A Few CCSS Aligned and FUN Websites to Check Out

Recently I've found a few great CCSS aligned websites that also have a game-based element built in to help motivate students to succeed. I highly recommend checking them out.

First off is www.zeal.com. It's a site for K-8 that's aligned to both ELA and Math standards. Below is a video explaining it a bit. It tracks what standards students have worked on. You can assign the standards and once they've completed the assigned standards, they can then choose the standards they work on. It's game-based as well in that students build an avatar and earn coins to buy items for their avatar. Which as we've seen from some of our other programs is a good motivator for our students.

Next is www.teachyourmonstertoread.com. This is a super fun FREE website that teaches phonics through a very engaging game. I found this site while on Twitter and set up an account and was immediately sucked in. It's THAT engaging! It's great too because while it initially works on phonics, it moves students then through to digraphs and trigraphs in level 2. Currently they have two levels but level three should be released in early 2015. I HIGHLY recommend this site for K-2.

Lastly, while not a CCSS-aligned site, Kahoot! is just an overall useful and fun site. It's a game-based, blended learning classroom response system. I tested it a few weeks ago in a 4th grade classroom, (Thanks Ms. Culler's class!) and we had so much fun we played 3 different quizzes. We had to remind them repeatedly to quiet down because they were so excited to play the games! How's that for engagement?

It's web-based so it can be used on any device. Signing up is quick is pretty easy. There are quite a few ready-made quizzes that you can use to test out with your class.

If you want help with any of these tools, feel free to send me an email! For the next post, I'll be featuring some great Chrome apps and extensions.  And I'll also have an announcement about new trainings starting in January!

-Kelly