Lesson Plans & Common Core

Here's an interesting new tool for teachers to use to plan lessons: Achieve the Core. It makes sure teachers are aligning each lesson with a Common Core State Standard. Seems to be a very helpful tool.

Math & Literacy Songs

There have been numerous studies conducted around the benefits of songs in the classroom and their affects on learning. It's a great way to "engage learners in kinesthetic, auditory, and visual modalities. Using music in the classroom can create a positive, energized and focused environment. Music has even been shown to help bridge language gaps for English Language Learners." Just to name a few reasons from Rock 2 the Core's website. Rock 2 the Core is a website housing songs aligned to the Common Core Standards. As of now, Rock 2 the Core has songs for K-5 Math and Literacy.

Math Games Website

Here's a great site I recently discovered: MathGames. Users can find games according to the skill they want to practice, the Common Core standard they want to master, or by grade level. Students can create a FREE account and MathGames will track his/her progress through their account. Here's a link to information for parents.

Math Games for Common Core

Here's a new math tool aligned with the Common Core: Prodigy.  It allows teachers to create accounts for students, track their progress/data, align lessons with the student's needs.  Students will love Prodigy because it's game based learning where they have to solve Math problems to unlock different levels and prizes within the game.  Read more about Prodigy on Emerging EdTech's blog.

Exit Ticket

Here's a fairly new resource, Exit Ticket, which was fully reviewed on Edudemic.  It's a student response system that allows students to answer quick quizzes, short answer, and multiple choice responses. It grades the assessment and analysis the data for the teacher. It's an exceptional tool for making any teacher's life a little easier especially with our new SLO's (student learning objectives) in Denver Public Schools.

Interactive Activities for Websites

Gynzy is a company that releases lessons and activities for SMART Boards. They recently released free interactive content to embed onto a classroom website. The free content includes 50 activities for elementary level math, language arts, science, or social studies. Many of the activities are fluency practice like clocks, counting money, synonyms vs antonyms, etc. An excellent resource for any elementary teacher.