Wonderful tool for locating sites that are tools for use in the school. Organized by categories, such as presentation, collaborative, research, slide show, mapping, and writing. Descriptions of tools and links provided.
problems with rubrics and why they don't work for helping students with writing; Maja Wilson has done extensive work in the area, and she has lots of credibility in this area; she has presented for NCTE her research; agree with her research!
This is a wonderful post written by a 1st grade teacher about the reasons for getting students to write blogs and to have an online presence including a digital portfolio.
A New York Times piece on how one kindergarten class is using Twitter as a writing and reflection tool. Comments from respondents are also of interest.
Cube Creators is a tool for creating stories in a step-by-step way, as reviewed by Richard Byrne. The site uses templates, and Byrne suggests this might help students get over writers' block.
Certainly, this is something we all need to get a handle on very quickly. These resources are quite useful, as you will see.
The purpose of this post is to start a discussion on TeachThought about the online resources available to teachers as they learn how to align curriculum with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Since nearly all of the 50 states have adopted the Common Core, the majority of our readers need access to high-quality resources they can use for professional development (
Before you go anywhere else, you should visit the Common Core website. There, you can download the standards and read them for yourself. Talk to the text, just as our students do when they are tackling something complex. Write your questions and opinions out on the print out. Now you know where you are cognitively in this process.