It is important to stay current and relevant in your field. However, keeping up to date with standards, lessons, and engaging activities can be time-consuming as a new or pre-service educator. Some interview questions that can be asked by a prospective employer related to this topic are, “How do you stay current in your field?” or “How do you keep up with the changes in your field?” Some resources to check out include:
- PDE SAS: This is the Pennsylvania Department of Education portal that contains 5 valuable features related to teaching: standards, assessment, curriculum framework, instruction, materials and resources, and school environments. The feature that this article will focus upon is the standards portal. When using the standards portal, you can search by grade level, courses or subject areas. Once you find a topic to search for you can find lesson plans, assessment pieces, videos, and resources like websites related to the specific standard or subject area. You can even search by common core standards, which makes this a fantastic resource for all educators.
- Discovery Education: Offers free resources for teachers grades K-12, along with parents and students. You can search through lesson plans, worksheets, clipart, and more within grade level and subject area. Lesson plans come complete with objectives, materials, adaptations, and step-by-step process to complete the lesson plan, along with resources to complement the lesson plan.
- Read write think: Is another site that you can use to search for lesson plans. But, this site is set up a bit differently it includes the ability to search for not only lesson plans, but also student interactives, apps, printables, and calendar resources. In addition, you can search through learning objectives such as 21st-century learning skills (critical thinking, digital literacy, and more).
- Gooru Learning: Within this website you can search by grade level, subject or standards (including common core, next generation science standards, and more). This site houses teacher created content and activities that can be adapted for large group, individual, or small group instruction. Within lessons teachers can embed questions, videos, images, and more.
How do you keep current in your field? Which tools and resources do you go to in order to find engaging and relevant activities for your learners?
Dr. Samantha Fecich, Assistant Professor & Instructional Technologist
Grove City College
Grove City, Pennsylvania