celebrating literacy and numeracy
National Literacy and Numeracy Week
in New South Wales 31 August - 6 September 2009
Kids Links
Sites using numbers, shapes, patterns, space and geometry ››
Sites using words, poetry, reading ideas
ABC Games Centre
Fun games including characters from B1 and B2, Rattus, Mixy, Feral TV, the Couch Potato game and more. Hold your mouse pointer over the button on the games page and the wheel in the middle indicates the age appropriateness of the game or activity.
Alfy.com
Play Battleship or Bridges or other mind games. You'll find Alfy reading activities, word, spelling and maths games at this site. Select a game and click on the "Educational Value" button on the navigation bar to read a description about what specific literacy and/or numeracy learning outcomes that the game or puzzle provides.
Australia Post Education Homepage
Write letters, design stamps, find out some interesting facts about the history of Australia's postal system and its high-tech operations and more at this site.
Authors
This site directs readers to thirty-three authors' sites. The authors include Dr Seuss, Jane Yolen, Mem Fox, Steven Kellogg, Pat Hutchins and Bill Martin Junior.
Lots of activities and access to a range of information about authors. Suitable to middle and upper primary.
Chateau Meddybemps
A fantasy site with activities for pre-school children.
Fact Monster
Access an atlas, almanac, dictionary and encyclopaedia from Information Please.
Funny Poetry
An interactive poetry site with a range of activities and advice to young poets.
See how fast you can recite tongue twisters. Fill in the blanks to complete poems; check out some riddles or gather some friends together to recite some poems that need a few characters. There is wide scope to have fun with language. Suitable for lower, middle and upper primary.
Great Web Sites for Kids
More than 700 high quality sites for "parents, caregivers, teachers and others who care about kids". This site is maintained by the American Library Association.
Joan Lennon books
Although Joan Lennon grew up in Canada, she now lives with her family and two cats in Newport-on-Tay in Scotland. Her house is on a hill overlooking the River Tay. Joan writes poetry and stories which have been published in the UK and America.
John Astrop's Portfolio of illustrated books
Samples of John Astrop's illustrated books. See the range of his styles to begin inventing your own characters or animation.
John's Word
1001 Wonderword-type puzzles, some with movie themes, others with everyday themes, like horses, colours, gold, pets, etc. If you like Wonderword, you'll love this site. Invent your own Wonderword and send it in for construction!
Kids' Corner
Children's classic literature, such as fully illustrated copies of Beatrix Potter's works and even an interview with Beatrix Potter's biographer.
Activities include listening to Beatrix Potter stories in English, French, German or Japanese. Full versions of Grimm's fairy tales, Dickens' A Christmas Carol, the Just So stories and the complete Alice in Wonderland. Suitable for middle and upper primary.
Learning Centre Links
Easy and safe searching for children. Web sites with tips for parents. This site seeks to further family literacy through parent-child readalongs.
Literacy Centre
This site focuses on the upper and lower case letters of the alphabet and phonics. However, the letter shapes and sounds are demonstrated using a voice and a tracing pencil which can be a little difficult to navigate.
Students are able to click on the letters etc to hear the sounds or watch them being drawn as well spell out the word (can only place the correct letters in).
Colourful with large letters for demonstrations and activities. It is available in four languages and is suitable for kindergarten and lower primary.
Lovatts Crosswords and Puzzles
The site of the famous crossword family, producers of many of Australia's best known crosswords and puzzles, including Colossus, Mega and Big. Lots of sample puzzles, suited to all ages.
Magnetic Poetry
Reconstruct poetry in the form of fridge magnets. You drag the words around the page to create a poem.
The home page of this site provides a huge range of interesting activities. Suitable to lower primary.
Poetry for Kids
Advice on poetry writing and a range of links to poets and their poetry. Each link has specific activities usually to do with writing poetry and includes links to poets' web sites. Suitable for middle and upper primary.
Princess Poppy
A pretty site to make you feel like a princess and read about the Princess Poppy books.
Scrabble Home Page
The Scrabble Home Page provides access to the world of Scrabble, plus a games page for kids! The games page includes Scrabble Hangman (suitable for upper primary), Scrabble Invader (suitable for lower primary students with good hand-eye coordination), which is good to assist letter recognition and Scrabble Snake.
