Teens Educational Resources and Homework Help
Click the links below for some great digital resources geared toward teens!
Goodreads allows you to get book recommendations, keep track of what you’re reading, join a book club, answer book trivia, and much more!
Seaching for Accelerated Reading information on a title? This site by Renaissance Learning will allow you to search by title to find grade levels and point values.
CliffsNotes “Explore, study, review” with CliffsNotes, “the original and most widely imitated study guide.”
PinkMonkey The “World’s largest library of free online literature summaries, with over 460 study guides/book notes/chapter summaries online” can be found here!
BookRags Bragging to have “everything you need to study or teach literature,” BookRags is a site to search for literature homework help and more!
GradeSaver will help you reach your grade goals with study guides written and edited by Harvard students.
JiffyNotes has free study guides that “focus on literary analysis” for both classic and contemporary literature.
Shmoop includes a free online homework and writing helper and is a great resource for literature lovers!
SchoolBytes has four main categories (English, History, Math, and Papers) and plenty of helpful information including plot summaries and math help!
High School Ace is a great place to find the “best free educational resources for teens.” You can find homework help, test study guides, games, puzzles and more!
MIStudentAid offers resources for Michigan young adults looking for funding for college, including a scholarship database and social media scholarship alerts!
Learn How to Become is an excellent resource for exploring what kind of school, experience, or mixture of the two is best based on your career interests! Search for a job you might like and then read about options for pursuing it!
If a career you’re interested in recommends an apprenticeship, visit the Department of Labor’s Apprenticeship portal to find openings near you and in many areas of our country.
If your interests require prior experience without a formal apprenticeship, consider an internship! The College Student Internships page will help you to determine if an internship is right for you, and how to tell a good position from a poor one.
The College Learning and Resource Center has resources compiled by a panel of experts to help you investigate aspects of college life which you may be interested in. There is also a section for understanding and negotiating job offers helpful if you’re finishing college.
Student Voters’ Guide: College students can use the BestColleges.com Student Voters’ Guide to explore voting resources and advice!
Check out the Alex Awards, awarded to ten books written for adults that have special appeal to young adults, ages 12 through 18, or the Michael L. Printz Award, which honors excellence in literature written for young adults. Also check out YALSA’s teen blog The Hub, which has interviews with young adult authors, information on book lists, and a weekly round-up of young adult author tweets.
Finally, a YouTube channel to help with history! Historyteachers adapts popular songs into history lessons. They’re funny, informative, incredibly hard to stop watching, and a good introduction to a lot of subjects that teens will be learning in history.
Michigan resources
Michigan residents or Michigan library or school access only.
Colleges and Career Readiness
Includes a resume builder where you can save, edit, and print. Explore a variety of careers including allied health, law enforcement, and nursing. Prepare for occupation exams including civil service, commercial driver’s license, cosmetology, teaching, and more. Prepare to join the military or become an officer. Create a free account to access tools to help you do well on these exams.
Practice tests, preparation eBooks, and tutorials for the ACT®, SAT, 12 AP subjects, PSAT/NMSQT, and TOEFL iBT® exams. Create a free account to access tools to help you do well on your college admissions tests and essay. Create a free account to access tools to help you do well on your college admissions tests and essay.
Designed for two-year colleges, this resource offers support for vocational programs. Subjects include: counseling, biotechnology, cosmetology, fashion design, forensics, graphic arts, health information technology, law enforcement, and veterinary assistant.
Homework
More than 450,000 biographies. Includes complete full text run of Biography Today and Biography Magazine as well as thousands of narrative biographies.
Nonfiction content geared for K-12 students. Includes over 132,000 encyclopedia articles, 103,000 images, 7,500 multimedia elements, more than 27,000 eBooks, and novels and essays. Tools include translation for 50+ languages and read-aloud functionality. Includes Lexile ranges and alignment with Michigan Department of Education Academic Standards across a variety of subjects.
Provides hundreds of popular magazines and reference books for high school libraries. Covers subjects such as art, history, sports, and music. Includes thousands of biographies and primary source documents. Also includes photos, maps, and flags. Pulls content from MAS Complete, Consumer Health Complete, Newspaper Source Plus, eBook High School collection, Applied Science & Technology Source, and Vocational Studies Premier.
Magazines and reference books for middle school students. Includes thousands of biographies and primary source documents. Subjects include history, current events, science, sports, and biographies. Also includes photos, maps, and flags. Pulls content from Middle Search Plus, Primary Search, Newspaper Source Plus, and the eBook K-8 Collection.
Includes over 14,000 short stories and 54,000+ poems. Covers information on thousands of authors and their works. Topics include: plot summaries, literary criticism, book reviews, novels, and author interviews.
Designed for high school libraries and offers coverage of popular high school magazines and reference books. Wide range of subjects offered including art, history, sports and music. Over 1,000,000 photos, maps and flags.
Provides different views about issues that help students develop critical thinking skills. This resource brings balance and perspective to contemporary issues using arguments from experts.
Read
For high school students and educators. There is a selection of teacher resources and titles align with Common Core Curriculum Standards. You may access the full text of these eBooks from your computer, or download titles to most popular portable devices.
Contains information on over 260,000 fiction and readable nonfiction titles. Features lists of award-winning books, book discussion guides, Read-a-Like recommendations, and complete series information. Also includes reader ratings and reviews. Create your own reading wish list.
Discover millions of books available from 400+ Michigan libraries.
Resources for everyone
General
The Homework Spot
You need it? They have it. A huge directory of homework resources by subject as well as project ideas and help with writing.
Internet Public Library Kids’ Space
Search for your subject and get a list of resources chosen by librarians around the country.
Internet Public Library Teen Space
Links to topics and resources specifically of interest to teens.
Games
Find a game to play while you wait.
Civics
Ben’s Guide to U.S. Government for Kids
Choose a grade level then look around for information on how the U.S. government works.
English
Merriam-Webster Online
How do you spell that word? And what does it mean? Try this famous dictionary and thesaurus for help.
Resources for Writers – the OWL Handouts
Grammar, spelling, parts of speech, and more.
Sparknotes.com
Study guides for English literature.
Geography
United Nations
Information about the United Nations, global issues, and information about UN member countries/states.
Flags of the World
Thousands of flags from around the world.
Encyclopedia of Greek Mythology
Huge resource for Greek Mythology.
History
American Memory
Historic photograph collections of United State’s history.
USHistory.org
Hundreds of resources about American History
The American Civil War
Civil War resources including battles, biographies, medicine and more.
Civil War
http://www.bartleby.com/65/ci/CivilWarUS.html
Columbia encyclopedia summary of the Civil War including causes, battles and links to detailed information.
Civil War Maps
Search for maps by location, subject or alphabetically.
Gettysburg Address
See a copy of the original Gettysburg Address writing by Abraham Lincoln and read about how it was written.
U.S. National Archives and Records
Get primary source documents for American history.
Mr. Dowling’s History Passport
Links to information on counties, culture and history.
Math
Math Reference Tables
Math tables, algebra formulas, and more.
Math.com
The World of Math online.
Graph Paper
Used your last sheet of graph paper? Don’t worry, you can print out different kinds of graph paper here.
Science
The Exploratorium Science Museum
The Exploratorium has a web site of over 15,000 web pages exploring science, art, and technology including science experiments and activities.
Science Fair Project Resource Guide
Find out how to do a science fair project and get ideas of different projects you can do.
Science News for Kids
Science news, games and information to keep you up to date on science in the news.
The Why Files
Find out the science behind the headlines.
NASA
Thousands of pages of resources on astronomy, planets, comets, astronauts and new discoveries of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.