Happy Thanksgiving!

A word of wisdom and encouragement!

 

 

May you all be thankful for the little minds you get to shape.

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving surrounded with family and friends.

And, of course, a well deserved mini-break from your busy and lucky jobs!

Teachers Pay Teachers

As all teachers know, it is not always fun to try and create a brand new lesson plan. There is a website I recently found called Teachers Pay Teachers. This is an awesome resource for teachers to find lesson plans. Teachers post their own lesson plans to the website and can decide to let people download them for free or to sell them for a small price. This way, you can make a little money for the lesson plans you've created! There are lesson plans for all subjects and ages that you can either download for free or pay a small price for. Have fun searching for new, exciting lessons for your kiddos!

Quietube!

Ever use YouTube videos to enhance your lessons? Ever worry about the ads or videos that could show up and distract your students from what you are wanting them to watch? Do you not use YouTube videos because of these distractions? There's a new website called Quietube. Add it to your bookmarks and click on it while showing the YouTube video and it will block all these distractions for you. (There are pictures to illustrate this below) It is a great tool to use, especially in the classroom!

 Go to the video on YouTube, click the Quietube bookmark and voila! This is what you get:

"Great Back to School Challenge": Raising Money for America's Classrooms and Schools

I borrowed this article from another blog. The "Educational Technology Guy" tells how much America's teachers spend out-of-pocket on school supplies for their classrooms. The amount is astonishing. It really makes you think about the character and dedication of teachers.

During September, two organizations are teaming up to raise money for a different school or classroom each day that do not have the funds they need.

Check out the full article below:

Great Back to School Challenge looks to raise money for classrooms

United States Math Compared to Other Countries

The video below examines the differences in the way math is taught in the United States and the way math is taught in other countries. Even though the United States spends far more money on math education than these other countries, our students are consistently farther behind in their math skills when compared with other countries. The TIMSS study discovered that there are huge differences between the instructional strategies between the United States and the highest scoring countries in Mathematics.

Teachers Are Heroes Infographic

The graphic below is full of statistics of teachers today. It is extremely eye opening and will make you look at the education field and teachers in a new light.


Brought to you by USC Rossier Online Master's in Teaching
http://mat.usc.edu/teacher-appreciation-day-2012/

Welcome Back!

It's the beginning of a new school year! 

This is a great time to begin incorporating some new things into your classroom (like technology!!) I hope you will continue to read this blog and use some of my ideas in your classroom this year! Enjoy!

Photo Credit:http://savingsangel.com/blog/2012/07/30/how-to-get-huge-back-to-school-savings/

Future of Technology

While this video is a few years old, it makes you think hard about the effects of technology on our world today. It is amazing to think that when this video was created in 2007, the "future" is what we now consider the present. This means that with the advancements in technology since then, the data in this video shows less of an effect from technology than there is today. Enjoy the video!

Literactive: "Teaching Children to Read"

Photo Credit: www.literactive.com

Literactive is an interactive website that is great for helping students learn to read and practice literacy skills. The activities can be used by single students or as a group or class on a Promethean or Smart Board. The websites provides resources and activities for teaching Reading and ESL. It is truly a great resource to be used in the classroom! It's even better because kids will love it!

Kerpoof!

Logo image from: www.kerpoof.com

I think a very important part of teaching is taking advantage of all the new technology available to teachers. This includes many interactive, educational websites. One of these is Kerpoof. I am currently observing in a Kindergarten classroom in an inner city school. All the classrooms have Promethean Boards. We use ours a lot for instruction and to reinforce students' learning through practice activities. Kerpoof is one of the websites we use for spelling. However, there are many other activities that can be used on Kerpoof. There are also activities to practice other skills like writing and drawing. Teachers can also access lesson plans, activities, and other ideas for the classroom. It is a mostly free website. There are some parts of the website that require a membership fee. It is a great tool to use in the classroom, especially if a Promethean Board or Smart Board is available.

Area and Perimeter

The link below is an interactive website guide to Area and Perimeter. It is useful for students individually and also to be used as a class on a Promethean Board. It first teaches how to calculate area and perimeter and then gives problems where students can enter the answer to check it. For students struggling to learn area and perimeter, this is an alternate, hands-on way for them to learn and practice!

http://www.bgfl.org/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/ks2/maths/perimeter_and_area/index.html

60 Educational Apps

This presentation is quite useful for teachers, especially ones with iPhones, iPads, or other similar products! It lists 60 educational apps, describes each of them, and shows pictures of each. It shows many neat tools that can be used in the classroom with the students or just by the teacher.

60 Educational Apps in 60 Minutes on Prezi

Prezi and Technology in Education

Recently, a new type of media, called Prezi, has become popular. It is very similar to PowerPoint, but quite different at the same time.

The first example of a Prezi talks about how technology is related to education. In my opinion, the points made in the video are very accurate.

Prezi+iPad= on Prezi

The second example is a great idea for a project in middle school. Students design a middle school of the future, creating models or floor plans describing the sizes of the building, rooms, parking lots, etc. and determining the layout and technology of the building. It's a very neat project that allows students to be creative and complete it the way they feel is best!

Middle School of the FUTURE Design on Prezi

Guess My Number Games

Here are two games that you can play with your students to help them with their adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing of numbers. They are tricky because no matter what number they pick, you will always guess right, so you will always win!

Picture from: www.dailyclipart.net

1st game:

1. Choose a number

2. Multiply it by 2

3. Add 10 to the number from step 2

4. Divide the number from step 3 by 2

5. Subtract original number from the
number in step 4

6. Answer will ALWAYS be 5

2nd game:

1. Pick any 2 digit number

2. Add the two digits together

3. Subtract the number in step 2 from the
original number

4. Add two digits of the number in step 3 together

5. Answer will ALWAYS be 9

Need a little encouragement today?

This video is a great reminder of our purpose as teachers and our reasons for choosing this difficult profession. It is a very inspirational and motivational video. Enjoy...

Creative Bulletin Boards

I am a Sunday School teacher at a nearby church and one of my jobs is to update a bulletin board every once in a while. Bulletin boards are a great way to give information or showcase students' to both students and parents. In a classroom, especially with math, it may be hard to find ways to utilize a bulletin board to display students' work. One idea is to have them create math related crafts such as color by number pictures. However, you need to make them fun and creative to catch people's attention, otherwise no one will ever notice them. Here is a photo of the one I did today. This board was not in a math classroom, but you can get the idea of the design from this.



Using tin foil as the background makes the bulletin board noticeable and attractive to the eye. Since I had two little girls help me with the bulletin board, I put their names on it. That's a good way to reward students and make them feel special. This board is for the product safety commission recalls and a place to display students crafts as they create them. Obviously, the parents will look to see their students; work and also notice the recalls in case any of them apply to things they own.

Thinking of creative and unusual ways to design bulletin boards is the easiest way to make them fun an noticeable to parents and students.