Starfall
Activities for learning to read. It is great for learning phonics and at the end of each activity, children receive feedback. Some activities are slow to download, however, they are worth the wait.
Activities include watching video stories and songs about the alphabet, chunking words and the activities with the letter Y and vowels. There are interactive stories that let children click and drag letters to make words to match pictures. There are also Voice Sound out words and letters within activities.
Other activities include a magic show called Who am I?, tongue twisters and much more. Suitable for lower and middle primary.
Teresa Flavin Fun page
Teresa was born in New York and for as far back as she can remember, making pictures and telling stories have been her favourite things to do.
She now lives in Glasgow, where she continues to illustrate and to write for young people. Teresa’s travels to places like India, Bali, Mexico, Spain and Ireland to inspire her work.
She once said: I believe everyone should experience the buzz of a book that can't be put down until it is finished. Once that book comes to life in one's mind, it is there always, as inspiring and comforting as an old friend who can be visited again and again.
Welcome to Narnia
The wonderful writer, C.S. Lewis is featured on this site. Activities concentrate on exploring the land of Narnia, providing lots of information about the author and giving information about the movie. It also contains a quiz for the students. Suitable for upper primary.
Sites using numbers, shapes, patterns, space and geometry
Count On
This site includes maths challenges (for older students) and games and activities for younger children, including "Numberland". In Numberland you can find out all sorts of irrelevant facts about lots of different numbers from the magic number square.
Click on "links" on the navigation bar, then select "games", or "puzzles and problems" for a selection of other sites (with star-ratings) to visit to test your maths ability.
Count Us In
This site offers a suite of games designed to help children understand basic number concepts. Useful supporting materials include descriptions of objectives and suggestions for additional (non-computer) activities.
There are fifteen games to practise counting, ordering, sorting and matching with simple pictures and numbers up to 10.
More advanced activities involve simple addition and subtraction concepts or splitting a group in half. Some activities have a defined goal (i.e., a "right" answer), while others allow free exploration. Suitable for early childhood.
Bobbie Bear
A short activity with a series of questions encouraging children to develop, test and explain their strategy for solving the problem.
You can dress Bobbie Bear in as many different outfits as possible using coloured shirts and trousers. It is visually appealing with an interactive opportunity to explore combinations and counting strategies. Suitable for lower to middle primary.
Figure This! Math Challenges for Families
A useful collection of interesting mathematical challenges. An index is available if you are looking for problems with a specific mathematical context.
80 challenges and each includes a question (with optional hints to help you get started), a complete solution and an extension of the initial problem called "Try This". Each challenge also includes a description of some real-world uses of the mathematics involved and links to additional problems and things to think about. Suitable for upper primary/Junior secondary.
Fraction Pointer
This site allows students to explore and visualise relationships between fractions. "What?", "How?" and "Why?" buttons give helpful background information for teachers including detailed instructions, suggestions for use and access to related resources.
There are activities allowing students to illustrate two fractions by dividing and colouring shapes, then find, illustrate and name a third fraction which is between these two. Suitable for upper primary.
Frogs
An animated interactive form of a "classic" interchange problem. Solving the problem involves working out how many moves are required to swap the positions of three brown frogs and three green frogs on a line of lily pads.
A simpler version of the problem is presented if help is required and, when students succeed, they are encouraged to extend and generalise the solution. Suitable for upper primary and junior secondary students.
Investigating the Concept of Triangle and the Properties of Polygons
The geoboard used in the activities on this site illustrates how a "virtual" classroom manipulative can sometimes have advantages over its physical counterpart. In this case, the capacity to use colour helps students to compare the features of the variety of triangles and other polygons they can create using interactive geoboards. This activity is just one from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM)'s excellent E-examples collection - click on "E-examples" in the menu to see the ethers. Suitable for early primary students.
Learning Geometry and Measurement Concepts by Creating Paths and Navigating Mazes
A great series of activities from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM)'s E-examples collection (developed to illustrate the NCTM Principles and Standards for School Mathematics). Teacher notes provide ideas for introducing and using the task in the classroom, as well as suggesting useful areas for reflection. A series of java applets allow students to program the movement of a "ladybug": firstly to hide under a leaf, then to draw rectangles of various sizes, and finally to move through a maze. An extension activity using Logo is also accessible from the "rectangles" page. Suitable for early primary students.
