This past month has been hectic for me; I’ve been working four times more than usual and I feel like I have too many balls in the air; fortunately, this time period has corresponded with our review of Help Teaching Pro by HelpTeaching.com so we’ve been using printable worksheets to help keep the learning on track.
The majority of my work is done after the children go to bed; however, with this workload, I’ve been both tired from late nights, and I’ve also had to try to sneak in a little work during the day, too. I’m not feeling at all organised but I don’t want to fail my children as their education is important. They have their core subjects from which they pretty much assign themselves lessons, but they also need additional learning materials. This is where Help Teaching Pro has come in handy.
HelpTeaching.com doesn’t teach, but can give children extra practice through worksheets games. That being said, they do have links to online lessons that you can assign children, but the majority of these were outside the grade range of my own children so we didn’t delve too deep into this area, but it is worth mentioning.
HelpTeaching.com has tests and worksheets available for children from kindergarten to grade 12, and these can be either printed as physical worksheets or assigned to students for them to complete online. You will find topics such as math, English, science, social studies, music, vocational studies, study skills, life skills, and more, depending on the age of your children.
One of the first areas of Help Teaching Pro that we used was the Math Worksheet Generator. Tristan was having a little trouble remembering the steps for long division and it was driving us all crazy. I had the program generate a couple of long division worksheets and printed them off. Tristan thought it was neat that a worksheet could be made in this way; just for him. After working on them, the process finally clicked for him and he now remembers the steps involved in long division. You can also generate worksheets on addition, subtraction, and multiplication (which I printed for Kallista).
Kallista doesn’t like to be idle after she’s finished her homework and Tristan is still working on his; it gets her all out of sorts, she’s always wanted to know as much as her big brother so she works hard on her own to try to catch up to him. When she finds herself in one of these moods and she insists on doing more schoolwork, that’s the time we head to HelpTeaching.com to see what we can find for her to do.
If the PC is available, I set up a worksheet for her to do right within Help Teaching Pro and I can set it to self-correct so she knows immediately how she’s done without having to wait for me to correct her work. If I know ahead of time that she may be looking for work, but the PC will be in use, then I’ll print off a few sheets at a time to have on hand for her. The colourful seasonal worksheets are always fun.
Did I mention that you have two options; you can to either save to PDF and print the worksheets to use when and where suits you and you also have the choice of assigning them to a student for them to do online either at any time of you can also specify a particular day and time, and you can also put a time limit in which they have to complete them (10 or 30 minutes, etc.). If you assign a worksheet online, then your student will need an email address to receive the link that will be sent to them with the assignment. It seemed that my childrens’ email addresses that ended in .org would not work, so I set them up under my email addresses and then forwarded the links to them, which was a little awkward, but it worked in the end.
I like some of the vocational and life skills worksheets that are available. These are typically for older grades, but because these are more out the ordinary, as well as practical, they caught my attention. I printed ones off for things such as kitchen safety and how to save money on groceries and instead of using them as a worksheet, the children and I used them as discussion starters and all offered our ideas and how we could apply them in our home, as well as how these ideas may or may not work for other families. I’ve just spotted a sheet on embroidery stitches and as I happen to have beginner’s embroidery supplies in the mail to us right now, this will be a useful worksheet!
Of course, if you want to build a bespoke test, you also have the ability to pull pre-written questions from their question library, compose your own questions, or do a mix; you also have the choice of multiple-choice, fill in the blank, short answer, etc.
I am finding it a little awkward to manoeuvre around the site as there are so many things on it, but as we aren’t using this as a core element, but as a supplement when a little something else is needed, I can work with it. The more I look around the site, the more I am finding; like a Harry Potter quiz that my children will have fun with.
A lot of work has gone into HelpTeaching.com, and there’s a bit of everything in there, too. If you’re not sure if it’s for you, you can access a limited number the printable worksheets on their free member plan, but to have full access and to use the test generators, you will want the Pro plan that we’re using. This isn’t a program we’ll necessarily use every week, but I have bookmarked the site for the children so when they’re interested in a topic they can search for content and test their own knowledge or use the worksheets as a starting place for more research. And of course; I like the option of having something at my fingertips for those days when I’m extremely busy or not feeling well but the children’s education must continue.
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