classjump.com

http://classjump.com/news.php

ClassJump provides free websites to teachers for the benefit of schools, teachers, students, and parents. It is designed to give teachers the opportunity to post assignments, documents, and classroom related material online where students and parents can conveniently retrieve them. This non-for-profit website caters to 20,821 teachers, 9,544 schools, and 201,562 students. The basis of ClassJump is to make the communication, outside of the classroom, easier between the teacher and student.

ClassJump offers schools their own websites here at ClassJump.com. With that, it is designed to help provide information to teachers, students, and parents while they are visiting teacher sites while on ClassJump.com. With a school site at ClassJump, you will take total control over your teacher access for your specific school. In addition, ClassJump gives students and teachers permission to create and edit content on their site.

For the benefit of the teachers, ClassJump allows schools to create sites on the school website that is private and only accessible to teachers. The private area of the site can contain news, documents, a calendar, and blogs that only teachers can access.

For the benefit of teachers and students, ClassJump comes in handy when teachers need to send out emails immediately and can do so by the bulk by using his or her teacher/student email lists. It is also useful for sending out alerts and notices. In addition, students are allowed to send emails to his or her teachers just the same.

To gain the best understanding of ClassJump.com, it provides the same needs to teachers and students comparable to those of the University of Illinois’ “Compass” or “Moodle”.

readwritethink.org

Reading and Writing Through A Poetry Unit

Review provided by Joshua Weakly:

Poetry is often considered a difficult subject to teach at the high school and junior high school levels. However, readwritethink.org offers a great resource for developing a unit around poetry. The objective of the unit is to instill the students with a desire to explore the poems that they are required to read. The most impressive aspect of the proposed unit is that it incorporates an activity between the students and their family members. While this may be a difficult task in some settings, it may prove to be a very beneficial activity in a setting in which it will be successful. Rather than making it a mandatory part of the unit, I would personally suggest providing it as an opportunity for extra credit. Another interesting and beneficial tool offered through readwritethink.org is the student activity of “Construct-A-Word.” A link to this tool can be found under the “Extensions” section of the “Instructional Plan.” This tool can be an enjoyable way for students to experiment with technology while still participating in the larger unit of poetry. The words that are formed from the tool can then be used by the students to create their own poems. This website offers a range of additional activities and lesson plans that can be utilized outside the context of the proposed poetry unit. I think that this resource will be of assistance to any teacher that would like help in developing an enjoyable and meaningful learning experience through a poetry unit.

http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/poetry-portfolios-using-poetry-152.html?tab=1#tabs

Learner .org

http://www.learner.org/

It not only has information for English and Literature, but also for Math, Science and History. One of the major things that I like about this resource is that it is easy to follow, and very well organized.

I especially liked the sections on Expanding the Cannon: Teaching multicultural literature. One of the biggest issues that I have as a future teacher, and current student, is the lack of diversity in the literature that we teach. We often stick to the usual greats without taking a second look at some of the multicultural literature coming from those same eras. I think that there is much that can be gained for reading the ‘not-so-greats’ as well.

The article lists 8 different workshops under this specific title. Each workshop has an itemized detailed explanation as to what each part of each workshop is meant to accomplish. Each workshop builds a different set of skills while incorporating 2 different authors whose works tie in similar themes. There are also links to resources that can be printed, purchase, and downloaded for use in the classroom.

Despite the organization of the resources, I do think that there is a lot of room for individual tweaking to fit your classroom and student abilities. The fact that the resources are so laid out will allow teachers to see clear opportunities to add some originality to the ideas presented.

Teaching and Learning with The New York Times

The Learning Network

The education blog extension of the New York Times website is a fantastic resource. To be honest, I haven't always been keen on the idea of using lessons plans off the internet or the scanner because of the usual inadequacy and formulaic nature of the activities. In order to be fair, there are amazing ideas to be found on the internet; the key is to use discretion when choosing which ones to use. Which is why I was thrilled to find that the Times offers daily activities and lesson plans which are stimulating and efficient as well as smart and sophisticated. Engaging with NY Times news and art content, the activities are wonderful at honing in on critical thinking skills and also encourage an interaction with culturally relevant material. The website offers a wide variety of lesson plans that are listed by categories ranging from Language Arts and Social Studies to Current Events, Fine Arts, and Media Studies. There is also a section which contains hand-picked journal articles with discussion forums for teachers to share and analyze their own methods and strategies with the theories and practices offered in the given articles. One of my favorite sections of the website is a student opinion forum which offers students the opportunity to deal with currently relevant issues and respond to them on a respectable and sophisticated platform. Everything about this website screams cultural relevance, and it is undeniable that it is 'hip.' There is a lesson plan that seeks to bring The Academy Awards into the classroom through an analysis of both film and culture. There is a lesson plan which engages in critical thinking about contemporary fashion. There is a lesson plan which drives students to personally respond to the issues related to global warming. Critical thinking and broad cultural analysis runs as a major current throughout this website. Another perk of using it on a regular basis is that it can ingrain into students the importance of keeping up-to-date with the news and, especially, the New York Times, which is, in my opinion, the pinnacle of newspaper excellence in the U.S.

