency (Canadian, American, Australian, British, or Mexican), then start earning money in the virtual piggy bank by calculating the correct amount of change. Questions increase in difficulty as the value of the piggy bank increases. [|Commerce WOW Zone] - Written to meet National Council of Teachers of Mathematics standards, CommerceWOW!Zone provides children and teens with a better understanding of the value and usage of money. The under-12 group follows the adventures of Penny Arcade and her friends as they learn about money through videos and exciting, interactive games.

[|Learning to Use Money] - This site includes the history of money and a full description of coins and bills and ways to combine them. Practice counting money and calculating change with realistic-looking money.

[|L'Euro Pour Tous]

[|Practical Money Skills] - This site offers lots of information on money management for students of all ages. You can find curriculum ideas, classroom resources, student activities, games, and more. Some links of particular interest include the curriculum links to activities (and lesson plans).

[|Savings Quest Game] - This practical and inventive website presents students with a fictional budget. Students can choose their "character" and career. Then students choose the type of living space they wish to rent, what short term goal they would like to save towards (for example, a new computer or vacation), how much money they need each month for entertainment and food, and other NEEDS or WANTS. [|Show Me the Money] - This highly motivating website is all about the stock market. This WebQuest challenges students (in groups of 3) to invest $5000 in a "virtual" stock market. Students must research, evaluate and choose stocks to track. Students must add, subtract and graph their stocks.

[|Shopping Math] - Students are given a specific amount of money to spend in this virtual toy store. Basic addition, subtraction, counting and money skills are all necessary to play this great game!

[|Tips for Kids] - This site features many modules (similar to lesson plans) in PDF format all related to money and economics. You can download the ENTIRE curriculum FREE! Each module includes four units of study. Module topics include Business Building, Mastering Finance, Economic Encounters, and Money & Me. There are also links to articles about finance (What is a Bond, Risk and Return, and others). At the "Resources" link there are four interesting calculators: Dollar Cost Averaging, Expected After-Tax Return, Staying Ahead of Inflation, and Time Value.

[|You are Here] - lots of activities using advertising and currency, based in a mall. Created by the Federal Trade Commission.

[|Young Investor] - If you are looking for a new way to teach your student about money and the economy...check out this gem! This site has articles and interactives for students of all ages (preK-grade 12). Some of the younger grades have only one or two activities, while upper elementary through high school have a wide choice of both articles and interactives. Topic examples include Budgeting, Sharing Your Money With Others, Understanding the Stock Market, and MANY others. There are links for teachers, parents, and students.