The last couple of weeks has made everyone, especially teachers, parents, and students learn to adapt and use new learning tools. Although many of these tools are not new, they may not be familiar to you or your school. BigSIS has put together a list of useful resources that, hopefully, will ease the burden of online learning. Below is a list of resources and tools we thought would be beneficial for your schools to have. As BigSIS finds new resources, we will be adding them to this list. If your school has resources they think others should know about, please do not hesitate in sharing that with us in order to add them to our list. For suggestions please email us: support@bigsis.com. 

New Resource Updated on April 14

All Grades

The George Lucas Education Foundation is dedicated to transforming K-12 education so that all students can acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to thrive in their studies, careers, and adult lives. Founded by innovative and award-winning filmmaker George Lucas in 1991, they take a strategic approach to improving K-12 education through two distinct areas of focus: Edutopia and Lucas Education Research.

Elementary School

When you think of National Geographic what comes to mind are the yellow magazines that took many of us on amazing adventures. Nowadays they have a large curated collection for curious learners, these activities will keep young learners’ minds engaged in social studies, geography, science, and more.

The creators of Crash Course have also created a second channel geared towards younger students. This bi-weekly show is meant for elementary school kids and covers topics ranging from Earth science to chemical reactions.

iCivic is reimagining civic education for future generations. By expanding their reach to every student in America, young people will grow more informed, more curious, and more engaged in civic life. Teachers and students can access printable lesson plans, interactive digital tools, and award-winning games.

Middle and High/Upper School

Harness the curiosity and creativity of your middle and high school students with a supercharged social studies curriculum that gets beyond facts. Big History Project is a free, online social studies course that emphasizes skill development as students draw mind-blowing connections between past, present, and future.

HippoCampus.org is a free, core academic web site that delivers rich multimedia content--videos, animations, and simulations--on general education subjects to middle-school and high-school teachers and college professors, and their students, free of charge.

Resources for All Grades

We are teachers is the starting point for e-learning. Here you will find 190+ online learning resources for Elementary, Middle, and High school online learning, and remote virtual classroom platforms.

Looking to revamp your lesson plans or get new ideas, head over to PBS Learning Media. Browse by subject, Science, Math, English, Social Studies, even Health, and Physical Education, you can also filter through grades, Elementary, Middle, High School. There are even resources for PreK.

BrainPOP offers in-depth learning on topics across the curriculum for upper elementary and middle school students. Each topic includes videos, quizzes, related reading, and even coding activities. Teachers have access to planning and tracking resources too. If you teach younger grades, head over to BrainPOPjr, which is specially designed for younger kids. Schools can get free unlimited use of BrainPOP during their closure. 

Kahoot! makes teachers' classrooms fun and interactive. It is a way to do learning games, trivia, quizzes, review information and test kids' retention skills. What’s great is that so many teachers already use this platform and make their activities, quizzes, etc public that as a teacher you will probably find something already created that will suit your needs. You can also create your own and share it with other teachers!

Science

Lower School and Middle School 

Scholastics has an awesome resource called ScienceFlix. There you will find 80 different tabs about a variety of topics, with reading material, videos, and even questions designed to make students think. Your students can even do some cool experiments! Please scroll down in the page to find the ScienceFlix link.

Another resource from Scholastics is TrueFlix. In the right-hand column, students will be able to read, watch, explore, and find the truth on a variety of science and nature topics. Each topic has a short video, a book to read, project ideas, and even an activity center. Please scroll down in the page to find the TrueFlix link.

Upper / High School 

ChemMattersOnline is a terrific resource for middle school and high school science teachers. Each issue provides a new collection of articles on chemistry topics that students will find engaging and relatable. The back-issue online library offers interesting downloadable articles on all sorts of chemistry-related topics, while the Teacher’s Guides help you direct your students as they learn from their reading.

LabXchange is a free platform where students and teachers can discover, create, and remix content to build their own learning journey. The content library contains high-quality digital resources from universities and scientific organizations worldwide, including interactive lab simulations, videos, assessments, and more. This resource is also offering to support educators in transitioning to online learning, educators can explore their remote learning resources.

Math

Lower School

Happy Numbers helps teachers deliver quality math instruction, monitor progress, and math growth—all remotely. Students can access Happy Numbers from any Internet-enabled device (even a smartphone!). They are offering Happy Numbers for free for the rest of the school year to ease the challenge of transitioning to online instruction. No strings attached.

Middle School and Upper / High School 

DeltaMath is a website that allows teachers to assign math practice content, follow students' progress and even see where students are having problems. They have material for students from middle school through AP calculus. Students get immediate feedback as they complete the problems. The overview video does a great job explaining how the tool work and DeltaMath is a resource that is always free.

Reading / Literature

Lower School and Middle School 

Audible is opening a trove of tales to help teachers, parents, children, tweens, and teens while away the hours in coronavirus self-quarantine. Stories can be streamed via laptop, phone, tablet or desktop computer.

ABCMouse Early Learning Academy is a comprehensive program that covers a wide variety of subjects for students aged 2-8 (Pre-K through second grade). It offers more than 850 self-guided lessons across 10 levels. 

Read To Lead is a self-directed way that youth (5th-9th grade) can engage in learning. In one session of gameplay, youth will read 500 words, spend 20-30 minutes reading, practice reading comprehension, enhance vocabulary, and more! Unlimited free educator and student accounts as well as lesson plans, additional reading passages, and project-based lessons.

Upper / High School 

Whether you’ve been teaching the same novel for years or are adding a brand-new one to your syllabus, sometimes it can be tough to think of engaging discussion questions, writing prompts, and activities. That’s why HarperCollins has made available over 100+ free teaching guides (for almost any novel you can think of!). Thorough and well written, they often provide just the dose of inspiration that we need. Couple these guides with getting your students signed up for ebooks at your local libraries.

Social Studies

Lower School

Crash Couse World History fantastic YouTube channel provides an engaging glimpse into some of the most notable events and developments in history. With sequences of videos on the World Wars, the history of science, U.S. History and more, it’s a great first introduction or review. 

TrueFlix also has a great selection of social studies/history topics. In the left-hand column, students will be able to read, watch, explore, and find the truth on a variety of people, places, and history. Each topic has a short video, a book to read, project ideas, and even an activity center. Please scroll down in the page to find the TrueFlix link.

Middle School and Upper / High School 

The History Channel not only has amazing educational TV shows, but it also has a plethora of history topics ready for your students. Take a dive into the past, have your students watch a short video and have them read about important points in history.