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Good Starting Points

• BJ Pinchbeck's Homework Helper
  BJ Pinchbeck's site includes more than 735 links in categories including art/music, computer science, English, foreign languages, health, math, news, reference, science and social studies. The new "college companion" section has links to help prepare for and attend college.

• Discovery Education — Homework Help
  Discovery Education created short videos to help students understand topics in English, math, science and social studies. The English page has videos on grammar and composition and is divided into sections by grade levels: K-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12. The math page is designed for students in grades 3-5 and includes videos on addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. The science page includes videos and interactive explorations to help students connect science to things they can see and experience. The videos on the social studies page help students understand the election process and the US presidency. In addition, the "Other" tab contains links to Internet sources for world languages, health, visual and performing arts, research, reference, stories and games, and technology.

• HomeworkSpot
  HomeworkSpot is designed to be a "homework information portal," covering all curriculum areas and offering a breakdown of resources by grade level (elementary through high school). A highlighted site and special theme areas which vary with the season add a nice dimension to the permanent reference links.

• Interactives
  Interactive activities provide an interesting way to improve students' understanding on various topics in math, language, arts, history and science. For example, design a roller coaster, produce a film, view geometric shapes in 3D or write a story. Although the majority of the interactives are designed for high school students, there are several interactives for middle school and elementary-age students. The site is provided by Annenberg Media whose mission is to advance excellent teaching.

• Internet Public Library
  A top-notch resource with special sections for kids and teens. The IPL's pathfinders are research guides to selected topics. If one matches your interest (or your homework assignment), you're in luck! A few parts of this site are highlighted under particular subject topics below.

• Kid Info: Homework Help
  Quality links in a well-organized and clearly designed format. Material is selected for relevance to curriculum requirements.

• Typing/Keyboarding

  • Dance Mat Typing
    Offers an entertaining touch typing program for elementary school children. Lessons are divided into four levels according to difficulty.

  • Peter's Online Typing Course
    Free online typing exercises for beginners.

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Biography

• Biographical Dictionary
  More than 28,000 brief entries. Useful for ascertaining dates of birth and death, finding names of those known for a particular work or event, or as a source of ideas if you're assigned to write about a famous person.

• Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774-present

• Biographies of Inventors
  From Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

• Catalog of the Scientific Community in the 16th and 17th Centuries
  Biographical information on more than 700 scientists of this time period.

• Classical Composers' Archive
  Searchable by name, nationality or time period. Approximately 1500 entries.

• The Faces of Science
  Biographies of African American scientists.

• Mathematicians
  Search for mathematicians of all time periods alphabetically or chronologically. Many biographies include a photo or portrait.

• National Inventors Hall of Fame
  Offers an alphabetically arranged list of inventions; site may also be searched by inventor's name or by timeline.

• Women's Biographies

  • American Women Through Time
    A chronological presentation of American women's history featuring richly varied source material. Formats include diaries, photographs, engravings, lectures, historical newspapers, links to thematic timelines as well as illustrative audio and video clips. Contents may be browsed or searched by keyword.

  • Biographies of Women Mathematicians
    Short biographical sketches, with reference sources cited.

  • 4000 Years of Women in Science
    Find biographies of pre-20th-century female scientists throughout history.

• Women's Biographies
  Nearly 100 very good biographies from Gale Research.

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Economics and Personal Finance

• Bank Jr.
  Learn about money, savings, budgeting and other banking topics. Provided by Zions Bank.

• Economics Education & Financial Literacy Videos
  Watch the videos that were produced to help prepare teachers for the Virginia high school course requirement for economics and personal finance. Topics include economics, income, money management, spending and credit, and saving and investing. The videos are between 10 and 20 minutes long and are presented by teachers, university professors or practitioners.

• Kid's Economic Glossary and Money Meanings
  Scholastic explains basic banking and investing concepts in terms kids can understand.

• The Mint
  Get ready for the real world by learning how to manage money. Learn how to earn, save, spend, borrow, track, give, invest and safeguard money. Includes quizzes and games.

• Money 101
  A series of 23 lessons from CNNMoney covering topics such as making a budget, controlling debt and investing in stocks, bonds and mutual funds.

