September Instructional Resource Update

Each month as Student Achievement Coach, I send an email to the teachers in my building that includes some of my favorite resources for teaching that I have come across recently. Since I now have the Blog, I'll be sharing those updates with my followers as well! I have already blogged about some of the items below in the last month, but in case you missed them, or prefer to see them all together, here they are!

Useful Documents:
1. FREE Facebook "Like" Comment Notes - Fun for Everyone! 
(By Rachel Lynette of TPT) Bring Facebook to real life!  Fill in the blank on the card with your name. Write a comment about something that you like that one of your students did. Give them the note. Great positive behavior support technique. You could also have the students write them for each other. 

2. The Learning Pyramid. Check out this Pyramid of Average Learning Retention Rates based on the learning activity. It is interesting how lecture comes in last at 5%, and Teaching Others (90%) and Learning by Doing (75%) come in the highest.

Great Websites!
3. Mastery Connect makes it simple to share and discover common formative assessments and track mastery of state and Common Core standards. Built-in grading tools save teachers time. Looking for an assessment based on the new common core standards? Search for assessments that other teachers have already made! This is also a great way to share common core common assessments in your PLC and across the district. FREE to join!

4. Stroome Web's first collaborative online video editing platform! Mix it up. Mash it out. Edit videos online anytime, anywhere with anyone. Upload your own footage or remix thousands of user-submitted -- for free.  Work on projects alone, or with others. Kind of like Google Docs, but with videos. This is a great site for group video projects because students can collaborate on the same video.

5. Class Dojo Manage behavior and keep your students engaged with ClassDojo. I think this system would be especially good for Freshmen Experience Teachers and 9th grade teachers. I think that our students will enjoy it, and it is a good tool for positive behavior support. It is also a good way for teachers to track student participation.
Class Dojo Tutorial on YouTube

6. Online Stopwatch Do you need to keep your students on task? Try putting this digital stop watch up on your projector screen. It is nicer than a regular time because your students can see how much time is left. Good for pacing individual, pair, or group work.

7. Differentiation Sqworl Sqworl makes it easy to organize and share multiple links with just one url. Easy and clean visual bookmarking. I created this Sqworl on Differentiation for one of the PLCs here. It contains 13 useful sites related to differentiation. Using Sqworl in the Classroom YouTube Video

Educational Apps:
8. Common Core Standards App-FREE

Educational Articles:
9. 5 Simple Steps to get Students to do Work (even if they don't want to)

10. 6 Traits of Quality Pre-Assessments These tips might be useful for teachers of honors classes, or classes with a wide range of mixed ability.