Halloween Motivator

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Getting kids to write and dig deep in their thesaurus is a tough job for teachers. It is hard to motivate some kids to enjoy writing and to have fun with words. Here is a great activity which is also just in time for halloween.

This activity is suitable for Grades 3-7. The resource includes a template for a small 2’ skeleton, a large 4’ skeleton, and a fabulous writing activity.

BUILD A SKELETON AND WRITE ABOUT IT
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Reading Readiness and Numbers

This is a series of lessons that is designed for children aged 3 to 5 years old.

Instructions on each page can be adapted to meet your children’s
needs. This resource is very flexible, and has wonderful illustrations and age-appropriate activities

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The pages are presented in black and white. This allows the teacher to give
specific coloring directions to the children to promote an understanding of the
readiness and numbers instructions.

Sets of pictures provide the reading readiness activities and faciliate the
understanding of the numbers. Small muscle development is promoted through
tracing picture outlines with a crayon or pencil. The children will identify similarities
and differences, use the numbers from 1 to 10 and sing the Ten Little Fingers action
song to the tune of Ten Little Indians.

Finally the children sing a song about Charlie Leong’s train. This is sung to the tune
of Old McDonald Had a Farm. They count the train cars, the animals, and learn to
notice details by identifying pictures that are the same or different.
These lessons integrate action, listening and song.

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Complete ESL Children's Curriculum

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Complete Language Arts program for students that struggle with basic English. In BC Canada, almost every elementary class has students that need far more ESL support than they are getting. This series provides high interest- low vocabulary reading for students that need extra support with English. The series starts with the basics of the alphabet, then moves on to writing of sentences, paragraphs, expanding vocabulary, and using simple grammar. What really works about this resource is that the activities allow the teacher to work with other students while the ESL group works on the appropriate activities. Oral language, writing, reading, and vocabulary are all addressed each lesson.

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ESL Classroom Resources

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Try 3 Pigs Coloring With Younger Students

June is a hectic time for teachers. Primary teachers need activities that engage small children, that tie into the theme, and provide a (small) break for the tired teacher. This resource works just great:
Three Pigs Enrichment Pack







This Primary Enrichment pack is ideal for any primary classroom. It has a huge 27 page coloring book based on The Three Little Pigs Story, and lots of web links to other sites, videos, and resources to immerse your little tykes in this great story! The coloring book is all original art work. Preview this resource here:

Three Pigs Enrichment Pack











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Interesting Online Design Tools

Fun Logo Site!

Have your students make awesome project titles, logos, and interesting graphics:

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Have your students go to: Logo Design and Image Tool

Find an online image editor, logo design tools and more. Read More...
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Create Word Clouds with Wordle

Create exciting word graphics with Wordle. Wordle is a free program that allows students or teachers to make a word cloud. The word cloud you see comes from the RSS feed of this web site.Picture 4

Find Wordle here: Wordle - Beautiful Word Clouds Read More...
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High Interest Low Vocabulary Readers

Classroom Management Tips

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What is teacher productivity?

Being a productive teacher is not taking away anything from students, it is giving more to students in less time. AND HAVING A LIFE!

So what is teacher productivity?

ANSWER: to be more efficient and give more to students. What you give is not more curriculum, more tests or assessements. It is what students need most: hope, joy and someone who believes in them. You will be able to really care for your students if you are not over-stressed.

Colleagues of mine have pointed out some of the extensive definitions of “Teacher Productivity”, and criticism of those definitions. I still stand by my definition:


The ability to be efficient so that you can give more to your students.

That “more” that you give is:

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Teach with literature

Literature has the power to capture the imagination of students. Take verses from Rime of the Ancient Mariner:

ship


The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow followed free;
We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea.


Or the now famous:

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.


The deeply affective nature of good literature works through the beauty of the language, and the universal themes it contains. Mature students know when they encounter something deep and universal.

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Useful Sites for Teachers #4 Khan Academy

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Another all-round winner of a free site is the online Khan Academy. This site provides 2,200 instructional videos for most topics in intermediate and secondary math and science. All the videos have a simple lecture-style format with whiteboard illustrations and some graphics.

Khan Academy


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Useful Sites For Teachers #1: SOLARO

Another must have useful site for a techie or non-techie teacher is SOLARO. It can be found at:

SOLARO » Helping the World learn, ONE STUDENT at a time.
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Solaro is an easy to use online teaching, study, practice, or assessment tool for students and teachers. This allows students to log on to lessons/ quizzes/ tests previewed or chosen by the teacher. And all the questions are aligned to the regional standards. In BC Canada, my Solaro accounts tie in directly with the Prescribed Learning Outcomes of the BC Ministry of Education. This direct tie-in is true all over North America.

An amazing thing about this service is that it is offered FREE to all schools. THAT’S RIGHT FREE! The easy to use interface, the number of options for teachers makes this site the #1 top winner of useful web sites for teachers!
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Astonishing presentations online FREE!

Prezi is an award winning creative and free online presentation site that wows students and teachers alike. It is is hard to beat this original and effective site. Using Prezi is like having a large on-line white board that you can fill with text, video, animations, and pictures. You then set the presentation to “zoom” in and out of the different components you have added.

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Prezi - The Zooming Presentation Editor

Here is an example of the presentation style:


Why should you move beyond slides? by Adam Somlai-Fischer on Prezi



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Free on the web?

The number of free resources on the web is shrinking. Formally free resources are being bought out to become part of someone’s business plan. A recent post on Teacher Tools tells about a wonderful teacher Sue Le Beau who has compiled some really excellent resources on one enormous page. Look around at some of her other resources on other pages. Some of those items are now on paid sites, and that seems to be the trend. We still feel her site has excellent resource links, and many still free. As far as other sites:That quiz has assured us that they will be free “forever”. There are no ads on the site. That QuizSolaro has said it will be free for schools. (For now that is.) The people from Solaro are passionate about helping kids and including all children in all schools in North America and abroad. SOLARO » Helping the World learn, ONE STUDENT at a time.Teachers Pay Teachers have an amazing large section of free items. This is not likely to change. TeachersPayTeachers.com - An Open Marketplace for Original Lesson Plans and Other Teaching ResourcesRegrettably many other “free sites” now are charging a subscription fee, or are so full of obnoxious ads with very little free stuff, that we cannot post the site on this resource web site.Please use the comments on this site and I will post your suggestions of good free (relatively ad free) web sites for teachers.I want to make a little cautionary note here:Watch that the sites you host your web pages on do not have inappropriate advertising. I remember one site I previewed for my class. This site had very good content and links, but a large side-bar banner advertised singles in my area. A large scantily clad lady was there to greet the youngsters! Was I glad I did not use that site without looking!The moral of this story is to preview everything!
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Free Clip Art for Teachers

If you find that your programs can’t provide sufficient clip art, you can find royalty free clip art can be found in the following places:

http://classroomclipart.com/cgi-bin/kids/imageFolio.cgi?direct=Clipart

http://www.clker.com/

http://www.clipart.com/en/

http://www.iclipart.com/

You may consider using royalty free clip art if you plan to publish your lessons or units.

For more information go here: Make Some Money From Your Lessons! Read More...
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Free or Inexpensive Websites for Teachers

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Organizing your class using a class web site is extremely useful. If your school or district has a web site, it is worth seeing if there is hosting for your class. If not, you may want to explore some free or inexpensive web hosts for teachers: Read More...
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