• MyMoney
  Improve your financial literacy using this collection of US government websites.

• You Are Here
  A virtual mall where you can play games to learn about advertising, business competition, identity protection and scams.

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Fine Arts

• Art Terms
  For definitions of terms and illustrative examples drawn from the fields of fine art, architecture, the decorative arts and art education, consult the award-winning ArtLex Dictionary or the Art and Architecture Thesaurus On Line . ArtLex offers definitions of approximately 3,300 terms, many supported by visual examples of the technique or object under discussion. The Art and Architecture Thesaurus is text only, but covers more than 130,000 terms in relational hierarchies, and is sponsored by the J. Paul Getty Trust.

• Famous Artworks Exhibition
  Includes the profiles of approximately 200 artists from the 13th century to the present, supplemented by a chronological and theme index. Color images of the artists' works enrich the short essays.

• Timeline of Art History
  Overviews, key events and maps are featured in this geographical, thematic exploration of art from prehistory through the present. The site is sponsored by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and features items from its collections as well as links to outside resources.

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History

Links from the library's list of homework websites.

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Language Arts

• Handwriting
• Reading
• Writing

• Handwriting

  • ABC Teach — Handwriting: Cursive Writing
    Download pages to practice writing letters using the D'Nealian cursive method. Some pages are available to members only.

  • Amazing Handwriting Worksheet Maker
    Make custom handwriting worksheets to practice basic printing and D'Nealian cursive.

  • Basic Handwriting For Kids
    Includes blank practice pages, alphabet tracing sheets, and single word images for downloading.

  • Enchanted Learning — Writing Letters and Numbers
    Printouts of letters and numbers to practice D'Nealian cursive and printing. Many worksheets are available for free; site members have access to additional pages and formats.

  • Mr. Kidzone — Cursive Writing Worksheets
    The site includes printable worksheets for cursive handwriting practice and custom tracer pages using cursive, Zaner-Bloser, and D'Nealian fonts.

  • Learning Page
    A free membership gives you access to worksheet pages to practice the Zaner-Bloser and D'Nealian methods.

• Reading
  See booklists for preschoolers, elementary age children and teens; as well as the children's literature, early literacy and teen sections of the library's websites for readers.

• Writing

  • Design215 Word Finder
    Need to find a specific word but can't think of what it is? Search by how many letters it has, what the first or last letters are, or by what letters are included in the word. You can use the unscramble feature to form new words. This is a great tool for finding all words with certain letter combinations (ex. all words with the letters 'aim').

  • Diagramming Sentences
    Learn how to diagram sentences by viewing examples ranging from simple two word sentences to a complex 100 word sentence. Provided by a retired educator and author.

  • Glossary of Poetic Terms

  • Guide to Grammar and Writing

  • Poetry Forms and Terminology
    Explanations and examples of various poetry forms, along with links to glossaries.

  • Resources for Writers
    Purdue University's Online Writing Lab provides this valuable set of guidelines on various aspects of writing. Topics include General Writing Resources, including Punctuation, Grammar and Spelling; Research and Citation Resources; Job Search Writing; Professional, Technical Writing; English as a Second Language and more.

  • Strunk's Elements of Style
    A classic guide on the basic principles of composition, grammar, word usage and misusage, and writing style.

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Languages

• Ethnologue
  The site offers a wealth of information about the world's languages. Find out where Utugwang is spoken, how many people speak Dutch in countries around the world and more.

• Nations and Their Languages
  The CIA World Factbook lists the languages spoken in each nation ranked by the number of speakers.

• Online Language Courses

  • BBC — Languages
    Gauge your fluency level in French, German, Spanish or Italian; and enroll in online courses or view interactive videos to further your understanding. The site also provides some information on other languages including Mandarin Chinese, Portuguese, Greek and Urdu.

  • Chillola - Language Learning for Kids
    A free language learning site for pre-kindergarten and elementary school age children. Kids can learn their first words in categories such as numbers, colors, shapes, animals, food, weather and more. Languages include English, Spanish, French, German and Italian.

  • Free Online Language Courses
    This site contains links to free online courses for many languages; both the quality and quantity of material vary from course to course.

