Professional online library
Classroom Management
Class Dojo - A way to celebrate your students and their positive behaviors. Encourage classroom and school values, use it to check-in on accumulating projects, and share what is going on in class with parents!
SharpClass - A free classroom management tool that allows you to keep track of everyday situations: keep track of which student left the room for what purpose and for how long, track parent contact, compile websites, set classroom jobs, and more.
Bouncy Balls - Engage your students in self-regulating their personal and class volume. The application utilizes the microphone on your laptop (you must click "allow to use microphone" when prompted), students must work together to collectively bring the noise level down. This does not need to be used forever, it is a scaffold. Once your students get self-regulated with monitoring their voice levels, you can pull this scaffold away.
Noisli - Basically a white-noise generator, it offers a menu of different sounds you can combine to your liking. A great way to help students avoid distraction while they work independently on their computers, during an assessment, or even as a calm way to enter the classroom at the start of the day.
Random Name Picker - Calling on the same student over and over? Would you like to focus on balanced participation? This random name picker may be your answer. Set up your spinner to have each of the students' names captured. Then when you need a volunteer or a student to choose, spin the spinner and let it decide for you!
Tip #1 - Once you create it with your students names, press save and bookmark the website. This will allow you to come back to it easily and not have to put in their names.
Tip #2 - Students hear the spinner going and it is suddenly silent. It is pretty great!
Tip #3 - You can remove their names if you want to increase the odds, or you can keep their name in it. It is up to you!
Tip #4 - Use it for randomly grouping students: Have a spinner created for boys and a spinner created for girls; low students with high students; have two spinners going at once, and more!
Online Stopwatch - A free timer that counts down and can also act as a stopwatch counting up. With a large screen and easy-to-press numbers, it is a great timer that can be seen across the room. There are no bells and whistles to it and something that students can also easily navigate.
Classroom Screen - Project this screen for the class and enjoy all the widgets it has to offer! Utilize the classroom timers to show how much time is left for a certain task, a traffic light to signal where they are, random name pickers, symbols to signalize how students should be collaborating, and more. You can even have multiple widgets happening at the same time!
Assessment Tools and Resources
Socrative - Engage your students in quick formative assessments that use multiple choice, true/false, or short answer questions. You can set them up as quizzes, exit tickets, or a "space race" game. The reports that they give are simple and easy to analyze. Give your students a code to use and they will sign in and they will receive the assessment you have assigned to them. Free for up to 50 students!
Plickers - An old crowd favorite. With the use of your smartphone you can collect real-time formative assessment data without the need for student devices. Ask a question and students use a printed card to show their answer. Use your phone to scan the room and see who answered correctly or not!
Otus - A data warehouse that my district uses. It incorporates classroom tools and resources to allow teachers to easily differentiate for the students; create assessments or pull from their bank of questions to measure performance; analyze the data from third party's (NWEA, ACCESS, SchoolPace, and more) along with the assessments created on the program to identify patterns throughout multiple years.
MAP Growth: Informing Instruction - A Padlet I received from a professional development in Lake County in February 2019. A great compilation of resources, research, and videos to inform your instruction based off of NWEA scores.
Edit, Create, Organize, Collaborate
Piktochart - My favorite place to create and design flyers, presentations, and infographics. You can join the "free" version, but I recommend the "Individual Pro for Educators" for only $40 a year.
Adobe Acrobat Pro - I would be LOST without this. The best way to organize and edit PDFs to be more accessible and efficient for teachers and teams. I love to use it to create interactive notes for Professional Developments I have lead out.
Airtable - I kindly refer this to "excel on steroids" and I only know the basic ways to incorporate! Free for the most part, this is a great way to connect information and from one excel spreadsheet to the next without having to know all of the formulas to do so. It costs to be able to collaborate with someone on it, but it is amazing when you do! I was able to easily track all of the math standards throughout an entire grade level's year of instruction and put it into a quick curricular map for teachers to reference.
Blogger - While I am still new to this at the current moment, I have found that it is a super quick and easy way to create a blog! Blogger makes it feel like you are typing up a word document and yet it converts it into a beautiful blog post that others can comment on.
Wix - A free and easy way to create your own website. I have had students create websites in class to go along with the topic they are trying to teach their classmates about, and it worked great. Just be careful with the subscriptions - it is nearly impossible to cancel if you decide to purchase!
OneNote - A digital notebook incorporated with Office 365. Many of the teams I work with use this to collaborate with their PLC agendas and minutes, along with resources. Almost every teacher in our school also uses it with their students as a notebook system where you can quickly and easily distribute lessons, activities, and resources to students without needing to make copies.
Google Drive - When I have resources that I need to share with teachers outside of our district, I use Google Drive. Easily organize all of your files, forms, and spreadsheets into folders and share with whomever YOU want.
