Teacher-Friendly Web Sites
Choose and research a teacher-friendly web site useful to Early Childhood educators and/or their students. Note the useful parts of this web site, usefulness, easy of navigation and "user friendliness". Post the following information as a comment on this Class Blog:
1. Exact web address
2. Web title
3. A 2-3 sentence summary
4. 2-3 sentence analysis/critique of the contents of the site.
You will be graded on your annotation of the web site and your ability to post on the class blog.
http://keiserk.blogspot.com/
ReplyDeletehttp://www.starfall.com/
Starfall is a great resource for teaching phonics and can be used by teachers or students. It is designed for preschool students through second grade. It provides activities for students learning ABCs, learning to read, and those that know how to read. It also has resources that may be more useful for the teacher in a large group setting, such as an interactive calendar.
Starfall is very user friendly, students could easily navigate from one page to the next. Teachers could use Starfall everyday in centers, free time, or computer lab. Starfall is very educational and engaging for students, two very important things. This is a great website!
By: Kristen Keiser
Teacher’s Clubhouse
ReplyDeletehttp://www.teachersclubhouse.com/index.htm
Teacher’s Clubhouse is a website you can go to get elementary teaching resources. They have different subject and topic areas. They offer worksheets, PowerPoint’s, and game ideas to teach in the different subject areas. There is also a classroom management tab where you are able to get ideas on classroom community and organization.
My mentor teacher told me about this website and said she goes here for a bunch of ideas. The downfall to the website is you have to pay money for the resources, but most of the resources are only 99 cents. I browsed the website and thought it was really useful. Before you buy anything, you are able to preview it so you know what it is, and there are also some free ones you are able to download.
By: Andrea Pasquale
Education World
ReplyDeletewww.educationworld.com
The title of this website is Education World--The Educator's Best Friend. This website includes a variety of resources that are available for teachers or anyone else to use for free. The web site provides new lesson plans, professional development articles, technology integration tips, and education news and issues for teachers to refer to that are updated on a weekly basis. The webpage also has a tab called top features which includes ideas for holidays and special days, teacher templates, a worksheet, library, a clip art library, website reviews and columnists. Then the web site includes free newsletters about lesson planning, professional development, early childhood education headlines, and special offers, school notes for home and education jobs. I think the website is very well organized and easy to navigate. On the homepage there are highlighted topics that are new and may be useful to educators. The topics that are highlighted are ones that teachers would be looking for such as ideas for lesson planning, ways to integrate technology, issues that happen in the school, and an early childhood section that provides hands on ideas for teachers to use in the classroom. I really like the content that is on this webpage and I have use this webpage multiple times because it offers great lesson ideas and it provides one with up to date information about education today.
The Teacher's corner
ReplyDeletehttp://www.theteacherscorner.net/
This website includes so many useful resources for teachers! It includes lesson plans, thematic units, seasonal items, bulletin board ideas, teacher resources, workheets, projects and many other things. You could really get a lot of good ideas from this website. There are lesson plans for pretty much every main ideas of indicators for every grade level in early childhood.
I really like that the seasonal activities incorporate multi cultural ideas, such as holidays and celebrations from all over the world. It lets you know what is available this month, and what is coming up in the next month so that you are able to plan ahead. I also think this is great because it uses a lot of hands on activities. Especially for math!
Have Fun Teaching
ReplyDeletewww.havefunteaching.com
Have Fun Teaching is an awesome educational sight when you need some help with ideas and supporting materials. This website includes worksheets, flashcards, videos, songs, fun activities, and more fun activities to do. It is specifically for kindergarten through sixth grade but there is most certainly an emphasis in the early childhood grade levels.
I, personally, LOVED this website. For those of you who were wondering about our awesome respect song from social studies, I got it from here! It is easy to maneuver throughout the site and its set up so it is easy to get back to where you started. The site is also connected to Facebook, twitter, and other blogs/social networking sights. It is very useful and I highly recommend looking at this sight!
Enjoy,
Nichole
The Kidz Page
ReplyDeletehttp://thekidzpage.com/
This website includes so many useful resources for teachers! It includes links for games, clip-art, ABC learning, fun room, puzzles, coloring pages, downloads, toys and movies, holidays and “what’s new”. Each link gives activities to use when teaching a certain subject. The free games are in two categories, educational and regular. There are math puzzles, baby-face Sudoku, which use faces instead of numbers, word searches, and spot-the-difference games that are exciting and challenging for younger kids. You can definitely get a lot of great ideas from this website! They have many free printables that you can use in your classroom.
