List of Student Start pages:

Animal Research Bookmarks

These web sites were collected for students doing animal research in 3rd, 4th and 5th grades. Each site gives factual information about a variety of animals, their habitat and habits. There is no master index, so students are encouraged to visit the different sites and investigate which animals are described on each site.

Baseball Bookmarks

These sites were collected for research and reading for information. Some of the articles are written specifically for children. These sites may also be used to keep track of teams or players and use the statistics for authentic math activities.

Chesapeake Bay, Crab and Fish Information

These pages give factual information about the Chesapeake Bay: its ecosystem, history, plants and animals, endangered species, and efforts to preserve and clean up the bay and its watershed. There are also sites on Blue Crabs and ocean animals riddles written by a 3rd grade class.
 

China

These sites provide simple information for young children who are leaning about China.

Colonies, Revolution and Patriots

These pages give information about the 13  Colonies and American Revolutionary war Patriots.

Folk tales, Myths and Legends

These sites have online folk tales, fairy tales, myths and legends from around the world.  Some are text based and some have illustrations.  There are also several sites with student written stories.  The final section links to sites that give tips for good storytelling.

Food and Nutrition Web Sites

These sites are selected as resources for student learning about types of food and the food pyramid. There is a site that explains food labels and students can even search the USDA Nutrient Database to find the specific nutrients in any food. There is also a data base for fast foods for comparisons.

Iditarod Related Sites

These sites were collected during the 1998 Iditarod when 5th grade students were reading literature books related to the Iditarod. Students followed the race daily and read for more in depth information on the event.
 

Maryland Information

These sites have information about famous Marylanders as well as information about Maryland.

News and Sports Articles for Kids

 
This is a collection of online magazines for kids, including Weekly Reader, Scholastic News, Sports Illustrated, Time for Kids and others written for and by students.

Poetry Sites

This is a short list of sites intended to limit online student time to a few good examples of child written poetry and fun poetry written for children. There is also a rhyming dictionary that children may use to find rhyming words as they create their own poems.

Reference Sites: Elementary Level

These sites were collected as general reference sites that are useful for many situations when factual. current or geographical information would enhance a lesson, provide authenticity to literature or clarify understanding. Short encyclopedia sites give a manageable amount of information and a large number of map sites allow for finding just the right type of map. There are also a dictionaries, biographical dictionaries and thesaurus. You will also find current weather information and satellite images for places around the world. Weather sites were selected for ease of use and fewer advertisements.

Sign Language

This is a list of Web sites that have online Signs.  Look up a sign for a word or learn to fingerspell.  Some sites even offer a quiz feature so you can test your skills.

United States Facts

Bookmarks of sites for student research about the United States.

Child-Safe Search Engines and Educational Directories

 In general, most Internet experiences for elementary students ought to be carefully planned and guided by teachers with specific objectives and purposes related to the content of the curriculum.  On occasion the student may use the Internet as one source in researching a topic. Although it would be most useful to start with teacher designed web start pages or bookmarks that direct the student to previewed selected sites for research, occasionally the use of search engines becomes necessary.  Adult supervision and guidance is appropriate at this level, even with child-safe search engines.  Faced with large amounts of information with no check for readability, level, reliability or bias, adults need to help children determine appropriateness of the information.  In addition, children will need to learn simple Boolean logic and key word search strategies as they might use in searching an electronic encyclopedia on a CD or computer-based card catalog.
 Child-Safe search engines usually find child-safe sites, however, many of them also find sites that aren't particularly relevant to children or may be mostly commercial in nature.  Education directories with search engines, have more appropriate sites that have been reviewed for educational relevance.  These however, may be drawing from much smaller databases and may include some sites that are more appropriate for teachers.  The key to using child-safe search engines, is to use number of them. If you don't find relevant matches on the first page with simple key words, then try several of the other search engines. Because the databases are limited, searching multiple databases will give better results.
 Even though search engines claim to be “safe,” nothing on the Internet can be guaranteed 100% safe.  For this reason, students must be taught how to recognize inappropriate sites and know what to do if they happen to find one.

Click here for tips on using bookmark files as student start pages.