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Have you ever asked your students to help you figure out what was going on with your computer or how to get something to work? The fact is that children come into school knowing how to work so many devices. In the society we live in, technology is everywhere and is quickly being implemented in classrooms across the world.
In order to help build engagement, there have been so many websites created to help students learn. My top 5 educational websites for upper elementary in 2021 are all student tested and teacher approved!
First, Flipgird is the perfect way to get to hear all of the thoughts of your students! Teachers start by creating a discussion topic that students will reply to. They will then record short videos on the topic. There are many settings to pick from, so student videos may be shared with only the teacher or with the entire class. Students can then watch their classmate’s videos and even respond to each other by recording another video or leaving an emoji reaction!
- Nearpod
Second, Nearpod can take any lesson and turn it into a highly engaging one! Full disclosure, I love Nearpod so much that I became an official Nearpod Certified Trainer.
Teachers can create their own presentations, upload one from PowerPoint, Google Slides, or search from a library with over 8,500 interactive lessons ready to go.
In addition to this, Nearpod allows videos to be embedded into lessons, so students no longer have to click several links only to get distracted by other ads or pages.
Teachers can also monitor student engagement by adding in virtual reality aspects, polls, collaborative boards, and game-based quizzes. Reports are instantly made to ensure teachers receive all the data they need!
- Freckle
Third, there is so much differentiation and engagement built into Freckle. There are lessons for math, language arts, social studies, and science. Freckle gets to know students just like teachers do in order to automatically differentiate lessons.
Students will always be engaged and challenged without becoming bored or frustrated. Additionally, students earn coins as they work, which becomes a great motivation! Teachers will be able to access all of the reports to see how well students are performing on the different skills being practiced.
- Xtra Math
Fourth, basic math skills are the foundation of nearly every math concept, so it is vital for students to be strong with addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. XtraMath is a free math fact fluency program to help students work on quickly recalling math facts. Students will be thankful they had time to practice before progressing to more advanced topics, such as fractions.
- Zearn
Lastly, since math can be so challenging to learn, students will all be at different spots in their learning. Zearn brings together hands-on teaching with differentiated digital activities. This means that students are learning concepts from their teacher and classmates and then independently working on self-paced lessons. There are so many fun math drills that will make students excited to strengthen their math skills while providing visual representations of key concepts.
Educational websites are the perfect way to bring technology into the classroom while keeping students engaged. Here are some other ways to make math games fun! Whether students are 1 to 1 with a device or have a set to use during centers, students will be excited to explore the different websites provided by the teacher!