  • FSI Language Courses
    Free language courses developed by the US Foreign Service Institute. More than 30 languages are listed; the courses include text and audio downloads.

  • Language Learning Library
    Includes information on grammar, common phrases and nouns, numbers, time, alphabet and basic pronunciation, dictionaries and culture for the following languages: Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, German, Chinese, Japanese and Russian.

  • LanguageGuide
    View images and see how the word is spelled while you listen to its pronunciation. The site offers information on 11 languages (English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, Mandarin Chinese and Japanese).

• Sign Language

  • American Sign Language University — Fingerspelling
    Fingerspelling uses signs that correspond to the letters in a word. Type a word or phrase to see how it is fingerspelled. Take practice fingerspelling quizzes, learn 100 basic signs or take a free self-study course on American Sign Language. These ASL lessons include videos and photos to demonstrate words and concepts. The site was created by Dr. William (Bill) Vicars, professor at California State University, Sacramento.

  • Signing Savvy
    Signing Savvy has videos of more than 5000 American Sign Language (ASL) signs and other common signs used within the US and Canada. Search for a word or browse signs by category to have the sign demonstrated on video. Words not found in the dictionary will be fingerspelled. Free registration allows access to additional features.

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Literature

• Authors
• Literary Criticism
• 
  

• Authors

  • African American Women Writers of the 19th Century
    This online collection from the New York Public Library offers material from the works of more than four dozen 19th-century African American women writers. Includes fiction, poetry, autobiography and essays. Reproductions of book bindings, title pages and illustrations enrich this primary resource.

  • American Studies
    Under the sponsorship of the University of Virginia's American Studies program, this website presents an online collection of more than 50 classic texts representative of American culture. In many cases, supplementary links to additional materials enrich the electronic version of the original work.

  • American Writers
    American Writers: Journey through History and American Writers II: the Twentieth Century are Web-based offerings of written and streaming video materials examining American writers "who influenced our nation's history." Originally appearing on C-SPAN, each segment discusses the author's background, literary significance and characteristics of the time period during which he/she wrote.

  • Shakespeare

    • Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet
      Well-chosen links relating to many aspects of Shakespeare's life and works.

    • The Works of the Bard

• Literary Criticism

  • Carol Hurst's Children's Literature Site
    This site developer describes the contents as "a collection of reviews of great books for kids, ideas of ways to use them in the classroom and collections of books and activities about particular subjects, curriculum areas, themes and professional topics."

  • Online Literary Criticism Collection
    An excellent resource from the Internet Public Library. Originally designed to offer resources for the study of British and American literature, this site has expanded to include materials touching on more than 20 national literatures. Certain sections are still under development, but coverage is available for Canadian, German, French, Italian, Russian, Spanish, Latin American, Japanese, Chinese and selective Slavic, African, Australian and classical literatures.

  • Shmoop — Literature
    Study literature and poetry and be entertained at the same time. Developed and written by Ph.D. and masters students from top universities, Shmoop's mission is to make learning and writing more fun for high school and college students.

  • Transcendentalists
    Information on this literary and philosophical movement of 19th-century New England. The site also includes links to more information on Thoreau, Emerson and others.

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Math

Links from the library's list of homework websites.

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Science

Links from the library's list of homework websites.

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Speeches

• American Rhetoric Online Speech Bank
  More than 5000 speeches including the top 100 political speeches of the 20th century, movie speeches and Christian rhetoric.

• History and Politics Out Loud
  A collection of audio material that captures "significant political and historical events and personalities" primarily from the 1960s-1970s. Browse or search the collection by date, speaker or title. Many entries offer transcripts in addition to the audio files.

• The History Place: Great Speeches Collection
  Dozens of selected speeches, each with prefatory material to place it in proper historic context.

• History.com: Speeches
  This site contains hundreds of streaming audio and video clips of famous speeches in the fields of politics and government, the arts, entertainment, science and technology, and military/war. Items can be e-mailed.

• TED: Ideas Worth Spreading
  More than 1000 videos of free, short talks related to technology, entertainment, design, science, business and global issues.

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More Links

From the library's list of homework websites.