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"What Makes a Great Teacher? Image credit: Veronika Lukasova Also in our Special Report: National: "How America Can Rise Again" Is the nation in terminal decline? Not necessarily. But securing the future will require fixing a system that has become a joke. Video: "One Nation, On Edge" James Fallows talks to Atlantic editor James Bennet about a uniquely American tradition-cycles of despair followed by triumphant rebirths. Interactive Graphic: "The State of the Union Is ..." ... thrifty, overextended, admired, twitchy, filthy, and clean: the nation in numbers. By Rachael Brown Chart: "The Happiness Index" Times were tough in 2009. But according to a cool Facebook app, people were happier. By Justin Miller On August 25, 2008, two little boys walked into public elementary schools in Southeast Washington, D.C. Both boys were African American fifth-graders. The previous spring, both had tested below grade level in math. One walked into Kimball Elementary School and climbed the stairs to Mr. William Taylor's math classroom, a tidy, powder-blue space in which neither the clocks nor most of the electrical outlets worked. The other walked into a very similar classroom a mile away at Plummer Elementary School. In both schools, more than 80 percent of the children received free or reduced-price lunches. At night, all the children went home to the same urban ecosystem, a zip code in which almost a quarter of the families lived below the poverty line and a police district in which somebody was murdered every week or so. Video: Four teachers in Four different classrooms demonstrate methods that work (Courtesy of Teach for America's video archive, available in February at teachingasleadership.org) At the end of the school year, both little boys took the same standardized test given at all D.C. public schools-not a perfect test of their learning, to be sure, but a relatively objective one (and, it's worth noting, not a very hard one). After a year in Mr. Taylo

This is a site built by Jackie Gerstein from Arizona. She told me "I began developing a website to showcase different Web 2.0 tools that students can use. I provided some examples but plan to have my upper elementary students add to it as we explore and use other tools." She built this using synthasite and it is a great thing to show elementary teachers to showcase some of the best tools out there. Great job, Jackie!

Site built to showcase elementary tools from Jackie Gerstein from Arizona.

A showcase of the Web 2.0 projects created by the upper elementary and middle school students - a interactive sight for this same age group.

A very useful livebinder by some teachers on QR codes in the elementary school with information and guides. I've found this is pretty updated even though the first page has a description from 2010. Very useful if you want to use them in your classroom or library at the elementary level.

Sesame Street has taken more than 1000 videos (all for elementary school) and aligned them with Common Core standards on the sharemylesson website. This is a great account for elementary teachers to follow on the site.

High School Middle School Elementary Kindergarten maths Welcome to Mathebook.net an online Free Learning website full of fun. This website is fully interactive and will allow kids to practice and learn math with ease. Our website is designed to help students of different grades, starts from Kindergarten, Elementary, Middle School and High School Math. The goal of this website is to provide new education tools to teachers, parents and off course students who can benefit from it.

"With so many expectations, requirements and scrutiny of primary school teachers, it is easy to become formulaic in your practice. This is a shame, as the initial enthusiasm for the job gets waned, and giving young students the opportunity to shine becomes less focused on whole-child development. However, to become an outstanding teacher demands consistency, focus and dedication. Outstanding teachers are always on the lookout for new ideas, but sometimes the tried-and-tested classroom activities and techniques can offer a strong system to help your pupils shine, despite curriculum restraints imposed."

Health teachers will love this site for kids. If you have a rainy day and have access to some computers, this would be a great place for activities. As we emphasize health, we should seek out engaging content in this area. This site is free. Love it. "The multi-award winning program is focused on teaching the basics of cardiovascular health, including anatomy, nutrition, and exercise, by offering comprehensive curriculum materials to teachers and a site just for elementary school children to explore. The curriculum was developed as part of our mission to educate the public in a collaborative effort with medical professionals and certified teachers.  Project Heart is completely free to use and free of advertisements. It is also fully translated into Spanish. 

Hundreds of articles, expert interviews, research, and resources highlighting success stories in K-12 education. Short videos provide case studies in technology integration, project-based learning, emotional intelligence, teacher preparation, assessment and more." /> metatext/html; charset=utf-8

Great website for those who want to teach about food production and farming.

Website to teach you about how the food got to you! This is a really neat website for elementary teachers who discuss food production. There is a resource for teachers as well. As a farm girl, it is great to see a site that discusses the importance of farming. This is so important for kids to understand. We garden at our school and it is great!

Prongo.com is an educational website for Kids. We offer fun, interactive, and educational games for kids. For teachers, Prongo.com also offers Quizstation. Quizstation allows teachers to create online quizzes for their students. Prongo.com also offers kids clip art, e-cards for kids, wallpaper, kids jokes, screensavers, and more. Prongo.com provides hours of learning fun for kids and resources teachers need to have a fun and productive classroom.

Office gossip (this study on an elementary school and their gossip against a principal) hurts EVERYONE including your school and in this case, test scores declined. Remember that when you gossip, you also hurt yourself and if you didn't already know this, take a read here about office gossip and how to intervene and stop it.

As former elementary science and math education professor, I was always encouraging preservice teachers to teach science and math from a hands-on, minds-on perspective. My goal was single minded in the sense that for students to learn science and math their curiosity must peaked. This was always a challenge because most of these preservice teachers learned science and math by rote memorization of facts. Their prior knowledge and experience had few opportunities to actually investigate science phenomena and truly understand the usefulness of math.

This is the location for getting the Mango game that Lorraine Leo recommends so highly. Mango looks like a really cool game to play on those Kindergarten smartboards. There are a lot of free interactive reading games to use with your interactive whiteboard. Pass this along to your elementary teachers!

Great site with interactive games for elementary teachers.

TESiboard resources are primarily open-ended tools that enable teachers to enagage their pupils in a learning dialogue around the resource. The resources are designed for use by the teacher on their interactive whiteboard but many are also suitable for pupil use, usually responding to a task or challenge set by the teacher.

Many elementary teachers I know talk about how much they love popplet. Here's a blog post about how teachers are using Popplet to teach English in their classrooms. Lots of ideas. 

This is Tabitha Carro's teacher blog with lots of resources, classroom posters. This looks like a great site for elementary teachers.