Our Focus This Month:
To access the website, simply click on the logo within each section. Enjoy exploring each of these amazing sites!
INFOhio
INFOhio is a free platform providing access to resources ranging from Ages 3 - 5 through 12th grade, as well as parent and educator resources. Everything from grade and subject specific resources, through career exploration and planning, you're bound to find something to suit your needs.
A few specific resources to note:
- Today's Science
- Fishtank Learning - full curriculum units for ELA & Math, through Open Space
- Teach with INFOhio - a blog from INFOhio which focuses on providing up-to-date changes and announcements of new resources.
- Open Space - powered by INFOhio, Open Space is a great place to find, create, curate, and share resources with others across the state.
Why it's great:
With the internet being chalk full of "resources" and lessons created by anyone and everyone, it can be difficult to determine whether what you're buying or using is high quality or not. INFOhio is one way to insure that what you're using is high quality, and it's free.
Newsela
Newsela has both free and paid components in ELA, Social Studies, Science, and Social-Emotional Learning. You can even find content that is specifically aligned with Ohio standards.
Why it's great:
- Curated resources, to the ability to create custom activities, search for content by standard, and control the reading levels for student experiences.
- Quizzes, Writing Prompts, and Assignments. Create and share customizable assignments and give students access to reading comprehension quizzes, customizable writing prompts, and annotations.
Powerful Teaching
About:
Powerful Teaching is based on the book from the same name. The book itself, looks at four powerful teaching strategies, known as Power Tools - "The four research-based Power Tools are flexible, practical, and quick to implement. By focusing on just a few carefully selected strategies, educators are empowered to harness cognitive science, without being stretched too thin (per the website)."
Why it's great:
Within the resources component of the website, it has FREE templates for teachers including retrieval cards (similar to flashcards, but with a purpose), retrieval guides, a metacognition template and a power ticket template. In addition to these templates, the site also includes free, easy-to-read research and teaching guides on implementing spaced practices into your classroom.
TED-Ed
About (from the website):
TED-Ed is TED’s youth and education initiative. TED-Ed’s mission is to spark and celebrate the ideas of teachers and students around the world. Everything we do supports learning — from producing a growing library of original animated videos , to providing an international platform for teachers to create their own interactive lessons, to helping curious students around the globe bring TED to their schools and gain presentation literacy skills, to celebrating innovative leadership within TED-Ed’s global network of over 650,000 teachers. TED-Ed has grown from an idea worth spreading into an award-winning education platform that serves millions of teachers and students around the world every week.Why it's great:
Though it has a wide selection of lessons, the animations presented from TED Ed are tremendous. They are entertainging and engaging, using humor with truth. The puzzles provide a great "brain break" for students; however, they will cause their brains to work harder, all while having fun learning and strategizing.
Learning for Justice
About (from the website):
Learning for Justice seeks to uphold the mission of the Southern Poverty Law Center: to be a catalyst for racial justice in the South and beyond, working in partnership with communities to dismantle white supremacy, strengthen intersectional movements and advance the human rights of all people.
We support this mission by focusing our work with educators, students, caregivers and communities in these areas:
- Culture and Climate
- Curriculum and Instruction
- Leadership
- Family and Community Engagement
Since our founding as Teaching Tolerance in 1991, we have had a strong foundation of providing educational resources, and we are building on that foundation with expanded engagement opportunities for communities, especially in the South.
Our free educational resources—articles, guides, lessons, films, webinars, frameworks and more—help foster shared learning and reflection for educators, young people, caregivers and all community members. Our engagement opportunities—conferences, workshops, and school and community partnerships—provide space where people can harness collective power and take action.
Through this continual cycle of education and engagement, we hope that we can build and maintain meaningful relationships with communities and we can all move from learning for justice to creating it.
Why it's great:
After attending a Social Justice 101 professional learning opportunity, I was hooked. The lessons and resources that this site offers FOR FREE are tremendous. We are in a day and age that if we are not considering the social justices in all of the work we do, then perhaps we need to explore further, and this is an excellent place to begin!
The Concord Consortium
Concord Consortium is a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating innovative educational technology for STEM learning. This website has thousands of free interactive STEM for your classroom. You can find activities for elementary, middle school, high school and higher education.
Why it's great:
Did I mention free interactive STEM lessons? This site includes a wide selection of educational activities, models, and software tools. You can sign up to create classess, assign activities and track student progress.
EduProtocols
Eduprotocols are lesson frames that can be used with any content. EduProtocols are suitable for students in all grades. You can also purchase EduProtocol Field Guides. Currently there are three field guides - with one of the field guides being Math focused.
Why it's great:
The website has free templates and short videos that demonstrates how the EduProtocol can be used in class.
PBS Learning Media
PBS and ThinkTV have curated FREE, standards-aligned videos, interactives, lesson plans, and more for teachers of all subjects and grade levels including preschool.
Why it's great:
All lessons, videos and interactives can be shared with your students via Google Classroom or you can share a link with your students. Along with free lesson plans and interactives, you will also find many award-winning series and collections. Among those are Mister C, SmartPath, Science Around Cincy, A-Z Career Lab, Crash Course, Inside the Classrooom for ELA and Math, Elinor Wonders Why, Social Studies Shorts,and Social Emotional Learning to name a few.
A Different Place
This website has excellent activities for gifted learners from math to technology and is available for kindergarten through high school.
Why it's great:
This website not only has resources for teachers, but parents as well. A Different Place provides links to many other websites categorized by subject. It is an excellent site to visit because of the wide variety of subjects and topics covered.
Exquisite Minds Gifted and Creative Children
Exquisite Minds offers support to parents and educators who want to challenge children to find new and constructive ways to look at the world.
Why it's great:
The site has links to websites and resources that are beneficial to teachers and familes. You will find best resources for educators, best links for parents , best sites for kids, best brain games, gifted humor and the best of gifted resources. You can also find Gifted FAQ and suggestions for books, games and currculum.
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (affectionately known as the "Mother Ship") is THE resource for teachers of gifted students.
Why it's great:
This website has a lot of information and is great to use for extension activities in order to keep gifted and talented students engaged and challenged. I like it because it covers many different subjects and, along with the core subjects, there are also activities in the areas of art, music, and foreign languages. This site also has free online educator webinars.
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Reach out - we are here to help. tandlsupport@mccesc.org
Madison-Champaign ESC
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Department of Teaching & Learning
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Email: tandlsupport@mccesc.org
Website: mccesc.org
Location: 2200 U.S. 68, Urbana, OH, USA
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