Do You Need HelpTeaching.com?

We recently reviewed the Help Teaching Pro membership from HelpTeaching.com  HelpTeaching.com is a website that offers a plethora of supplemental material from kindergarten through high school in the four main subjects: English Language Arts, Mathematics, Science and Social Studies.

What Makes HelpTeaching.com Stand Out?

There are a few aspects of this particular site that I feel make it stand out.  First, you have the ability to generate and create your own math worksheets, games and puzzles.

For the math worksheets, it focuses on addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, but allows you to set the difficulty level, although there are limits, since it is meant for drilling.  For example, for multiplication, it only does two digit and doesn’t go past 50 for either factor.

For the games and puzzles, you can choose between Bingo (with numbers), Word Bingo, or Word Search.

My kids enjoy word searches and they are a fun way to practice vocabulary and spelling.  We used their word search generator to practice Latin vocabulary.  I especially liked that I could save my worksheets, so if my child lost theirs, or I wanted to re-print it for future use, I don’t have to recreate it all over again.

Second, it allows you to create your own tests.  With the Help Teaching Pro membership, you also have the option of inserting images either from their library or your own and you can have more than the ten questions the free membership allows.  With creating your test, you are given three options.  You can create it all from scratch, you can search their library and add questions or you can just specify a grade level and subject and let them generate it for you.

Once again, it saves your tests, so you can come back and use them again in the future.  I did create a test just to see how it works, even though the curriculum we use comes with their own test.  I found it was fairly easy and gave me options for the types of questions I might want to use.  They even have How To guides to help you write better tests.  While this was not a feature that I utilized frequently, I could definitely see its benefit, especially if you like to create your own curriculum or if you are teaching in a co-op setting.  It would even be a good tool if you want to generate practice or make-up tests for your students.

Last, it allows you to assign lessons and tests to students.  The lessons can be assigned and emailed to the student to do.  The student is sent a link, so they do not need to log in in order to complete the assignment.  You then get a report that tells you how long they spent on the lesson and if they tried the practice questions. Afterwards, you can choose to print the test, or log in to your account and assign them to take it.

My five year old liked taking the reading comprehension tests on the computer.  I had to read her the questions and help her click the answers, but she enjoyed the video that read the story and answering the questions afterwards online.  I could have also printed the questions out, and I did on occasion.

Again, while I felt this was a neat feature, it wasn’t one I would use frequently, simply because I don’t really email my kids their assignments.  However, if I was teaching a co-op, this would be very useful.  Especially since it also allows you to generate reports, so you can have all the information in one place and would know when students accessed the lesson and how long they spent on it.

There are a plethora of lessons and worksheets from which to choose.  At times I found the prospect of searching through them to see if any intertwined with co-existing lessons to be a bit daunting.  There really is so much.  However, I was usually able to find something.  They have tests for many of the most popular books that a child may read at certain grade levels.  For example, my daughter just finished reading A Wrinkle in Time and I was pleased to find a test already available so I didn’t have to create it myself.

Personally, I feel the people who will benefit most are those who can take advantage of the three areas I listed above.  However, there are many worksheets and lessons that are only available with the Pro membership.  For example, you need a Pro membership to access most of the high school materials.  So, really, it will just depend on what you are looking to use it for.  I did find it had a varied and expansive collection of information.