A Way to Teach

Last semester I stumbled across a website called A Way to Teach that I have continued to find extremely informative and helpful.

Please visit the site by either clicking the above picture or clicking here.

This is an active, literature-specific site run and maintained by educators and students. It offers a wide variety of resources and materials, including reading and writing lesson plans, literature reviews, audio files, useful links, discussion forums, teacher groups, and annotated and illuminated texts. In particular, the discussion forums have a plethora of information, suggestions, and links that have helped me plan my own lessons.

While this site is free, certain resources are locked by a points-earned policy in order to promote continued activity and procure new content. Access to the forums, links, and literature reviews is open even to unregistered users. After a free registration, however, you can actively participate in all the aforementioned subsections through comments and reviews and thereby earn points towards 'unlocking' the remaining resources. Adding poignant quotes to relevant discussion boards, commenting on discussion threads or lesson plans, or submitting your own lesson plans will earn you 1, 2, or 50 points each, respectively. Once 50 points have been earned, you will gain access to all downloadable files, lessons, and texts.

To discourage a deluge of useless or plagiarized information, each lesson plan is carefully evaluated for original content, proper attributions, and completeness before being admitted to the site. If a lesson is deemed helpful but incomplete, it will instead be added as a forum post. Furthermore, there is a rating system (between 1 and 5 stars) for each resource provided to help organize the site's content.

Ultimately, the community atmosphere at A Way to Teach is strong. The interaction between students, new teachers, and veteran educators has created a unique dynamic in which literature is approached in new and innovative ways. While the literature discussed on the site is largely Eurocentric at this time, the resources provided are extremely useful, and the site will likely grow in scope in the future. I would highly recommend this site as a reference for those who are teaching or plan to teach literature-based lessons in the future.

LEARN NC

LEARN NC

http://www.learnnc.org/

LEARN NC, a program of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Education, finds new, innovative and successful practices in K–12 education and makes them available to the teachers around the world. It is a site with numerous different types of information on it. Some of the things include lesson plans, good strategies, classroom management and etc. For each grade level from kindergarten to grade twelve, there are numerous resources. In addition, it focuses on multiple subjects, not just English, but Science and Social Studies as well.

One of the useful parts of the website that I found useful is the multimedia section. It not only is an easy way to search for movie/video clips, but the clips are education and are appropriate to use in school. Moreover, since this is a website supported by university, it is a suitable website for usage in schools. Also one of my favorite parts is the section about conferences. Since I cannot afford to go to the conferences, the conferences that are held at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are covered and give the outline of the conferences. It is very educational part of the website because you get to learn new or successful practices in teaching, but also what is new happening in the field of education.

One downside of the website is that in the field trips section of the website. The field trips focus on South Carolina and since most of us will not teach in South Carolina, this is not a useful part of the website.

Poets.org

http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/6

If you are at all like me, the idea of teaching poetry frightens you to your very core. Where do I start? How can I devise a unit plan or even a lesson plan based on a subject that I don't fully understand? With such a vast array of types of poetry and directions in which to take your curriculum, Poets.org helps to simplify the process by providing loads of resources for educators in their comprehensive site devoted to the study of the poetic form. The site is the central hub for the Academy of American Poets, so it provides teachers and students with a direct line to what is happening in poetry today and throughout history.

Among the many resources available are a plethora of lesson and unit plans, each with its own unique critical approach. From a section that highlights the achievements of women in poetry to an exploration of war through verse, poetry is used to ignite discussion not only about the nature of literature, but about the complexity of the human experience. The site also features many sample poems to be used in the classroom as well as critical and pedagogical essays and articles that correspond to the poems featured, providing an easy way to begin a unit on poetry criticism. I would encourage any teacher interested in teaching poetry to take a look at this site as well as anyone who simply has a love for the genre.