TeacherHelp

LoudLit.org is committed to delivering public domain literature paired with high quality audio performances. We pair together great literature and accompanying audio. Putting the text and audio together, readers can learn spelling, punctuation and paragraph structure by listening and reading masterpieces of the written word. Read and listen via your web browser or on your mp3 player. Regardless of how you enjoy the audiobooks (audio books), they are free.

"Rubrics are great tools to help assess student learning. Teachers everywhere are using rubrics to guide teaching and learning. Yet even the most experienced teachers commonly misinterpret rubric scores! Unknowingly, they are short-changing their students. So, are you using rubrics properly?"

Most parents and educators are always encouraging our youth to get off the couch and do something! DoSomething.org is an organization that helps teens with social causes they care about. This is the generation of "doers" and this organization provides an avenue for young adults to make a difference in the community they live. They have 3 rules: No money, no car, and no adults! The organization provides tons of resources on their website including a directory of clubs in each state that are already setup, but teens are encouraged to start their own project as well. I came across a video online on "How to Use Social Media for Good" by Monique Coleman, in a section called DoSomething U, which helps people starting not-for-profit organizations or social enterprises. That got me to their site and from there I found all these amazing clubs our youth is organizing and most importantly, doing. They also have the Do Something Awards which were earlier this year on VH1. They select 5 nominees that receive a $1,000 towards their cause and the Grand Prize Winner receives a $100,000 grant for funding for their project. The 2010 Grand Prize winner is Jessica Posner who started a community center in the second largest slum in the world, which is in Kibera Africa where 66% of girls there trade sex for food as early as 6 years old. But not everyone needs to cure cancer or fight AIDS to participate; any student can start a project they care about in their own community or simply search for volunteering opportunities near them. Since one of the rules is no adults, I would suggest sharing the site with your students and letting them run with the ball from there.

The Learning Registry project is an informal collaboration among several federal agencies that share the same goal: making federal learning resources and primary source materials easier to find, access and integrate into educational environments.

"For over a decade, TeAchnology has been providing free and easy to use resources for teachers dedicated to improving the education of today's generation of students. We feature 42,000+ lesson plans, 9,000 free printable worksheets, rubrics, teaching tips, worksheet makers, web quests, math worksheets, and thousands of other great teacher resources. We are the online teacher resource that is designed to help busy Kindergarten through High School teachers."

Select an event on the calendar to explore related lesson plans, websites, and student resources.

Ice Breakers is a no frills site with tons of free instructions about many useful icebreakers, group games, and team building activities. This is a great place to find activities for the classroom. The site is uber-plain and filled with ads, but the content is strong enough to still recommend it to educators.

The league allows students to cast votes, individually, in which they choose between two competing people, ideas or things. In a discussion on climate change, for example, they could vote for which they thought was the bigger cause of global warming: aeroplane emissions or volcanic activity - discuss! Each student chooses repeatedly from random pairs. By repeatedly casting votes, the students create a league, ranked in order of the most powerful, important, popular or influential. The results are often unexpected - students are surprised to see how their peers voted - and a good starting point for discussion. Why does this person have more power than another person? What makes this pop star more influential than that politician? How is this power used?

Resources specifically for teens from the collaboration between the Internet Public Library and the Librarian's Internet Index.

"The basic idea is that teachers and librarians can upload and share all of their lessons by re-creating them (cutting and pasting sometimes) online and then sharing them with the public. It's a bit more time consuming than just uploading your lessons, but that allows all of the lessons to be searchable and organized. I've been using it for awhile now, and while there aren't many library lessons out there now, there are more added every day. As an added bonus, for every 50 lessons you upload and share, you can get a $10 Starbucks gift card!"

BrainNook is an online multiplayer game that helps kids ages 6-11 develop Math and English skills. It contains over 100 educational games based on Math and English concepts. The games help kids to practice important skills such as mental arithmetic, spatial visualization, vocabulary and grammar. They cover topics as simple as recognizing 3-letter words and adding single-digit numbers, to more advanced concepts like counting syllables and manipulating fractions.

Guidance and Support for Ongoing Improvement How does the MILE Guide help states, districts and schools implement and support 21st century skills initiatives? * Generate broad-based support for 21st century skills initiatives through step-by-step establishment of a compelling vision for 21st century teaching and learning. * Set benchmarks and goals with assessments to help administrators, teachers, and policy leaders to identify current progress on 21st century skills initiatives and define next steps. * Generate successful grant applications through identifying and prioritizing objectives as they seek funding via grants and other sources. * Ensure continuous progress through providing improvement rubrics to monitor activities and accomplishments. A Comprehensive, Coherent Toolkit for Progress Offering a variety of tools all designed to work together, the new MILE GUIDE includes: * The MILE Guide Self-Assessment Tool A visual mapping and self-assessment tool that allows districts to plot where they are today and set a course for future integration of 21st century skills into systems of learning. * Implementation Guiding Recommendations A set of district-relevant recommendations and promising practices to help local districts move from assessment of 21st century skills integration to concrete action. * P21 Framework Definitions The most up-to-date P21 Framework definitions that spell out expectations for 21st century student outcomes and the necessary support systems at the state and local levels.