Afree guide on Teaching Reading in K-2 You can download a free 31-page teacher's guide filled with tips on how to teach fluency, comprehension, and other reading skills. It's from ReadingRockets.org, your source for ractical, research-based information on teaching kids to read and helping those who struggle.
WEEKLY "WRITING BUG"
If you're looking for engaging writing prompts and have access to a color printer, you'll find a nestful of "writing bugs" at the Education World website (with writing hints included). Here's a recent item: "A STRANGE THING - What if you woke up to discover that you had been turned into a *thing* for one day? What thing were you turned into? The thing must be an inanimate object -- something that does not move. Describe what your day was like as that thing."
RUBISTARWhile many teachers want to use rubrics or are experimenting with writing rubrics, they can be quite time-consuming to develop. RubiStar is a tool to help the teacher who wants to use rubrics but does not have the time to develop them from scratch. RubiStar provides generic rubrics that can simply be printed and used for many typical projects and research assignments. The unique thing about RubiStar, however, is that it provides these generic rubrics in a format that can be customized. The teacher can change almost all suggested text in the rubric to make it fit their own project.
Curriculum Links
This resource page at the Kenton KY school district website is elegant in its simplicity. Follow the content-area link to a new page, and then click on the link for middle grades resources. All pre-screened by your colleagues in Kentucky!
Reading Rockets
Reading Rockets is pleased to announce a new, bilingual Web site for Spanish-speaking parents! Called Colorín Colorado, it provides information, activities, and advice on helping children learn to read and succeed. (If you're a native Spanish speaker, you know why the site is called Colorín Colorado. If you're an English speaker, click on the homepage to find out what it means!). The site is now in English and will soon be translated into Spanish for its launch in September.
About.com
This website has an enormous collection of materials relating to k-12 teaching including lesson plans, links and tips for all disciplines and age levels. It is a very useful site for new teachers, seasoned teachers, and even home school. Get tips on how to prepare for your first day and classroom management strategies, find fun games for students, and discover even more of those web sites that make your job just a little bit easier! It is a bottomless pit of information.
Knowing Poe: The Literature, Life, and Times of Edgar Allan Poe
Through the activities on this site, you can introduce learners (or, be introduced, yourself) to the literature, life, and times of one of America's foremost writers. The rich classroom resources on this site have been created especially for Maryland students in middle and high school. In addition to these interactive experiences, there are lesson plans created by Maryland teachers, primary source documents, links for further research, and materials for fun family activities related to Edgar Allan Poe.
Reading a-z: A Complete Online Reading Program
A project of LearningPage.com, Reading a-z provides educators with over 150 downloadable guided reading books to help children become more proficient readers. The site also contains over 212 lessons plans, over 500 worksheets, and over 200 flash cards to help teach alphabetic principle, phonemic awareness, and sound/symbol relationships. Although there is an annual subscription fee, viewers currently have free access to 28 sample books, along with their accompanying worksheets and lesson plans. Elementary teachers, home schoolers, and parents may find this site useful.
EDSITEment
Created by a partnership of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Council of the Great City Schools, the National Trust for the Humanities, and the MCI WorldCom Foundation, is an award-winning website designed to help teachers integrate peer-reviewed Internet resources into their literature, history, art and culture, and foreign language classes. The site gathers together 70 humanities websites chosen for their outstanding intellectual quality, superior design, and classroom impact. It also features a search engine, lesson plans, and in-class and take-home activities.
AskOxford.com
Launched on July 12 in conjunction with the revised edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary, this site offers an array of resources to help visitors make the best use of the English langauge. Features include a word of the day, quote of the week, language and writing tips, question and answer, word games, a jargon buster, and education resources. Users may also email queries to the Oxford Word and Language Service. A fun and educational site that should appeal to anyone interested in language or writing.
