This week while we had the chance to explore online topics of personal interest, I decided to focus my attention towards good teacher resource-sharing websites. We have already brushed on topics of personal learning networks (PLNs) and how important it is to build up a relationship with other teachers who may be helpful in providing rich resources. One of the main websites that teachers turn to in order to increase their PLN is Twitter because
the website it crawling with up-to-date links and information that can easily be attained by looking up the right hashtags or by following the right people. Sometimes, however, teachers may find themselves looking for a very SPECIFIC worksheet, project, or video to help supplement a point in their lesson. From personal experience, I have discovered that my own PLN of pre-service teachers usually don’t reply when I Tweet out a desperate request
asking for resources on really specific lessons. Therefore, I am left to try and find quality resources on my own. One of my biggest struggles as a pre-service teacher comes from my own insistence that I have to make all my own PowerPoints, notebook presentations, worksheets, and activities simply because I am being evaluated daily and I have put the unrealistic expectation on myself that I need to create everything from scratch. Although I may have learned this lesson the hard way, I have come to the very obvious conclusion that many internet resources available can be a lifesaver and a timesaver! One of the most valuable things that has helped me to come up with new and exciting content is by browsing teacher lesson plans on the same topic. Now obviously there are many awesome ideas that you can stumble upon by reading teacher’s blogs, but this can be a very time consuming way to acquire resources in comparison to doing simple keyword searches on websites that are designed around giving immediate and relevant items. With this in mind, I wanted to browse for online teacher resource sharing sites that I hope I can refer back to within my upcoming practicum to save me from some sleepless nights! Here is a list of good education websites that I found, but below is my own list of sites where teachers can actually share their OWN lesson plans – which in my experience is more helpful to me in my own lesson planning!
SMART Exchange is one of my favorite websites to go to when I am looking for interactive ways to deliver a tricky concept that could use some visual backup OR for a hard concept that requires some hands-on manipulation to make connections. I think that this an extremely helpful website for teachers because we are always looking for ways to keep our students engaged and to use technology in meaningful ways, which are both usually met as soon as the SMART Board is utilized. Also, making a good SMART notebook presentation can be
extremely time consuming, so if another teacher has already made a similar notebook presentation it can definitely be worth using it in your class! I personally use SMART Exchange a lot, and I have also downloaded some of my own notebook files onto there because I had colleagues asking for my presentations!
Share My Lesson is a new website that I have discovered which is a really great site for sharing and finding resources. Although I found the website a bit confusing to work through at first, I eventually caught on and then was able to find some really great lesson plan
ideas and printouts. Some of the lesson plans that I came across were extremely detailed and very engaging for students such as the math “Number CSI – Solve the Crime” worksheet package which combines 9 silly celebrity pictures and a series of murder mystery ‘clues’ such as ratios, counting time, moving decimals, etc. to solve the murder mystery. This lesson plan was a prime example of what I meant when I said that I like to find websites where ACTUAL teachers submit their own lesson plans – because they are set up in a way that is detailed enough that anyone can easily succeed with them (almost like a substitute lesson plan).
Pinterest is one of the quickest ways that I link to useful teaching resources when I am trying to brainstorm for lesson plans. I turn to Pinterest over a Google search because I know that many of the great resources that I may spend a long time sifting through on Google or other sites will be linked back to Pinterest anyways. I also like that Pinterest gives you an immediate visual of the link, so you can usually do a ‘quick shop’ to see if anything matches what you had in mind before you decide to click on it. One of the other main benefits of Pinterest is that many teachers use it as a medium to link back to their own personal blogs. So, by doing a search and browsing for related pictures, you can often be linked back to relevant blogs that may give you a more in-depth breakdown of that lesson if you interested. Pinterest also often links to relevant videos, handouts, songs, and websites that would be provided by searching numerous other websites as well. The main downfall with Pinterest as a means of finding teacher resources is that often the links may be broken or just lead to a picture with no explanation. I also find that many things on Pinterest link to Teachers Pay Teachers and require a payment to access.
Teachers Pay Teachers is another really well-known website that has great resources like classroom printouts, worksheets, writing units, themed PowerPoints, etc. The site is an awesome way to get your hands on ready-to-teach learning packages and handouts. However, some of the worksheets don't come with very in-depth explanation as to how to use them in a lesson plan, and many of the items are resources that must be purchased . With that being said, I have often found many free items on TPT that have been perfect for my own uses in my own lesson plans! The thing that I like about Teachers Pay Teachers is that it is a way for teachers to put all of the hard work of making authentic documents PAY off... literally. We spend hours trying to put together cute and relevant worksheet and units, and this is really one of the biggest sites out there where other teachers will actually pay you for time you have put into that resource. For overachievers like myself who think that they need to make everything from scratch – this is the place for it to pay off!
One issue with the resources I have listed so far is that many of them focus around US or UK curriculum. When trying to find strictly Canadian or Albertan websites with the same idea of sharing resources, I found that most of our websites aren’t quite as in-depth. The main Albertan one would probably be the Learn Alberta website which has a section where teachers can add their own resources. Another relevant site for our school is the Curriculum Laboratory’s Lesson Plan Database, however, you need to be a UofL member to access it, and it is a relatively new database so it only has 201 resources so far. Both of these websites are useful for Albertan teachers because they are linked directly to relevant curriculum for our classrooms.
