After viewing the different websites for this week’s response I have decided that the sites that I am most drawn to are "The Literacy Web at UConn" and "Math Forum @ Drexel." I have chosen these two sites because I have taught third grade for many years and I am always looking for new resources to share in my classroom and with other teachers. Also, my focus of instruction usually revolves around strengthening my students’ math and reading skills. I have become aware that other teachers seem to have similar priorities to mine. Performance indicator five for NETS-T states, “Teachers continuously improve professional practice, model lifelong learning, and exhibit leadership in their school and professional community by prompting and demonstrating the effective use of digital tools and resources” (ISTE, 2008). I feel that my grade level partners would benefit from these websites as well because they are frequently searching for valuable resources on the web to enhance what they are already doing in their classrooms.
The forum for Dr. Math seems most relevant to me because it has a link especially for elementary education. Dr. Math is part of the "Math Forum @ Drexel." It is particularly useful because it has a question/answer resource for teachers and students. Additionally, this would come in handy for kids when they need assistance and there is nobody nearby to answer their questions. Students are able to submit their questions to Dr. Math and answers are sent back via e-mail. The most common questions and answers are gathered and placed into a searchable archive which is organized by grade level. Dr. Math seems to be a valuable tool to educators and most importantly, students and parents.
The other website that is appealing is the "The Literacy Web at UConn." It is categorized by grade level and there are links to research, new topics, and literacy topics. The area of literacy topics will be useful to me because teachers are able to locate ideas for integrating literacy strategies into their instruction. As a teacher and literacy coach, I am always looking for new ideas and strategies to improve student achievement. Upon reviewing the grade three and four links, I discovered it is comprehensive. For instance, it provides websites for grades three and four, online lesson plans, and ways to integrate technology. In my opinion the most interesting link is the one entitled Children's Literature because it provides educators with a wide variety of children's authors and associated websites including ideas and strategies for implementing children's literature into the classroom. For example, the link entitled Jan Brett directed me to her website where I was able to find many suggestions of how to incorporate her books in my classroom.
I consider both of these sites to be beneficial to teachers, student, and parents. Therefore, I plan to share them with my colleagues.
References
The ISTE NETS and performance indicators for teachers (2008). Retrieved from http://www.ISTE.org
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2 comments:
I was instantly drawn to the ideas presented in Marilyn’s blog because the two sites she chose related directly to the major goals at Wilbur Cross this year: literacy and numeracy. Minority students are not doing well in the areas or regain and writing. I think we’ve known this for awhile now but something really y needs to be done about it. While I don’t think I can do much on the math end of things because I am an English teacher for a reason, the “Literacy Web at Uconn site does seem like a good one to help with the literacy issue. Quite a few people in their blogs this week talked about this website and how they like it because everything was broken down by grade level. This is also the main reason why I like it as well. There were lots of things that seem like they could be of use to me as an English teacher. They have reading instruction practices for secondary schools. I am a highs school teacher, and I’m sure we know that so many of the students are not reading at a high school level at all. We have more and more students being placed in reading classes and English at the same time. My Period 9 class is filled with struggling readers this year and I am always on the lookout for ways to improve their skills. The website also has booklists for young adults. In my English class we do a lot of independent reading, and it will definitely help some of the students to have a list they can look at to choose a book from. Many of the kids love young adult literature since they can relate to the issues and the books are usually short. One other thing I found on the website were the resource for Shakespeare. There is a wealth of useful information there. I like how they have summaries of some of the plays. When we read and perform Shakespeare in class we often skip certain parts. Students could go on line to view the summary of a part we’re skipping, or I could use the summaries to catch up any absent students.
Marilyn also mentioned using children’s literature and that is something I’ve been trying to incorporate in my classroom more the last two years. I’m actually looking for a children’s book that matches a theme I am about to teach, so I will definitely use the website to find a title.
hi marilyn...i love your website!!
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