Tips for using TeachersFirst

Search
For just-in-time teaching resources, use the search box to enter a specific curriculum concept or a professional topic. You can narrow a search by adding an additional term or specifying a grade range for your search. The most effective search terms are the same ones you use as curriculum headings or terms included in standards, such as fractions, climate change, plants, civil war, or alphabetization.

Browse
For teaching inspiration or simply to explore the breadth of our resources, try the subject grade search. Our thousands of reviewed resources and original lessons/units include practical tips and original teaching ideas from Thinking Teachers like you.

What’s in a review?
Reviews include a teacher-friendly description and “In the Classroom” section with ideas for implementing the resource in your classroom. We even include project ideas and pragmatic tips about things that will work well (or areas to avoid). Small icons tell you about site content, such as video, and standards and about plugins you may need. Read other teachers’ comments and ratings of resources or add your own—if you sign up for FREE TeachersFirst membership. Click the resource title to open it in a new tab (or window) without losing your search results.

The Tabs:
Classroom Resources includes anything you would use with students in the classroom. You can find over 16,000 educator-reviewed web resources, searchable by subject/grade or keyword. You can also find lesson plans/units, ready-to-go content you can share on student computers, a projector, or interactive whiteboard, and special topic collections of web resources. Everything we offer will show up via keyword searches, or you can simply browse. We even offer just-in-time collections organized into a classroom planning calendar.

TeachersFirst Exclusives includes ready-to-go, projectable classroom activities, lesson and unit plans, special topic collections, and professional pages written exclusively by the Thinking Teachers of TeachersFirst. TeachersFirst Exclusives are created by experienced teachers who know the realities of the classroom.

Professional Resources includes everything you need to do save time and be a better teacher. Included are time saving tools, bulletin board hang-ups, collections and tips to help with professional challenges such as differentiating, help with rubrics, curriculum-connected reading lists, tutorials on using wikis and blogs in the classroom, and much more. You can also access OK2Ask, TeachersFirst’s free, online hands-on virtual workshops for teacher professional development.

What’s Hot shares the latest and most popular content. See our weekly Update, featured sites, recent member comments, our Editor’s blog, acclaimed TeachersFirst Edge reviews of the hottest web 2.0 tools, and other frequently changing content.

About Us tells you about the purpose, people, and policies behind TeachersFirst.