Curriculum Freebies

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I have a few freebies to share with you today!

Free Online Curriculum Resources

(Originally titled “Open Educational Resources: On the Web and Free”)

            In this Educational Leadership article, Minnesota district media/technology director Doug Johnson recommends the following online curriculum resources:

-    OpenEd: www.opened.io with more than 250,000 videos, games, and other resources aligned with standards.

-    The Digital Public Library of America: http://dp.la and the Library of Congresswww.loc.gov have copious primary-source materials – manuscripts, artworks, maps, and sound recordings.

-    Gooru: www.goorulearning.org is an open and collaborative online community used by more than 400,000 teachers in 140 countries and all 50 states.

-    Creative Commons: http://search.creativecommons.org is an effective tool for finding copyright-free media.

-    CK-12: www.ck12.org specializes in high-quality curated STEM content and has links to more than 15,000 resources.

“Open Educational Resources: On the Web and Free” by Doug Johnson in Educational Leadership, March 2014 (Vol. 71, #6, p. 85-86); Johnson is at doug0077@gmail.com.

Safari Montage

I had forgotten this resource was available to MNPS teachers.  It has some powerful videos for you to support your students learning through your lesson focus.  

URL: http://safari.mnps.org 

Use your MNPS username and password

Tiers: Elementary and Middle Schools

·      For teacher instruction

Product Information:

406 new video titles have been added to the K-8 Core Content Package (2013) for a total of 3,744 fully segmented and searchable video titles, along with 17,195 still images, 2,226 web links, 259 audio files and 246 documents. Designed by our curriculum staff to meet thecore needs of a K-8 curriculum, the titles in this package come from the most highly acclaimed publishers, such as Ambrose Video, BBC, Biography, Disney Educational Productions, The History Channel, National Geographic, PBS, Scholastic, Weston Woods and others, in addition to award-winning programs from Schlessinger Media. Each title is correlated to Common Core and State Standards, and includes extensive, standardized metadata to ensure that teachers can find exactly the clips they need.

Often times teachers' voices go unheard.  Here is a chance to let someone know how decisions made by the Tennessee Department of Education impacts your teaching and the lives of your students.  Feel free to post any comments or concerns you may have.

Dear educators,

We hope this finds you warm during this especially chilly winter! We are pleased to launch a monthly Q&A series on education issues based on the recommendation of one of your fellow teachers. Our first Q&A will be with Sara Heyburn, Assistant Commissioner for Teacher & Leaders at the Tennessee Department of Education. Sara's division oversees teacher preparation, licensure, evaluation, and professional development.

Please email your questions to Educator.Communications@tn.gov by Friday, March 7. Sara will address your questions on Classroom Chronicles, our blog for teachers. Do you have a colleague who didn't get this newsletter? Send them this link to sign up.

Hello & Welcome Ross teachers! I decided to go the blog route for keeping you all informed on the new strategies and techniques I am learning about each day. It is my hope that chunking information at a time will better fit into your daily routine. Here are two math resource recommendation from a fellow MNPS educator. I especially recommend the MC2 Portaportal link - belonging to Marrie Lassiter (a nationally recognized author on the Math Common Core, who is also a professor at MTSU) and Cindy Cliche- both TNCore Coaches. If you chose to explore their Portaportal- the password is MC2. I would also like to share a find by our own Christa Willits. She has located tasks that may meet 2nd grades needs on the Howard County website- that we also use for the District Elementary Curriculum I Framework as a resource. Here are the links: Stephanie's link: http://guest.portaportal.com/mwiemers Christa's link: https://grade2commoncoremath.wikispaces.hcpss.org/Assessing+2.NBT.4