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This website contains a wide variety of virtual manipulative that can be maneuvered by all learners at all stages. Both students and teachers can use this to demonstrate understanding as well as modeling a strategy. All viewers are able to see concrete place values as well as the composition and decomposition of hundred and ten blocks. It is a great tool for the visual learner and those who are still in the concrete stage in addition/subtraction.

Week 9: Daniel Light presents this article about keeping students engaged while in Math. It is so important to keep your students engaged while learning. When students are engaged, they are more likely to stay focused and motivated while learning. Thus, students will retain the information because they are focused and motivated. Daniel Light provides strategies to do this in math class.

This resource provides a list of 10 strategies to support English Language Learners (ELLs) in math. The best practices which stood out most to me are eliciting nonverbal responses when students need to demonstrate understanding, such as a simple thumbs up or thumbs down. This allows students to answer questions without having to produce the language. In addition, this resource supports my SMART target learning goal to support students with explaining how to solve for an unknown in an equation. The resource suggests using sentence frames so students can better participate in discussions, which also provides structure as students explain their mathematical thinking.

This article is about alphabet knowledge in Pre-kindergarten and Kindergarten classroom. It went over different assessments to use to assess the proper way to demonstrate alphabet knowledge. This a great article to read. It talks about instructional approaches and how to shift to alphabet instruction that aligned with emphasis on assessments and differentiated instruction. I believe that would be good resources to help teach my students' letter sounds. This might also help me achieve my SMART target goal.

This site contains free resources for science teachers. Teachers can search to find resources by keyword, such as topic or class. Our group can use this to find lesson plans or activities to support our SMART goal of supplementing instruction for some AP Biology students.

This is a great source that provides the similar manipulatives that we use in math- digi blocks, fraction patterns, base tens blocks. Students can manipulate the resources online. In the homepage, you'll see that the manipulatives are organized by grade level and math topic.

A doctoral dissertation about enhancing writing at the elementary level. Teachers used an intensive 9 week writing program and observed the effects on the students' writing performance. Learning gaps with writing is very wide and instructional changes are made in order to help students write better. Cross-curricular instruction with writing is also emphasized in this study.

This article provides detailed background information regarding explicit writing instruction, especially regarding students with special needs such as ADHD, but the strategies discussed can be adapted and used with all learners regardless of ability or grade level. The article begins with a focus on strategies for providing students with motivational contexts for their writing as well as making writing a routine that they enjoy. The rest of the article is divided into sections based on students' ability/age level (basic skills, revising and editing, and motivation). This article discusses strategies that can help address teachers address students' learning gaps in elaboration and explaining their ideas fully in expository writing tasks. Be sure to click "Single Page" at the bottom right of the article so you can see the entire article on one screen, and explore the links to the left of the article for more information about writing instruction for different populations!

I found these writing strategies to be extremely useful in helping come up with activities for helping students improve their writing skills.

Grades K-2 Reading. Kindergarten-K, First-1st Grade and Second-2nd Grade Smartboard Interactive Reading. ELA Writing Games, Activities and Lessons. Teachers and students can use these Smartboard games, activities and lessons to learn about Reading ELA in Kindergarten, First Grade and Second Grade. This site offers an array of phonics activities to support struggling K-2 students working on initial letter sounds, vowel sounds, and reading skills.

At the New Mexico School for the Arts, they tried a variety of approaches for using data to improve student achievement, and didn't get it right at first. This article shares what they learned.

This article includes example-based insights and techniques for using student performance data when talking to parents about their children.

Personal Finance is life skill that students will use from childhood into adulthood.

Student Outcomes

This article from The Language Educator discusses how to differentiate instruction in the language classroom through the use of stations, complex instruction, orbital studies, centers, and tiered activities. The article showcases the success of differentiating instruction at a German immersion school and and a district-wide implementation of differentiated. Included are addresses to challenges with differentiating instruction in the language classroom.

Founded by Dr. Gianfranco Conti, Phd., the Language Gym. The site includes a language training system with a verb trainer, workouts, and a game room. The verb trainer reviews tenses, pronouns, types of verbs, and conjugations. The workouts have vocabulary and grammar modules by proficiency level. The game room uses sports themed games to practice language skills. Languages included are Spanish, French, German, Italian and English.

Great article about how different states and communities reduced the achievement gap. It mentions Maryland, and states that MD provides extra instruction for students who are not on track to pass the High School Assessment. But I think it would be a lot more useful to provide extra instruction at lower grades to reduce the achievement gap early on.

This is a document provided by the NEA on how schools can improve students reading achievement in school. I like this resource because it breaks down steps school can use from teachers, students and parents to improve reading. It starts by discussing literacy skills taught in kindergarten and goes into talking about text meaning for older students. Great resource!