I usually just do a year-end list of The Best Science Sites and many other topics, but it gets a little crazy having to review all of my zillion posts at once. So, to make it easier for me — and perhaps, to make it a little more useful to readers — I’m going to start publishing mid-year lists, too. These won’t be ranked, unlike my year-end “The Best…” lists, and just because a site appears on a mid-year list doesn’t guarantee it will be included in an end-of-the-year one. But, at least, I won’t have to review all my year’s posts in December…

The criteria for a site to make it on this list is the same as it has been in previous years. They have to be:

* Free

* Engaging and accessible to English Language Learners

* Provide English-language development opportunities as wells as science content

You might also be interested in:

The Best Science Websites — 2010

The Best Science & Math Sites — 2009

The Best Science & Math Websites — 2008

The Best Science Websites For Students & Teachers — 2007

Here are my choices for The Best Science Sites Of 2011 — So Far:

The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) has a site with a number of excellent science interactives which provide audio support for the text.

“San Diego Zoo Kids” has tons of accessible information and online games on…animals.

The Kitchen Pantry Scientist is a neat site to get quick, easy, and inexpensive ideas for science experiments.

The Exploratorium has reorganized all their interactives into one Explore page.

McDougal Littell’s Class Zone site is on many of my Social Studies related “The Best…” lists — their interactives are incredible (the links I have in this post may, or may not, bring you directly to the interactives. If you get sent to a map, just click the subject you’re interested in and click on California. That will lead you to different textbooks — then click on one of them. That will lead you to the interactives). However, I realize I’ve never written about their equally as impressive high school biology sites. It, too, has plenty of interactive, and most provide audio support for the text.

A Journey Through Climate History is a very, very impressive interactive from ABC in Australia. It highlights key events affecting climate change over the past one hundred ten years.

“Science Of Everyday Life” is a neat interactive timeline of inventions, and comes from Discovery Education.

Evolution of renewable energy is a very useful interactive tracing renewable energy use from 8000 BC to the present.

National Geographic unveiled a new site to support their extravaganza on “Great Migrations.” It’s an amazing site, filled with incredible videos, interactives, photos — the works — all on animal migrations.

Sizing Up The Universe is a neat interactive from the Smithsonian that does a very good job at helping users gain an understanding of how big planets and moons really are.

Earlier this year, Richard Byrne posted about a neat BBC interactive on rocks. I was pretty impressed, because it had subtitles and was relatively accessible to English Language Learners. So I explored the site a little further and found that the BBC Schools Bitesize KS3 site had a whole series of similarly accessible activities.

First, go to their main Science page. Next, click on any of the four primary categories:

Organisms, behaviour and health

Chemical and material behaviour

Energy, electricity and forces

The environment, the Earth and the universe

Each of these four sections has multiple “activities,” which are animated exercises that have audio and subtitles.

Feedback is welcome.

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