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The official portal to the Standards Aligned System, with standards, frameworks, instructional materials, resources and much more.

Below is the list of websites that I use on a regular basis to enrich and differentiate instruction and content.  The services of the sites listed are free or of minimal costs. A really nice list of tools, not overwhelming, and very resourceful.

Are you looking for practical ways to improve student achievement? Strengthen teaching and learning processes with research-based instructional strategies combined with effective technology use. Twelve core strategies link to 30 classroom examples that show how to apply key research, using technology to engage learners and improve achievem

This collection of reviewed resources from TeachersFirst is selected to help teachers, parents, and students understand concepts of copyright and Fair Use.  This collection includes instructional activities about copyright and collections/tools to use images, music, and texts legally, either through Fair Use or Creative Commons licensing. Use these resources to model and teach ethical use of electronic media or to find copyright-safe raw materials for student projects. Be sure to share these resources with students for them to access any time they have a project to do.

ADULTS LEARN DIFFERENTLY than young people. But more importantly, their reasons for learning are very different. Andragogy (Knowles, 1984), the theory of adult learning, attempts to explain why adults learn differently than other types of learners.

"Instructional expert Jim Knight visits John Cusick to observe a small groups project and discuss the classroom management techniques he is using. John and Jim discuss structured lessons, giving students respect, and finding the key to unlocking their love of learning"

"Instructional expert Jim Knight visits Michael Covarrubias to observe a lesson on context clues, discuss the classroom management techniques he is using already, and share some ideas to increase student engagement. Michael and Jim discuss emphasizing effort, getting students attention before asking questions, using response cards, and planning back-up activities."

"A new report has identified key challenges facing education technology in the coming years, ranging from changing economics to instructional practices that have failed to adapt to the evolving technology landscape. 2 But the No. 1 challenge in ed tech, according to the report, is with teachers themselves and the inadequacy of their preparation and ongoing training"

Survey/Poll to use for Instructional Coaches for coaching effectiveness.teaching practices, district support, implementation,student achievement

Mentoring can accelerate the development of new teachers' instructional practice. Mentors need comprehensive and ongoing professional development to be effective. These conversation tips provide insight into the broader curriculum of mentor professional development offered by the New Teacher Center at University of California, Santa Cruz, a content contributor to PBS TeacherLine.

"Students need much more support and feedback in the online environment than in a traditional course. This is because the potential threat that students feel alienated is quite high in the Virtual Classroom. Using effective feedback strategies will enable the instructor to identify and meet individual student needs as well as encourage students to participate and continue to participate at a high quality level."

"When instructors adapt their course materials to the online environment, they should be sensitive to the advantages and disadvantages of the Virtual Classroom. Web-based learning is well-suited for communications, collaboration, and information acquisition, but not for reading long text files. It is difficult to read screen after screen of text on a computer. In the Virtual Classroom, text-based lectures should be short and few. With this being the case, where are students going to get the information they need in obtaining the learning objectives?"

"What do you want to use technology for? To help you answer this question, we've outlined some teaching/learning activities below that are used across the disciplines and tried to suggest through examples from the Web how each might utilize a certain kind of technology or a combination of different technologies to accomplish specific learning objectives. Each example represents a different discipline, and there are over 40 disciplines represented in the examples."

"Backward design begins with the end in mind: What enduring understandings do I want my students to develop? How will my students demonstrate their understanding when the unit is completed? How will I ensure that students have the skills and understand the concepts required on the summative assessment?"

"Developing and Teaching a Course: Goals & Objectives"

"Whether you're into digital photography, web design and development, motion graphics, or just need to brush up on Excel, you can learn all the software skills you need to gain a competitive edge with our online tutorials."

A SmartBoard mini-movie is a simple (most involve only a click of the mouse), interactive animation that teachers can download and add to their galleries. From there, the movies can be inserted into their SMART Notebook presentations. Each mini-movie is a dynamic Flash file, similar to the same files that are already included in SMART Notebook's resources.

"Becoming accustomed as a coach to not having your own classroom or your own students was probably challenging. I am sure, however, you quickly engaged in conversations with your colleagues about offering to demonstrate or co-teach some lessons to those teachers willing to share their students with you. Although alien at first, I'll bet it was very rewarding to work with students again and feel that great "high" that a teacher feels when the lesson worked well. "