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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.

Two studies were released in an attempt to "quantify the benefits of mobile technology in education and the infrastructure needed..." In these students students had tablets and Internet access at home and at school. Of course, I'm not sure that it is tablet computers that give benefits, Internet access, cloud computing, or a combination, but I'm sure these studies will be touted by many far and wide. Of course, remember if they had strapped the tablets to the kid''s back and hadn't used them - they would have had lower scores. All improvement is all in how technology is being USED to teach. "The studies put Android tablets in the hands of students and their teachers in two schools - eighth-graders at Stone Middle School in Fairfax County Public Schools and fifth-graders at Falconer Elementary School in Chicago Public Schools - and provided wireless access to the students both in school and away from school. (The devices were HTC Evo tablets.) Researchers then followed the students' activities over the course of a year, with the aim of evaluating "how access to these devices for communication with teachers and classmates increases comfort with technology, extends the learning day, and allows students to develop digital citizenship skills within a safe and secure learning environment.""

Eliminating math misconceptions is difficult and merely repeating a lesson or extra practice will not help. Telling students were they are mistaken will not work either. Recognizing student misconceptions and immediately focusing on the misconception is important. Providing guiding questions using inductive reasoning is the best approach, along with the use of writing prompts which help reveal further student misconceptions.

Teaching math to elementary students is critical for establishing a foundation of success in mathematics. There is a need for some basic memorization of facts, because students who do not memorize arithmetic functions struggle in upper grades. However, math must be fun and interesting, along with making connections with real-world applications.

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.

A great way to get started with technology is to join in an exciting project. this project by Susan Silverman was designed using the principles of Universal Design for Learning. I've heard her present and she is a pro. (Along with my friend Jennifer Wagner.)

Susan Silverman creates excellent projects for global collaboration among elementary students.

Great resources for elementary students

NetGenEd Sounding boards. Kim Cofino is an expert at this model and is running this: "The Sounding Board process is a very easy, fun and eye-opening way for younger students (upper elementary, middle, and lower high school) to participate in one of these amazing, global projects. Basically Sounding Boards act as peer reviewers for the students participating in the project. Small groups of students in the Sounding Board classrooms will review one NetGenEd student group's work and offer very simple peer feedback. This time around, I have to admit, the project is even more exciting because it's part of a larger project organized by Don Tapscott, author of Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World. Here's his intro to the wider project:" Please put a call out and join in! Thanks!

For those working with elementary students integrating global competency, these 428 lesson plans and activities are great ways to cover geography and the cultural literacy that is needed by today's students. 

Fun! A Milk Carton Construction Contest! This is something you can do with all students (and win $5,000 in the process.) This is a fun one to share with elementary teachers. Evergreen Packaging is challenging school age children to become more eco-friendly with their nationwide Made By Milk Carton Construction Contest. For the past 3 semesters, students have been using their creativity to build art creations from recycled school milk cartons based on specific themes. Schools have the chance to win up to $5,000 for their creations. The Spring 2014 contest theme is "Stories," and entries are being accepted now until April 16, 2014.

"Put the tools in kids' hands. * Interactive whiteboards: They don't call 'em interactive for nothing. When these large-display screens that connect to a computer and a projector arrived at Forest Lake, Williams gave teachers six months to wean themselves from their interaction-less overhead projectors. Students can touch the interactive boards to solve math problems, play games, or write and edit text. When one student is running the board, Williams suggests keeping others engaged using remote clickers, personal dry-erase slates, or manipulatives. (Download this idea guide for interactive whiteboards.) "

Grant Program that provides grants of up to $4,000 per year to students who intend to teach in a public or private elementary or secondary school that serves students from low-income families.

A variety of Google templates for classroom use including a student newspaper, timeline, calendar ideas for students, classroom job application, story mapping graphic organizer, venn diagrams.  Many are elementary level but easily adaptable for higher grade levels.

Tynker has many exciting coding games that you can play with students. Start with these for your elementary classrooms.

Language learners resources for elementary students. 

An article in last week's Education Week looks at the increasingly common practice of reading aloud to middle and high school students. In discussing the practice with Mary Ann Zehr (I'm quoted briefly in the piece) I made the point that while there is certainly nothing wrong with reading out loud to teenagers, it is symptomatic of what I call "literacy creep" - the tendency of elementary school-style instructional techniques to find their way deeper into K-12 education across all content areas.

Yet another beautiful analysis of a major problem in education today by the good people at Core Knowledge.

Nice write up on how Brad Flickinger is running his elementary classroom with a lot of high-quality technology equipment where the students serve as mentors for each other. Love this model. Hat tip: Robert Madden