The Teacher's Shelf

This resource is updated weekly to include the latest grants, contents and awards, and classroom resources. Check it out!

I have personally used Donors Choose before, which is on this list. It is a great website that allows educators to raise money for materials in the  classroom. 

“ChronoZoom, a free tool developed by Microsoft Research and an international team of collaborators, is helping her students visually explore the history of, well, just about everything, from the Big Bang right up to the present day” (Boss). 

“However, effective use of this 21st century technology requires that we not only become proficient in textual communication, but also in our ability to express ourselves and interpret others' ideas through visual literacy” (Guymon).

“That's the purpose of visual literacy (VL), to explicitly teach a collection of competencies that will help students think through, think about and think with pictures” (Finley). 

Explain Everything is a great website that allows teachers or students to create presentations using audio recordings. Check out an example of how a teacher uses Explain Everything to present a lesson on The Outsider.

Check out this video on the basics of a flipped classroom! It provides great insight into using videos in the classroom. Enjoy!

Check out this blog for a great tool using Google Spreadsheet! You can create rubrics that automatically calculate the grade based on which boxes you select. 

I thought this provided great insight into the world of distance learning! Even with a distance learning setting, students need structure and clear guidelines established. Also, personalized feedback is extremely important! 

This is one of my new favorite bullying resources! I have multiple copies in my classroom for my kids to read. It is the perfect set up for a teenager with graphics, different fonts, “rap” poems, mini quizzes, personal narratives, and even screenshots of text messages! There is a whole chapter on Cyberbullying along with a bunch of other great chapters. Check it out here on Amazon! 

One of the most powerful assemblies I ever watched as a teacher was when Mr. Halligan spoke to our student body about the loss of his son Ryan. It was the first time I ever sat in the auditorium and heard nothing but silence as every student attentively listened to Mr. Halligan describe his son, share his pain, and raise awareness about the effects of bullying.  

I think this a poster all teacher should have in their rooms! We need to teach students how to be the best digital citizen they can be and cut down on all the cyberbullying. 

If you are looking for a new “game” changer for your classroom, check out KaHoot! :)

Instructional Technology and Media for Learning 

Since my district went 1:1 with MacBooks in 2014, I have enjoyed incorporating more technology into my instruction and finding ways to connect ELA content with the digital world we live in. One of the favored activities in my classroom is when students have the chance to create iMovies. Students have created iMovie trailers for a novel or persuasive commercials for an argumentative project. The possibilities are endless with iMovie! Students have the opportunity to be creative and interact with text, video, audio, and special effects. Tony Vincent shares a great variety of PDFs useful for developing and planning out iMovies. I particularly love his iMovie Trailer Planner. This allows students to brainstorm the overall goal and theme of their iMovie trailer. Check it out!