Assignment #3: Teacher Toolbox

Link to toolbox.

My teaching toolbox covers different aspects of the teaching profession. There are general websites that have many resources such as lesson plans, printouts, articles, worksheets and much more. There are also sites that can help with management and the nuts and bolts of teaching. Helpful resources include a site for homework to be posted, and sites specifically for classroom theme ideas and decorations. I also included one site that is used as a forum for teachers to share ideas. This is always a good tool to have. The last two subheadings are project ideas/curriculum tools and student sites. Some highlights in these categories are a site where teachers can sign up classes and students to participate in collaborative projects with students around the world, and a site where students can play educational, appropriate computer games. All these categories are important to the success and interactivity in a classroom.

I was amazed at how many sites there are for the world of education. There were many sites that I found that were duds or didn't contain any useful information, and then there were the sites that I could spend hours on. These were the sites that I decided to include in my teaching toolbox. Useful to me means a resource that you can keep coming back to in order to be successful. This is how I decided which sites to include.

I hope I can post some sort of toolbox on a class blog so other teachers can look at it, as I have found other teacher's blogs and such very helpful in my own search. I would love to have the student sites available for students during free time and all the teacher resources will be helpful for me in everything I do!

THREE FEATURED RESOURCES

1. http://www.randomhouse.com/teachers/ 
The random house website has an incredible amount of information on books, awards, authors and illustrators, reviews and activities for the classroom. One aspect I explored was the "Step into Learning" resource. This aspect is helpful for teachers, parents, and students. There is a simple step process that the books students read are categorized by. It goes from "step one: ready to read" to "step five: ready for chapters". There are options for teachers, parents, and students to view different things based on these five steps. In the teacher's view there are activities for specific books and whole pdf files about each step and how to meet the child where they are at in reading.

2. http://www.thehomeworkzone.com/
This is one site I found that is easy to use and would be more helpful in an elementary setting than a secondary one. There isn't a way to post grades that I found, just a portal to describe homework assignments and announcements. This could be helpful for elementary students' parents who want to know what their child should be doing. It is free so there are a few ads which could be distracting, but there may be a way to buy a webpage and eliminate the ads. On this site you can download documents and link webpages--both things that help keep parents connected to the classroom directly.

3. http://www.kerpoof.com/#
I absolutely love this site. It is great for students as well as teachers. For teachers there are lesson plan ideas, classroom ideas, and explanations of the cross referenced activities with national standards. The part for students though is what caught my attention the most. There is oppurtunity to make storybooks, doodle, make a movie and more. One thing I played around with was an activity called "Spell a Picture". The student gets to pick a background and to add objects to the picture they have to spell the word correctly at the bottom of the screen and options for the object will appear can be dropped into the picture. This was really fun and helps students learn spelling!

I'm excited to find more great resources!