As all my teacher friends can attest, there are a lot of websites that are great as learning resources. And I mean a LOT.
Many of my students access computer games and activities by using a switch, and in my years of teaching, I have accumulated quite the collection of websites for switch use, some for academic purposes and some just for fun when a student has free time. I hate filling up my bookmark bar with a million and five (okay, slight exaggeration) of these sites, and I didn’t like having to search through my chaotic “Teacher Things” Pinterest board to find them all, so in an effort to simplify, I’ve compiled a list of sites that I have found to be useful for varying levels of abilities and needs. I categorized them so I could easily find sites that would work for each student based on need. Some of the sites are repeated below because they fit more than one category of use.
Single-Press Cause & Effect Learning. These sites are for beginning switch users or users who are still working on learning that hitting the switch will produce a result or desired effect. They give the student 100% chance of success because they cannot hit a “wrong” answer.
- SENSwitcher Students can work their way up to multi-press as they improve their skills.
- Priory Woods A fun way for students to activate a short video. Lots of songs and variety of popular TV shows and movies to keep students interested.
- HelpKidzLearn This website has a TON of great cause & effect games and stories for switch use. The free subscription gets you access to a few activities under each category, but you can choose to subscribe for less than $2 monthly and gain access to all the activities.
- KneeBouncers Unfortunately, this site requires a paid membership for almost all activities (although you can sign-up for a one-month free trial). It has lots of games and activities for cause & effect learning and is even great for young children without disabilities.
- Dartboard Hit the switch two times (once for horizontal coordinate and once for vertical) in order to “throw” the dart. While it is easy to participate in this game, the concept may be better suited for higher-level users.
- Papunet First Games Simple clicks allow different pictures to pop up around the screen. There are some simply-for-fun games and some are great for practicing vocabulary of fruits, vegetables, and animals.
- Shiny Learning Very simple games that are lots of fun! Some single hit, some press and hold, and some multi-click activities.
Academic Learning & Stories
- Hiyah Slideshows This website allow your student to use a switch to click through a ready-made slideshow to learn about a concept such as colors, shapes, seasons, holidays and can also be used to increase learning with dolch words and basic math. There are also stories they can read.
- Papunet Games This site is FULL of learning activities. Puzzles, dominoes, memory games, games of precision, sudokus, word exercises, drawing exercises, first games, and more!
- Storyline Online Short videos of famous actors talking about and reading their favorite children’s stories. The story illustrations are “brought to life” for the viewers to watch and all stories are read in around 5-7 minutes.
- Tar Heel Reader Users create powerpoint books that students can read through by having their switch set to left and right arrows or by having the switch “click” the left arrow like a mouse. The cool thing about this website is you can search for a topic (i.e. “Halloween,” “Dr. Seuss,” etc) and find lots of books on that topic. All the books can be set to be read aloud. You can also upload your own books!
- Online Talking Stories The title is pretty self-explanatory. Lots and lots of stories to choose from that are animated and read aloud.
Multi-Switch/Keyboard User Games. These games are for experienced switch users who have moved past the cause & effect understanding and are ready for a challenge. Some of these are pretty high level so make sure you experiment with them first to make sure they’re right for your student.
- BBC Games These games are fairly complex and may be best for two players.
- Dartboard This fun game allows a student to hit the spacebar twice in order to throw darts. Could be used as a cause & effect activity with two single-presses, but the strategy and game itself is probably best suited for a higher-level user.
Enjoy these sites! And please let me know if you have found other ones to be helpful and I will gladly add them to my list.
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Disclaimer: I received no compensation, monetary or otherwise, for endorsing any of these websites. I had no contact with the administration of any site and am recommending them only as sites that worked well and allowed success for my students in my classroom.
simplify the chaos 