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Whether it is class homework updates, project deadlines, school news or dinnertime conversation starters, teachers are taking advantage of Twitter’s free tool and keeping parents up to date and involved in classroom happenings.

Get more parents involved in the classroom by streamlining how you ask for help and making it easier for parents to sign up to help. 

In 1970, the U.S. had the highest rates of high school graduation in the world, now it has one of the lowest.

now around 75 percent, which puts America 23rd out of 28 countries surveyed.

They are mentors, coaches, motivators, and lifelong sources of inspiration to their students.

Google Earth: FREE With Google Earth for iPad, you can fly to far corners of the planet with just the swipe of a finger. Explore the same global satellite and aerial imagery available in the desktop version of Google Earth, including high-resolution imagery for over half of the world's population and a third of the world's land mass. You can swipe with two fingers to adjust your view to see mountainous terrain.

GeoWalk HD: $2.99 AU We are all used to the idea that encyclopedias are pretty boring and usually too overloaded with information, that's why we decided to squeeze the most essential and exciting info about our planet into a brief, informative and illustrative 3D Fact Book to explore the world in a playful way.

National Geographic World Atlas: $1.99 AU National Geographic World Atlas HD utilizes the highest resolution images, providing you detail, accuracy, and artistic beauty normally found in wall maps and bound atlases. Preloaded with 3 different styles of world maps with an internet connection, you can continue zooming through continent-level maps into Bing maps - close enough to see your home!

Anticipation guides ask students to express an opinion about ideas before they encounter them in a text or unit of study.  Completing anticipation guides prepares students to recognize and connect to these themes as they surface in their learning.  Reviewing anticipation guides at the end of a lesson or unit is one way to help students reflect on how learning new material may have influenced their opinions, perhaps by reinforcing previously held beliefs or by causing ideas to shift. 

Character ChartsGraphic organizers, like the sample below, can be used to help students organize information about major and minor characters in a text.  Completed character charts are useful tools for writing essays and studying for tests. They are often used to record information about literacy characters, but can also be adapted to record information about historical figures.

Document Analysis TemplatesAnalyzing historical documents requires students to identify the purpose, message and audience of a text. Document Analysis Forms are graphic organizers that guide students through a process of identifying important background information about a document (e.g. author/creator, date created, place, format, etc.) and using this data to determine the bias or perspective of a text.