Selected low-cost curriculum and PD resources for teachers.
As the name suggests, this site is like Wikipedia for teachers, by teachers. Though supported by the Clark County School District in Nevada, anyone can contribute K-8 lesson and unit plans to the site. The lessons are then searchable by key word, grade-level standard, or a specific textbook. Want to see what a guided-reading lesson looks like? Need some advice on how to organize student folders? Check out the demonstration videos, which provide short clips of real teachers demonstrating their instructional, management, and organizational techniques. Administrators may want to consider showing the free videos to staff members for quick and easy professional development.
This site boasts 28,000 free lesson plans for K-12 classrooms and a variety of tips, printable worksheets, and games for all subjects. Users can scroll through pre-made graphic organizers and rubrics to get lesson ideas or create their own using a template. There are various worksheets, such as word searches and Mad Libs, that some teachers might consider using as centers or for students who finish their work early. Teachers who pay a yearly membership fee have access to more extensive resources.
The names of this site’s main sections “Find, Contribute, and Connect” give you a sense its offerings. Teachers can search through a collection of math, science, language arts, and social studies lesson plans and activities for students of all ages and grade levels. They can also add their own resources to share with the community by uploading files or creating lesson plans, from templates or scratch, and adding them to the site. Many of the resources are evaluated by content experts and teachers through the ‘Curriki Review System,” and given a rating of basic, good, or exemplary. Users can also create a profile, write blog entries, and keep lists of their favorite resources. Through the “Connect” option, teachers in similar subject areas, grade levels, or geographic locations can find each other and hold group discussions. Educational organizations such as CyberSmart and Cool School have partnered with the site and added to the collection of curriculum resources.
VoyagerU specializes in professional development courses in reading. The programs use a mixture of group-study sessions with a trained facilitator and individual online activities and assessments. Participants keep track of their progress through an online report card that shows their remaining activities and allows them to work at their own pace. They also have access to a variety of lesson plans and activities they can take back to the classroom, such as printable, leveled reading books. The courses are research-based and applicable for all K-12 teachers who are helping students develop reading skills. Although there is a considerable fee for the resources, federal School Improvement Funds may cover the costs, and VoyagerU offers help securing funding.
Sponsored by the Annenberg Foundation, this site advertises video professional development workshops for K-12 teachers in the areas of arts, foreign language, literature, mathematics, science, and social studies. Teachers can sign up for workshops alone or in groups, and have the option of using the hours for graduate credit. Workshops are geared toward specific grade levels and include titles such as “Assessment in Math and Science: What’s the Point?,"and “Conversations in Literature.” All materials are available for free through Video on Demand and PDF files on the Web site; alternatively, participants can purchase DVDs and books. The Teacher-Talk e-mail lists allow class-takers to communicate and discuss ideas. The site also offers free educational videos that teachers can download and show to their classes.
Library of Congress—Teachers Page
This site gives teachers ways to use primary sources from the U.S. Library of Congress in their classrooms. On “The Learning Page,” teachers can find suggestions on teaching with primary sources and explore the American Memory collection, an online resource providing free access to photographs, sound recordings, and historical writings that document the American experience. The page also provides a collection of 4th through 12th grade lesson plans and activities in the areas of history, government, and literature. The lessons include opportunities for students to practice using American Memory’s primary sources. In addition, the site describes three forms of available professional development workshops: in-house workshops at the Library of Congress, distance-learning videoconference programs, and self-serve workshops for school in-service trainings. For information on the workshops, teachers should contact edoutreach@loc.gov.