I absolutely love this website! It has so many neat ideas and free things that you can use in your classroom. It is very user friendly and is easy to navigate through the pages! I highly recommend that you check this website out! It may be helpful for activities you are planning in your units!
Enjoy friends!
Andrea Voorhees
Sadlier Phonics
ReplyDeletehttp://www.sadlier-oxford.com/phonics/teacher.cfm
This website allows students to use their knowledge of letters, sounds, and words as they play fun and educational games and activities. This website can also be used by teachers. Teachers can use this website to watch videos on teaching certain language skills such as phonological awareness, short vowels, and long vowels. Teachers can also use this website to watch videos on classroom management and on assessment and instruction.
I recommend this website to use in the classroom. I liked it because it was free and very easy to navigate. I felt it was easy to navigate because the site was broken down into grade levels so it was easier to find activities for each grade. I also liked how this website is useful for parents, teachers, and the students.
http://www.brainpopjr.com/
ReplyDeleteBrain Pop Jr is a site that is full of videos that helps explain different topics in the Early childhood curriculum. There are two characters that the students love and one is a robot. It explains things in terms students will understand. My classroom mentor teacher uses this site to reinforce some complicated topics. My students love them and the room is silence when the video is playing. Teachers can also set up this site for students to explore indepentdently or have the whole class watching.
I recommend this site to use in the classroom. It keeps the students engaged and also helps to further explain something they might not get by just hearing the teacher talk about it. The site covers every subject and even has videos on sensitive topics like divorce and bullying. Students can also practice their site words. I love this site, you can find anything on there to help and anyone can sign up for it easily. Very assessible for parents, teachers and students!!
Hubbard’s Cupboard
ReplyDeletehttp://www.hubbardscupboard.org/
This website has some of everything. It is a great tool for teachers. There is a lot of material that can be used in kindergarten, but there are many resources that can be used in any early childhood grade. There is a section for math, literacy, and social studies and in each section there are resources and activities that can be done. Like center ideas, online games, literature, and many ideas. There are alphabet center ideas, sight words ideas, and small group activities. There is also a resource section with resources and different websites for every content area. Some areas include new teacher resources, fine motor skills sections, printables and more teacher websites. It also includes a list of children's authors.
I think this is a really good website. There is a whole section on kindergarten which contains activities, assessments and more. There are many ideas that can be used in any content area. This site also has links for early childhood grades to many other good resources. There are authors, ways to involve families, and so many links to sites for just about everything which is helpful.
I think it has a lot of useful information. It is also a user friendly site. There are tabs along the side and then they connect you to different links. It is organized in a good easy to use way. A very good resource for teachers!
Scholastic: Early Childhood Today
ReplyDeletehttp://teacher.scholastic.com/products/ect/
This website, created and maintained by Scholastic, is a cavalcade of resources for the early childhood teacher. The site is broken down into 7 main areas: Activities, Behavior and Development, Community, Curriculum Areas, Leadership, Home-School Connection, and Tips and Strategies. Each section has information for teachers including activities for every area of the classroom, how to handle certain behaviors, professional development advice, classroom tips, insight on curriculum, and even spotlight on real teacher’s classrooms to look at for inspiration.
I think this is a great website for any teacher. The fact that it covers such a wide variety of classroom related topics from Activities to Behavior makes it a one stop shop for educators look for extra info on the subjects. The site is also very user friendly and simple to use and navigate.
ABC teach-The educators online resource
ReplyDeletewww.abcteach.com
ABC teach has a lot of tools to create activities for your kids, oodles of worksheets and activities for any theme or holiday you could imagine. They have a list of free materials for things like: core subjects, reading comprehension, holidays and seasonal, ABC activities, Pre-K/Early Childhood, Homeschoolers and Parents, Clip art, Theme Units, Fun activities, Teaching extras, Languages/ESL, and so much more! You can sign up for a free monthly newsletter that would probably be pretty cool and full of good ideas. There are 5 tabs at the top of the page: Home, directory, ABC tools, Interactives and a Membership tab. There are great things in every tab (too much for me to talk about in this short entry), so you’ll just have to check it out for yourself!
