For the past several weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to explore the worksheets, tests, and worksheet generator on the Help Teaching Pro subscription from HelpTeaching.com.
What Is Help Teaching Pro?
Help Teaching Pro is a subscription service where you can find quality learning materials for your children. There are thousands of printables available in a variety of subjects, online worksheets, games, and a worksheet and test generator. There are also online lessons with videos and quizzes.
Once you log into your account, you can navigate to different areas of the site. There’s a handy menu at the top, allowing you to easily move between tests and worksheets, lessons, test maker, worksheet generator, online testing, and your own personal content.
After you make your selection, you can search by grade or subject area to find what you’re looking for. Most content is aligned to Common Core State Standards, and you also have the option of searching by standard.
How We Used HelpTeaching.com In Our Homeschool
My kids sometimes balk at their typical schoolwork. But, they love to “play school.” And in their minds, when you play school you get a worksheet.
So, I printed out a bunch of different worksheets at different grade levels. I stuck mainly to reading and math, though I did also include some holiday themed material, and a couple of science worksheets.
Then, I stuck the worksheets in our “school” cupboard. The kids know they can use any of the worksheets and coloring pages I store there whenever they’d like. So, a couple of times a week I saw them flip through the stack and find something they thought a sibling would enjoy. Then they sat down to play.
In addition to their free play with the worksheets, I used some of the resources more purposefully. For instance, my third-grader is currently working on memorizing the multiplication facts. In their third grade math section, I found just what I was looking for:
Worksheets focusing on one particular multiplication set. I printed these off and used them during our math time for extra practice. They also had worksheets with a couple of fact families included (such as 0-3 and 4-6). We will be using these once he’s got the singles down.
There were also worksheets my preschooler could use. Here he is with one partially done. He was practicing writing the letter S for Simon.
What I Thought of the Material Available on Help Teaching Pro
There is a ton of content available, so I can’t speak to everything. But, here are some thoughts I had about what I did use.
It’s really easy to customize the worksheets, even the pregenerated ones. There’s a button over on the right-hand side once you open a worksheet that asks if you want to customize it. When you click on that, it allows you to make changes to how the content appears, and what type of content is included. This is nice for making minor changes.
The worksheet and test generators are also useful. You can easily create a worksheet for your child to practice each week’s spelling words, or create math story problems using words your child is familiar with. And if you’re working on story problems, you might as well have them personalized occasionally! 😀
There is also a bank of questions you can use in your tests. If you’re stuck, this is a good place to look for inspiration.
I liked the ability to break it down by standard. Even though I’m not using Common Core State Standards in my homeschool, it was nice to be able to break the math down into the different strands and just refresh my memory on the types of material they may be seeing on standardized tests.
I didn’t use any of the online lessons, because it said at the top they were geared for middle and high school students. However, as I flipped through them, I realized I was mistaken. It said the lessons for those grades were meant to be self-directed, not that they only had content for those grades available.
As I scrolled through the material, I found plenty of lessons for younger grades as well. Most included a video and then an online quiz. I think the wording at the top of this section needs modified a bit to make it more clear exactly what is included, because there were some great lessons here that I skipped over at first because I didn’t realize they were for my kids’ grade levels.
However, I thought many of their worksheets, especially for kindergarten, were too hard. Many grade K worksheets were text based, with words that are not frequently taught in kindergarten. There were also frequent long passages, which most kindergartners would not be up to reading. Here’s an example from their Next Generation Science Standards reading passage:
So many of the kindergarten worksheets need to be completed together instead of independently.
Before you start printing off everything, make sure you give it a once over and ensure it’s the right level for YOUR child.
But, other than the grade level discrepancies I thought existed, there really is a ton of quality material on this site. It’s a fun place to find material for extra practice.
To see what other Crew members thought of Help Teaching Pro, please click on the banner below.