Padlet - A great and easy way to collaborate with anyone! You can use it with your students (anonymously or not) as a way to discuss, put ideas on the table, and analyze. I often use this with my teams as an alternative to post-it notes when we want to gather them all and keep them in an accessible location.
Symbaloo - A great way to organize and categorize websites and resources in the form of buttons. I have used this with my students as I organized songs, games, tutorials, and resources by concept. If a student is struggling with a particular concept they can utilize it with direct links to resources that I have approved, instead of using a search engine and finding resources that are not at the correct level.
Thinking Collaborative - Home of Adaptive Schools Seminars and Cognitive Coaching Seminars, this website provides a vast array of strategies that can be used when working with PLCs and teams. I often use this for ways to engage my teams with inclusion activities, but often also look at it for ideas on how to incorporate new learning and balanced participation.
Content-Specific
63 Awesome Websites for Teaching and Learning Math - I believe that the title explains it all! A fantastic resource for both teachers and students with compiled online resources that includes descriptions, cost, and the grade level(s) it aligns to.
Achieve the Core - An amazing resource filled with everything you could ever need or want when it comes to common core and ELA/Literacy and Mathematics. Filled with resources that help you learn professionally, as well as resources for you to use if you are to facilitate professional development with teachers. It also includes lesson plan templates, textbook alignments, lessons, tasks, and assessments. My absolute favorite go-to is the Coherence Map that breaks down the trajectory of every K-8 Math standard to see where it came from and where it is going to.
ALEKS - Aligned with our current middle school math curriculum, it is a web-based assessment and learning system. Teachers often use this as a way to differentiate and fill gaps, as well as enrich and extend a student's learning. It uses adaptive technology to instruct students on topics they are most ready to learn, based off of a knowledge check that they take.
Bridges Educator Site - the elementary math curriculum that we utilize. It is filled with incredible resources for the teacher, including an embedded blog and implementation tips. It also includes PDF versions of the curriculum and resources.
ConnectED/Glencoe Math - the middle school math curriculum that we utilize. It is filled with incredible resources for both teachers and students, alongw ith the online textbook.
Curriculum Ladders for Math 6+ - Combining NWEA RIT ranges with mathematical concepts to help teachers see the ladder of instruction. Simple, easy, and a nice reference tool.
Graham Fletcher - one of my most favorite "math guys" out there. His progression videos are engaging and informational, and he also lists great Three-Acts resources for grades K-5 (although there are some a little higher). If you haven't seen him in action, I highly recommend you doing so. You can also check out Dan Meyer's amazing list of Three-Act tasks.
Goalbook Pathways - Although it costs an arm and a leg to have full access, I highly recommend educators checking it out and getting their free trial. This website helps everyone understand the standards and how they are assessed. It encompasses instructional strategies, assessment examples that are taken from the PARCC assessment and organized by DOK level, resources, and more. If I won the lottery I would absolutely purchase this for my school and/or district.
Imagine Math - (formerly Think Through Math) Another great web-based assessment and learning system that uses adaptive technology to address the needs of every student. What sets this one apart though is the "motivation" component: as students solve problems correctly, they earn points. Students are able to then "donate" their points to different charities (such as Boys and Girls Clubs of America) and the company actual money to those charities on the students' behalf.
Math Learning Center - fantastic applets that can be added to your Google Drive resources if you utilize Google Classroom! You can also access them through the website as they help with conceptual understanding using hands-on tools.
The Quantile Framework for Mathematics - Linking assessment with instruction, this is a fantastic tool filled with resources. It breaks down concepts by quantile measures as well as prerequisite knowledge, supporting skills, and impending skills. It also aligns to the Common Core Standards or th standards of your state. I often use this as a reference when working with teachers who don't know how to support their students in a skill or how to scaffold it.
YouCubed - Jo Boaler's website with easy and impactful ways to inspire students to mathematical success and have a growth mindset.
Parent Resources
12 Homework tips for Parents - An article incorporating simple and quick ways to help children complete their homework.
4 Pitfalls to Avoid When Your Kids Are Learning Fractions - A blog post I wish everyone would read, not just parents :) Fractions are one of the hardest concepts for students to grasp, and this article helps parents avoid making it any more difficult for their child(ren).
Math Learning Center - fantastic applets that can help support your child in conceptual knowledge. It is especially helpful when you don't have the hands-on materials at your disposal at home.
Parent Roadmaps for Math - created by Council of the Great City Schools, these roadmaps are a perfect supplement for getting to know the standards better in a more parent-friendly language. Complete with examples, conceptual maps, and resources in both English and Spanish.
Stop Telling Your Child You're Bad at Math - Struggling in math is not genetic, despite popular belief. This article is great at helping parents address their own math anxiety so that they can help their children.