Teachers First - Thinking Teachers Teaching Thinkers

Sight Words offers a comprehensive resource of techniques, teaching activities, lessons, and materials for teaching young children to read. Begin your exploration by Clicking the Teaching Strategies. Explore the information and instructions for all teaching strategies employed in lessons. View videos, read blog posts, create and print your own flashcards, and more! Explore the history of Dolch and Fry sight words. Take a visit to Sight Word Games to find great ideas for your classroom: Bingo, Fly Swat, Fishing, Bean Bag Toss, and more... all related to sight words, of course. Some of the video clips are hosted on YouTube. If your district blocks YouTube, then they may not be viewable.

tag(s): flash cards (43), game based learning (171), gamification (74), preK (255), reading strategies (98), sight words (23)

Discover a constantly changing, blog-style collection of articles about all areas of science, designed to engage readers in science and instill a desire to learn more. The articles are grouped into headings such as Environment, Technology, Space, Health and Medicine, The Brain, Plants and Animals, Physics, and Chemistry. Articles share recent discoveries, timely experiments to try (such as cold weather explorations during winter), and intriguing (but true) revelations about scientific mysteries. There are topics of interest to almost any reader, such as "Why Most Food Labels Are Wrong About Calories" or "How Smartphones Can Lead The Fight Against Air Pollution." Click tags to find similar articles. Note that subject material is intended for adults, though our editors found nothing objectionable in the actual articles shared by IFLScience. Avoid clicking on ads and items under "More Stories" and "From the Web," as these lead to other sites of less predictable quality. If sharing this site with teens, be sure to point out which links stay within IFLScience. The site does allow reader comments from the general public. Preview if sharing in a classroom.
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tag(s): brain (54), environment (240)

Organize student Google documents with Doctopus! This tool is essential for organizing of documents both to and from students. Create a Google Doc template. Next, create a spreadsheet containing the students who will be using the document. When you install Doctopus as a Chrome add-on, a Doctopus folder is created in Google Docs. Be sure that the template you create and the spreadsheet containing student names are in that folder. A script needs to be installed to pull the student names from the spreadsheet and then send them the document. Find simple directions with screenshots here. Doctopus is a Google Chrome add-on and is available for Windows, Mac, Chrome OS, and Linux. This add-on is not available for Windows RT, iPad, or mobile devices as of this time.

tag(s): assessment (146), collaboration (87)

Is there a climate change? What conditions on the Earth have changed over time? Find answers to these questions and more with this free tool. Choose from the following in the menu bar: Sea Ice, Sea Level, Carbon Emissions, and Average Global Temperature. Drag the slider to show the differences in each of the four areas from 1979 to 2022. Read an explanation of consequences of these changes below the slider.

tag(s): antarctica (28), arctic (40), carbon dioxide (10), carbon footprint (5), climate (80), climate change (87), temperature (35)

Explore this timeline and map of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth for The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. Click on the red circles to read a sequence of events for the location. Please note: there are two different timelines. The timeline on the right menu is a Timeline of Events. The timeline on the top menu is a Timeline of the History of Middle-earth.
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tag(s): independent reading (85), novels (31)

Can't take a field trip to NYC? Visit the Statue of Liberty virtually! View the virtual tour and photo gallery for Lady Liberty. See the site for specific instructions on how to use this interactive.

tag(s): american revolution (82), art history (86), landmarks (18), virtual field trips (79)

Use this free slide-based multimedia app to put lessons and other material on any web browser OR iOs and Android devices. Build your presentations using pre-made templates. The site does offer ready-made presentations (some free). The interactive, pre-made videos and text presentations are from Ted-Ed, Khan Academy, Nearpod, and others. Some include questions to answer as you work through the presentations. What is the best part of Nearpod? There are now three different presentation modes.

When in the "live presentation" mode (in person or remote web conferencing), teachers control the lesson's pace, and students do not move to the next screen until advanced by the teacher. With the "student pace" mode, students progress through independently, whether at home or in class. The third mode is "front of the class;" you project your presentation, and the students do not use their devices. Use the teacher version of the app to push out the presentation to your students. For the first two modes, every student uses their own student app to follow the screens and answer the questions. This provides immediate feedback about every student. The feedback can be emailed to the teacher for later review. This formative assessment tool is invaluable and a unique part of the app. The tool also includes drawing for students to work out problems. Teachers can identify students who are not "on task" and not working within the app when a little red light pops up. Absent students can complete the assignment at home.

The free version of Nearpod for Educators is called Silver; you get 100 MB of storage, 40 students per session/lesson, access to 20+ formative assessments, 7,500 pre-made interactive lessons, 1,000 pre-made interactive videos, 40 students can sign up per lesson, and more. How many lessons and videos will depend on your storage.

tag(s): assessment (146), classroom management (128), DAT device agnostic tool (143), differentiation (84), Formative Assessment (70), gamification (74), Learning Management Systems (22), multimedia (43), Online Learning (40), personalized learning (9), playlists (10), remote learning (61), slides (45), Teacher Utilities (146), teaching strategies (41)

Find news and resources for grades 7-12 at PBS Newshour Classroom. Search the site by Subject Area, Videos, Arts and Media, Science, and more. Explore news articles written for students with the background and context needed to understand complex topics. The Daily Videos are ad-free and have related stories along the right side of the page. Read the current events news stories and follow the Extra Twitter feed. Don't miss the many free lesson plans including current events, American history, health, government, holidays, and more. Lesson plans are all aligned to the Common Core standards. Lesson plan topics vary from "Personal reflections on the poetry of Maya Angelou" to "Selma to Montgomery: An introduction to the 1965 marches" and countless others! Look for the Student Voices and Student Reporting Labs for those who would like to be published or to help a local PBS station produce the news.
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tag(s): civil rights (194), elections (80), holocaust (41), memorial day (12), news (229), pearl harbor (9), poetry (189), veterans (20), video (257), women (137), world war 2 (149)