Worksheets and Tests from HelpTeaching.com (A Schoolhouse Crew Review)

Pop Quiz: Where can homeschoolers go online to find worksheets, lesson material, tests, and quizzes for all subjects and all grade levels? The answer is HelpTeaching.com! We've been using their Pro Plan for the past several weeks for this review.

HelpTeaching.com is a website that offers tests and worksheets, lesson materials, and educational games for all grade levels; and in all subject areas. Some of their vast library of materials are available with free memberships, but with the Pro Plan that we've been reviewing, we have unlimited use of the Test Maker and Test Room features, as well as access to all the premium content. Pre-made tests and worksheets, and their answer keys, are printable or may be administered online using the Test Room feature. All the content is organized by grade and by subject to make it easy to browse and find what you need. The Test Room is a platform that can be used to have students take the tests online. There is even a Test Maker feature, which allows you to customize your own test.

There is also a large library of lessons for middle and high school levels. These are video lessons from sources such as Khan Academy and Bozeman Science, along with short introductions, links to other free resources, practice questions, and links to longer tests and worksheets. The lessons are a great resource for students who are doing self-directed learning.

The Game Generator allows you to create word find puzzles and bingo cards for some fun ways to reinforce lessons. 

How did we use it?  I have two high school students and both have some coursework they are doing this year that either doesn't have written work included or has only a limited amount. So my main focus for HelpTeaching.com has been the printable worksheets to supplement those areas of study.

Thanks to the easy organization by subject, I was able to quickly find all the available tests on the topics I needed to address. I made the most use of the materials for Physics, which is what Landon has been working on, so let me take you on a quick tour of what we did. On the main Tests and Worksheets page, there are menus by grade level or by subject. Down the sidebar is a set of quick links to browse the printables:

Clicking on the "Science" heading in that list opened up a sub-set of headings:

And the more detailed listing featured some of the most recent worksheets that had been added to the library available.

In all, there are well over 100 worksheets and tests for middle and high school level Physics. Those are also sorted into subjects such as Forces and Motion or Light and Optics. By browsing that list I was able to find plenty of tests and worksheets to print out that would provide Landon with extra practice in doing calculations and written quizzes that assessed his understanding of every Physics topic that he would encounter in his curriculum. 

Each could be printed or downloaded as a pdf, and the answer key could be viewed online or printed. Each test can also be taken online in the Test Room or scheduled to be taken online by the student later on.  I chose to print all the tests I wanted to use, because our need was for more written work. I graded his completed tests while viewing the answer key online, but the answer key could be printed as well. We also tried out the Test Room and Test Maker, however.

With the Test Maker, you can choose questions from the content already on the site to compile your own test, or you can add your own questions to create a completely customized test. I tried choosing the questions I wanted to use from what was available on HelpTeaching.com, and I also did it by putting in the questions from our own materials. You can create multiple choice, fill in the blank, true or false, or open ended questions, so it's quite versatile!

The Test Room allows you to email an invitation to the online test to your students, or create a link that you can give them if they're not going to access it right from the email. You can choose to have time limits or not for the tests. I did have trouble figuring out how to add my students and classes, and just found it easier to use the "Take Now" option offered along with the print or download options on each test page. 

I also was very excited to find some useful worksheets in the Life Skills for Teens section. Landon is also doing a Consumer Math course, but it's a computer based course and as such it doesn't have written work that we can print and show. So these worksheets on Money, Credit, and Debt Management are especially handy to us!

I was delighted to find a large selection of tests covering music theory and notation, history of music, composers, and musical instruments; and a few styles of printable composition paper. This was a section I hadn't even considered in my initial look at the website, so it was a great discovery. Kennady is studying guitar, piano, and voice, so having some ready-made tests I can give her to make sure she is understanding all the music theory is wonderful.

We made limited use of the online lessons, but I was so impressed with how much is available. This is the list of just the Physics lessons, so as you can see, there is a lot here! The symbols show where the video portion of the lesson come from - Khan Academy, YouTube, or HelpTeaching.com - and a grade level and approximate running time is also shown. The lesson can be viewed immediately, or assigned to the student. (Our internet speed is often slowed down, making online video difficult to watch, which is why we didn't spend a lot of time using this part of the site) This section of the site would be extremely valuable to a self-motivated student putting together a course of study based on their own interests. 

What we liked best:

• The huge library of subjects covered, especially in upper grades, makes this a valuable resource for home educators. We concentrated our use in the Physics and Life Skills subject areas, but there are also middle and high school level materials available for Visual and Performing Arts, Music Theory, Literature, Algebra, Geometry, Sports, all branches of Science, History, Economics, and more.
• There were so many subject areas to choose from that I wondered whether I would even need to create my own tests! But the Test Maker is such a cool feature, and it meant that I could put together a very focused and customized test for exactly what my student was working on. That's a wonderful option to have when you're using curriculum that doesn't follow a "standard" scope and sequence for a particular grade.

What I need to mention:

• I had a very hard time figuring out how to send an email link to a scheduled test to my students. So that part of the website was not at all intuitive - to me, anyway. There was a link to import my class list, but I didn't have a class, just an individual student. Finding instructions to do that was frustrating, and I finally found a way to get the link to send to my student almost by accident. I would recommend that HelpTeaching.com provide some clearer instructions for this feature. That said, that really was the only part of the website that I had any difficulty figuring out!

Our bottom line:  The more I look at what's available already on HelpTeaching.com, as well as the flexibility of being able to create my own tests, the more convinced I am that the annual Pro Plan membership is a bargain for home educators. Especially for those of us pulling together some of our own courses of study, or using non-traditional curriculum, the lessons and printable tests and worksheets are a very valuable supplement and a true help to our teaching efforts.

Would you like some HelpTeaching in your homeschool? Here's what you need to know:

Visit the website: http://www.HelpTeaching.com

Pricing: Some of the resources are available with Free Membership. The Pro Plan is available for $24.95/year and gives access to all of the site's content along with unlimited use of the Test Maker and Test Room features.

Age Recommendation: HelpTeaching.com has educational materials for students K-12.

You can connect with HelpTeaching.com on Facebook, on Twitter, on Google+, and on Pinterest.

Visit the Schoolhouse Review Crew blog for more information and to read other reviews. 

Don't miss a coffee break! Subscribe to Homeschool Coffee Break by Email!

 ©2006-2016 Homeschool Coffee Break. All rights reserved. All text, photographs, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written consent of the author. http://kympossibleblog.blogspot.com/

I have done my best to provide accurate pricing and links at the time this post originally appeared. Please be aware that these may change.