ABC teach is a great website! They have a lot of free things for teachers, and even more if you buy a membership! I stumbled upon this when working on my units and I fell in love with all of the great activities and tools I mentioned above! I think this is a well designed website and it is easy to navigate (which is always a good thing for our busy lives). I didn’t get a membership, but I can only imagine all of the great stuff they are ‘withholding’ from us freebie lovers :). I honestly really like this and would recommend it to anyone who needs some inspiration, worksheets or activities.
Sara Hennessy
ReplyDeleteEDTL 3200
Teacher Friendly Website
Website Address: http://www.edina.k12.mn.us/concord/teacherlinks/sixtraits/sixtraits.html
Website Title: 6 Traits of Writing
-OWL (Online Writing Lab) for Elementary Students
Summary: The website is full of ideas and ways to improve a student’s writing ability and skills. The different tabs provide examples, games, and resources for both the students and teachers to further develop the different stages of writing from brainstorming to revising and editing, to finalizing a piece of writing. The website is very friendly appealing with all of it’s bright colors and adorable picture art and clips.
Critique: The website would be very helpful as a teaching resource for the classroom. The teacher could especially click on the organization link and be introduced to a variety of ways to engage the student in organizing their thoughts when beginning to write a paper. The website provides many questions that the individual could ask themselves to see if they are brainstorming correctly. The only negative is that the teacher would have to create his/her own worksheet to provide to the students. It’s unfortunate that the website doesn’t already have pre-made worksheets for the teachers to print out and make copies for their class. I do really like how the website provides different leads or hooks the teacher can use to engage the students and others about the topic. The website offers suggestions of riddles, questions, or stories!
Cassandra Rodriguez
ReplyDeleteEDTL 3200
Teacher Friendly Website
http://www.brainpop.com/
Summary:
Brain Pop is a website that if you are a user (or try a free trial), you can look up lesson plans and units, games, and other things by standard and grade level. Not only do they hold Ohio Content Standards, but you can choose from any other state standard as well. There are also buttons that take you straight to a certain content area, and you can look up specific material such as social studies historical figures, or math data analysis. The website is specific in the content. There are free movies, will let you review for tests, gives tools, and other creative games and material. This can be used on an interactive white board, and stays strong with over 100,000 members.
Critique:
This website is great. There are so many options to choose from and have hundreds of ideas and games. They give a free trial, tours, and have one so many awards. I was surprised to see the amount of content they have on here. The ideas, games, and activities are all ideas that get students and engaged and excited about learning material. The only downfall, is that if you would like to join as a member, it's over 600 dollars. In order to watch these movies, you must sign up, or you can try the free trial. There are free games and videos to watch which are interactive. I would definitely recommend this to education teachers from pre-k to high school.
http://www.readinga-z.com/book/leveled-books.php
ReplyDeleteI am not joking when I say this is one of the best websites I have seen that a teacher can use. The website focuses directly on reading. At the top of the website there are several tabs; home, all books, leveled reading, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, poetry, alphabet, assessment, more resources and teacher’s corner. This website is filled with lesson plans, books and great ideas for assessment. It has hundreds of different books that are leveled and in alphabetical order. Each book gives you a lesson plan to go with it, reading strategies, comprehension questions and so much more. Every book is also accessible online so you can print it out or use it on a smart board to read together. This is a great, teacher friendly website and I would recommend checking it out!
The School Bell
ReplyDeletehttp://www.theschoolbell.com/contents.html
Summary: This site includes a number of links to various activities concerning all different subject areas. It is subdivided into themes on a month by month basis and thus provides teachers with a myriad of activities and lesson ideas. The site is also parent and child friendly and provides ideas for children to extend their learning experiences during the summer months or holiday periods.
Critique: The site claims that it is ESL friendly and while I suppose the activities included might be beneficial to ESL students, they would likely require individuals with a good handle on the English language to access them.
Rachel Williams:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.enchantedlearning.com/crafts/
I have used the Enchanted Learning website many times to find ideas for lesson plans, craft ideas, and free worksheets and coloring pages that are simple to download. It contains lesson plans and crafts listed by topic or month. It is very easy to find what you are looking for.