Website Resources | The National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented (1990-2013)

If you are just getting started with the idea of independent or small group Type III studies, click here for a few sites within selected content areas to help guide your journey. We have selected one or two within each content area, and you can click on the content area to find others.

Language Arts/Reading
This website focuses on the unique learning needs of precocious readers. Specifically, the author provides browsers with an extensive list of books that are psychologically and developmentally appropriate for young (7-10), but advanced readers. The author organizes her recommendations into 8 categories: picture books, chapter books, timeless fantasy, classic stories, modern fiction 1, modern fiction 2, epic fantasy, and non-fiction.

Just for Kids

The following list of websites provides all students, including those who are advanced readers and writers, with the opportunity to explore a self-selected topic in depth. Precocious readers may want to pursue an author study about their favorite writer or illustrator. Book Links, a magazine designed for teachers, librarians, and media specialists, publishes author studies, essays linking books on a similar theme, bibliographies, retrospective reviews, and other features for those who educate young people. Several websites feature renowned authors and illustrators and invite browsers to explore books, as well as their authors. Some provide students with the opportunity to communicate directly with selected authors.

      Book Links
      Author Studies for Primary Grades (1-3)
      Jan Brett’s Children’s Literature Site

Bibliotherapy
Use the following websites to provide resources for bibliotherapy with highly able readers and writers. Bibiotherapy is the use of children’s books to help young people understand and resolve personal issues. It is a particularly effective technique with avid readers because they are capable of seeing the metaphoric implications of the material not only for the characters in the plot, but also for themselves.

Molding the Minds of the Young: The History of Bibliotherapy
Helping Children with Books

Science
The Exploratorium’s website, in four languages, is as interactive and hands-on as the museum in San Francisco! Thus, it’s not surprising that the website has earned a variety of awards. Monthly, the staff presents “10 Cool Science, Art, and Education Sites”. Recently, the sites included Neuroscience for Kids, Calendars through the Ages, Citizen Kurchatov, DNA for Dinner, Project Primary, Understanding Color, Project Full Moon, and The Learning Matters of Chemistry, among others.

Exploratorium

Mentorships
Provide mentorships for students with a passion in science. Mentors can be located at local universities/community colleges, online, in the business sector, and among parents of young people. Telementoring projects include:

      Scientific American
      Electronic Emissary
      HP E-mail Mentor Program
for (5th – 12th grade students)

Cool Web Sites for Kids
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) maintains an award-winning website that houses a special link to Cool Web Sites for Kids. Students can access a variety of interactive, hands-on activities and resources about: airplanes, the Earth, planets, space travel, stars, and galaxies. All links are chock-full! Once into the planet site, for example, students have a wide variety of options such as, Make Your Own Scale Model of Galileo, Build Your Own Martian Spacecraft, and Gravity Box, in which students compare Earth’s gravity to gravity on the Moon and Mars.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Kids Identifying and Discovering Sites (KIDS) is a biweekly publication produced by K-12 students as a resource to other K-12 students. It is an on-going cooperative effort of 12 classrooms from around the United States. Since 1996-1997, students amassed an archive of sites in science, mathematics, and history, including, for example: Inventions, the Holocaust, and Natural Disasters. Selection criteria are included for readers and can be used by other students who want to use similar criteria for identifying and selecting Internet sites for their own Web pages.

Kids Identifying and Discovering Sites (KIDS)

Social Studies
The American Memory Historical Collection (Digital Collections), a major component of the National Digital Library Program, are multimedia collections of digitized documents, photographs, recorded sounds, moving pictures, and text. There are over 70 collections and some investigate themes such as elections, immigration, inaugurations, presidents, and women pioneers.

The American Memory Historical Collection (Digital Collections)
National History Day

Explore the discoveries and inventions that have changed thinking and history. Some examples include: maps, mapmaking and their role in exploration; photography and the printing press and their ability to preserve the past, the railroads and their ability to bridge people and continents; telescopes and their ability to see into the past and future. A suggested website is Teaching About Turning Points in History. The site provides teachers with strategies and resources to encourage students to think critically about turning points in history and to conduct research about historically significant topics that interest them.

The History Net

Mathematics
This is an award-winning site that contains over 200 pages of information about Fibonacci numbers and the golden section and golden string. Categories of information include: Fibonacci numbers and Golden sections in nature, the puzzling world of Fibonacci numbers, the intriguing mathematical world of Fibonacci and Phi, the Golden string, applications of Fibonacci numbers and Phi, and resources and links.