The list above has just a few of the good teacher resource sharing sites that I found while exploring the web this week. Having a few helpful websites like these is a great way for teachers to save themselves some work during lesson planning, but also for teachers to gain recognition for their own creative ideas and to build up their PLN while they borrow and share resources!
the website it crawling with up-to-date links and information that can easily be attained by looking up the right hashtags or by following the right people. Sometimes, however, teachers may find themselves looking for a very SPECIFIC worksheet, project, or video to help supplement a point in their lesson. From personal experience, I have discovered that my own PLN of pre-service teachers usually don’t reply when I Tweet out a desperate request
asking for resources on really specific lessons. Therefore, I am left to try and find quality resources on my own. One of my biggest struggles as a pre-service teacher comes from my own insistence that I have to make all my own PowerPoints, notebook presentations, worksheets, and activities simply because I am being evaluated daily and I have put the unrealistic expectation on myself that I need to create everything from scratch. Although I may have learned this lesson the hard way, I have come to the very obvious conclusion that many internet resources available can be a lifesaver and a timesaver! One of the most valuable things that has helped me to come up with new and exciting content is by browsing teacher lesson plans on the same topic. Now obviously there are many awesome ideas that you can stumble upon by reading teacher’s blogs, but this can be a very time consuming way to acquire resources in comparison to doing simple keyword searches on websites that are designed around giving immediate and relevant items. With this in mind, I wanted to browse for online teacher resource sharing sites that I hope I can refer back to within my upcoming practicum to save me from some sleepless nights! Here is a list of good education websites that I found, but below is my own list of sites where teachers can actually share their OWN lesson plans – which in my experience is more helpful to me in my own lesson planning!
SMART Exchange is one of my favorite websites to go to when I am looking for interactive ways to deliver a tricky concept that could use some visual backup OR for a hard concept that requires some hands-on manipulation to make connections. I think that this an extremely helpful website for teachers because we are always looking for ways to keep our students engaged and to use technology in meaningful ways, which are both usually met as soon as the SMART Board is utilized. Also, making a good SMART notebook presentation can be
extremely time consuming, so if another teacher has already made a similar notebook presentation it can definitely be worth using it in your class! I personally use SMART Exchange a lot, and I have also downloaded some of my own notebook files onto there because I had colleagues asking for my presentations!
Share My Lesson is a new website that I have discovered which is a really great site for sharing and finding resources. Although I found the website a bit confusing to work through at first, I eventually caught on and then was able to find some really great lesson plan
ideas and printouts. Some of the lesson plans that I came across were extremely detailed and very engaging for students such as the math “Number CSI – Solve the Crime” worksheet package which combines 9 silly celebrity pictures and a series of murder mystery ‘clues’ such as ratios, counting time, moving decimals, etc. to solve the murder mystery. This lesson plan was a prime example of what I meant when I said that I like to find websites where ACTUAL teachers submit their own lesson plans – because they are set up in a way that is detailed enough that anyone can easily succeed with them (almost like a substitute lesson plan).
Pinterest is one of the quickest ways that I link to useful teaching resources when I am trying to brainstorm for lesson plans. I turn to Pinterest over a Google search because I know that many of the great resources that I may spend a long time sifting through on Google or other sites will be linked back to Pinterest anyways. I also like that Pinterest gives you an immediate visual of the link, so you can usually do a ‘quick shop’ to see if anything matches what you had in mind before you decide to click on it. One of the other main benefits of Pinterest is that many teachers use it as a medium to link back to their own personal blogs. So, by doing a search and browsing for related pictures, you can often be linked back to relevant blogs that may give you a more in-depth breakdown of that lesson if you interested. Pinterest also often links to relevant videos, handouts, songs, and websites that would be provided by searching numerous other websites as well. The main downfall with Pinterest as a means of finding teacher resources is that often the links may be broken or just lead to a picture with no explanation. I also find that many things on Pinterest link to Teachers Pay Teachers and require a payment to access.
Teachers Pay Teachers is another really well-known website that has great resources like classroom printouts, worksheets, writing units, themed PowerPoints, etc. The site is an awesome way to get your hands on ready-to-teach learning packages and handouts. However, some of the worksheets don't come with very in-depth explanation as to how to use them in a lesson plan, and many of the items are resources that must be purchased . With that being said, I have often found many free items on TPT that have been perfect for my own uses in my own lesson plans! The thing that I like about Teachers Pay Teachers is that it is a way for teachers to put all of the hard work of making authentic documents PAY off... literally. We spend hours trying to put together cute and relevant worksheet and units, and this is really one of the biggest sites out there where other teachers will actually pay you for time you have put into that resource. For overachievers like myself who think that they need to make everything from scratch – this is the place for it to pay off!
One issue with the resources I have listed so far is that many of them focus around US or UK curriculum. When trying to find strictly Canadian or Albertan websites with the same idea of sharing resources, I found that most of our websites aren’t quite as in-depth. The main Albertan one would probably be the Learn Alberta website which has a section where teachers can add their own resources. Another relevant site for our school is the Curriculum Laboratory’s Lesson Plan Database, however, you need to be a UofL member to access it, and it is a relatively new database so it only has 201 resources so far. Both of these websites are useful for Albertan teachers because they are linked directly to relevant curriculum for our classrooms.
The list above has just a few of the good teacher resource sharing sites that I found while exploring the web this week. Having a few helpful websites like these is a great way for teachers to save themselves some work during lesson planning, but also for teachers to gain recognition for their own creative ideas and to build up their PLN while they borrow and share resources!