TutPup
What it is: TutPup is an outstanding, free math and spelling practice website. At TutPup students can compete in fun, educational games against kids from all over the world live. The site reminds me a lot of the World Math Day competition. Students are matched up with other students from around the world where they play fact games and compete in real time to see who best knows their stuff. I love that TutPup is available to students all year long (unlike the World Math Day site), it doesn’t collect personal information about students, and there are several games to choose from each with multiple levels. TutPup helps students build math skills in the areas of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, algebra, and a mixture of those skills. TutPup also helps students build spelling skills with a spelling game, students listen to a word and have to spell it before their opponent. The site is highly motivating, takes into account different learning levels, and builds a variety of skills.
How to integrate TutPup into the classroom: My students absolutely love this website. Any time they can take part in a little friendly competition they are ready to compete. The great thing about TutPup is that it can be differentiated for your different levels of learners. Each student can play games at their own ability level. This keeps the lower math students engaged and feeling successful and the higher level students challenged enough to hold their interest. These types of sites have my students asking, “can I play this game at home too?” When have you ever had a student ask if they could practice math or spelling facts at home?! They truly love the competition of this site and get the added benefit of increasing their math fact recall skills. Use TutPup as a math center in the classroom where students can practice math facts, or a practice center in the literacy block for additional spelling practice. This is also a fun whole class activity with an interactive whiteboard or projector, students can call out the answers to the questions as a class for the teacher to enter. You won’t have to assign this site for homework, students will ask to play from home. Tell parents about this site as an alternative to flash card math fact practice.
Tips: TutPup offers teacher accounts and student accounts for free. However, right now their are no available login ID’s. I contacted TutPup about this dilemma and they are working on a solution. In the mean time, students can access all the games as a guest player. I’ll update this post when TutPup has solved the registration issues.
Leave a comment and tell us how you are using TutPup in your classroom.