Dr. Ron Knott

Mathematics Contests and Competitions
Promote student participation in mathematics contests and competitions, including:

Continental Math League (grades. 2-9), Richard Kalman or John Lufrano, (516) 584-2016, www.li.net/-majorbar/cml
Math Olympiads (Division E: grades 4-6; Division M: grade 7), (516) 781-2400, Mathematical Olympiads
John Hopkins Talent Search (grades 2-8), (410) 516-0278, Center for Talented Youth

Problem of the Day, Problem of the Week
Institute “Problem of the Day” or “Problem of the Week”. Gather problems from past competitions of Continental Math League or Math Olympiad at the following sites:

MindWare
Marcy Cook

Books
More contests and competitions can be found in:

All the Best Contests for Kids, ISBN 0-89815-451-0, and
The Ultimate Guide to Student Contests, Grades 7-12, ISBN 0-8027-7512-8.

To make the task of facilitating Type III projects easier, you may want to review the following links. They were selected to help students learn more about independent or small group research opportunities. Some are designed for teachers, but many are appropriate for individual student use.

Electronic Resources to Assist Students in Conducting Research

Mystery Tour – www.teachnet.org/MysteryTour/intro.htm

Experience the fun of being part of an Internet fieldtrip. The only cost associated with this will be postage and 30 stamped picture postcards. In return, your class will receive a United States map, postcards from other tour guide schools, and your class is eligible for prizes throughout the tour.

KIDPROJ, a part of KIDLINK – www.kidlink.org:80/KIDPROJ

At this site teachers and youth group leaders from around the world plan activities and projects for students and other kids age 5 to 15. KIDPROJ is like a “family” who talk to each other, participate in many discussions and work together on many different activities and projects.

Kidpub – www.kidpub.com

Aspiring young writers can submit stories, poems, and data to this site for publication.

Poetry Pals – www.geocities.com/EnchantedForest/5165

In 1998-99 Poetry Pals published up to a maximum of 50 poems per school for the year. Students’ names are not posted to protect the personal safety of young people.

Journey North, A Global Study in Wildlife Migration – journeynorth.org/Sitemap.html

This cite is an ongoing global study of wildlife migration provided by Annenberg/CPM Math and Science project. Participants gather and submit data about migrations, sitings, blooming of plants, etc.

iEARN – www.iearn.org

This cite enables young people to make a meaningful contribution to the health and welfare of the planet an its people by offering 35-40 structured projects, each with a teacher-facilitator, in social studies, science, environment, math, arts, literature, and interdisciplinary areas.

PROJECTS & PROGRAMS – globalschoolnet.org/index.cfm?section=Programs

Projects & Programs provides Internet projects for students. You can design your own project or join an existing project created by other teachers and students. This cite gives access to other organization’s projects.

Online Projects – www.pitsco.com/p/collab.html

This cite provides online projects for students to join. The meta-list has over 80 WWW sites that have information on collaborative projects.

GLOBE – www.globe.gov

Globe is a hands-on program that will link Oceanic and Atmospheric students with other students and with scientists around the world. Students, guided by trained teachers, take environmental measurements identified and designed by an international group of scientists and educators.

Testbed – teaparty.terc.edu/about//about.html

This cite has created several science projects including EnergyNet, Global Lab, Classroom FeederWatch Project, and Cyber March.

Scientist Network – www.madsci.org

At this site there is an archive of questions and answers to scientific ponderings. Also, students can pose research questions. Scientist Network includes a listing of edible and inedible experiments.

Museums Hotlist – sln.fi.edu:80/tfi/hotlists/museums.html

Musuems Hotlist provides a listing of science centers and museums that can be used by the students to locate information for a research project as well as providing contact to museum curators.

HP E-mail Mentor Program – mentor.external.hp.com

The Hp E-mail Program is a structured, project-based program where HP employees worldwide volunteer to telementor 5th – 12th grade students in unique one-to-one electronic relationships. The focus of this program is to help students excel in math, science, professional communication skills and to develop solid education and career plans for life beyond high school.

Department of Education – www.ed.gov/pubs/emath

E-mail based volunteer programs designed to help students master challenging mathematics, science and technology.

My Hero myhero.com

This cite is used to honor heroes and to pay tribute to local heroic figures such as MLK Jr, Mark Twain, Nelson Mandela, Albert Einstein and Rosa Parks. Through this web site parents and children can share their heroes.

KidsConnect – www.ala.org/ICONN/kidsconn.html

This cite is a question-answering, help and referral service to K-12 students on the Internet. The goal of the service is to help students access and use the information available on the Internet effectively and efficiently.

National Student Research Center – youth.net/nsrc/webs.html

NSRC serves as an outlet for student investigations. This site is on-line to assist teachers and their students on how to conduct scientific research. Students can submit their research findings to this site for publication.

Places to Publish Student Products – www.edbydesign.com

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