Learning Geometry and Measurement Concepts by Creating Paths and Navigating Mazes
A great series of activities from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM)'s E-examples collection (developed to illustrate the NCTM Principles and Standards for School Mathematics). Teacher notes provide ideas for introducing and using the task in the classroom, as well as suggesting useful areas for reflection. A series of java applets allow students to program the movement of a "ladybug": firstly to hide under a leaf, then to draw rectangles of various sizes, and finally to move through a maze. An extension activity using Logo is also accessible from the "rectangles" page. Suitable for early primary students.
Maths File Game Show
The twelve Shockwave games available on this site provide some fun ways for students to undertake some interactive skills practice in the areas of Number, Algebra, Shape, Space and Measurement, and Data Handling. "Key Ideas" and "Tips" can be accessed during each game, providing hints for playing the game as well as helpful instruction in the relevant mathematics. Another useful feature is the Teachers page which summarises the content knowledge required at each of the three levels for each game (specific links are made to the UK national curriculum, but this is not a barrier to general use). Suitable for junior secondary students.
Maths On The Net
This site emphasises working mathematically. It has a good source of mathematical questions and challenges for students. It was established for NSW country primary schools, but participation of students from interstate and overseas is welcomed.
Activities include new questions every two weeks during school terms, and an archive of previous questions (together with feedback and sample students' solutions). Tasks are categorised in four levels of difficulty.
Students are encouraged to collaborate and to submit solutions for recognition and possible publication on the site. Suitable for early childhood to early secondary (NSW syllabus stages 1, 2, 3 and 4).
Mudd Math Fun Facts
This site is a wonderful source of fun and interesting mathematical snippets, many with presentation ideas and references. Students are able to explore a collection of "fun facts" designed to generate interest, arouse curiosity and cause students to look at mathematics differently. They can create magic squares, do mind reading tricks or find new ways to multiply by eleven! A search capacity, which includes difficulty level, helps students find appropriate items. Suitable for secondary students and beyond.
Number Gym
Interactive activities for building number skills are presented simply and colourfully on this easily navigable site. Students can have lots of fun whilst practising addition, subtraction, multiplication, number naming, place value and fraction skills. Many of the activities have a "help" option which can assist students to see the patterns and relationships they are using. They also make use of important visual aids such as the number line and "100 board", and are accompanied by notes for teachers and/or parents. Suitable for primary students.
Numeracy in the News
This site is an excellent Australian resource and is now a couple of years old, but presents a model of using real-life numeracy opportunities that will appeal to many teachers. Newspaper articles are classified by topic and also by aspects of numeracy involved, making it easy to find something of interest. Students can use this site as inspiration to get involved at looking at the local paper with numeracy in mind.
Activities on the site provide links to full-text newspaper articles (from the Hobart Mercury and other News Limited newspapers) which are suitable for exploring with a numeracy focus. Some articles are also accompanied by suggested questions for students and/or related discussion points for teachers. Suitable for upper primary/lower secondary.
Pythagorean Theorem
This page is sure to give you some new ideas for exploring Pythagoras' Theorem, using both concrete materials and some great computer-based illustrations. Activities consist of 43 proofs and associated Internet links. Some are presented with static diagrams, while others use interactive Java applets. There is also a "Front Page" link to an "Interactive Mathematics Miscellany and Puzzles" site. Suitable for secondary students and beyond.
Rainforest maths
This is an Australian website that offers students from Kindergarten to Year 6 opportunities to practise their numeracy skills using fun animation. Activities are self-checking and self-directed, very colourful and engaging.
Tessellate
This site allows students to create their own unique tessellations online. Students can modify a triangle, rectangle or hexagon by altering the sides to make your own tessellating polygon. They can then experiment with the effect on their pattern of changing colours or editing your shape, and use the instructions given via the "How"; button to print their creations! Instructions, background information and access to related resources are readily available. Links from these pages will also take you to the extensive array of other activities available from Project Interactivate.
Suitable for middle primary and beyond.
© DET 2007