Meyer-Houston References

Back to Learn More

4th Grade Bloggers! Julie Meyer-Houston Home Learn More Standards Inspiration About the Author

Links

Blog Space for Students

Edmodo - Online safe place for teacher-and peer-monitored blogging. Teachers can create classroom pages and small groups, which colleages, students, and parents can join for collaboration!

Resources for Teachers

Common Sense Media - The best website for parents and kids to learn about digital citizenship and internet safety. There are also lessons with games available for teachers and their classrooms.

Kids Learn to Blog.com - Provides guidance and free resources to get kids blogging

Edutopia - The online encyclopedia of everything education, including the use of technology in education and project-based learning. For example, click HERE to learn the 12 Awesome EdTech Apps, according to Vicki Davis.

Buck Institute for Education - Project-based learning is their passion; great resources can be found here including lessons and lesson planning templates

Blogs / Websites

Cult of Pedagagy - Blog written by Jennifer Gonzalez about excellent tips for teacher and techology resources. For example, click HERE for 6 Ed Tech Tools to Try.

Free Technology for Teachers - Blog written by Richard Byrne about awesome technology resources for teachers with their students. I love that it shows many how-to screencasts, how and why to use different apps and tools for all types of devices. For example, click HERE for five ways to create screencast videos on Chromebook.

Teach Hub - Fantastic K-12 News, Lessons, and Shared Resources by Teachers, For Teachers -- Provided by the K-12 Alliance. For example, click HERE to learn 50 ways to use Twitter in the classroom.

TeachThought.com - Great resources for teachers and their professional development. For example, click HERE for 100 ways to use Facebook in education by category.

We Are Teachers - Excellent resource for classroom ideas and free printables. For example, click HERE for 10 surprising ways to use Instagram in the classroom.

Twitter and Instagram hashtags I follow to learn/read the latest conversations include #edchat, #edtechchate, #educhat, #edmuses, #techchat, and #innovativelearning

More Tools/Apps

Screenshot and screencasting tools I used and liked enough to recommend because they are free and easy to use: Nimbus, Screencastify (both of these are browser add-on extensions), and Jing

Click HERE for annotated additional resources on my "Learn More" page.

Curriculum Ideas

TPACK Lesson Plan Template created by CMS Instructional Technology Team at www.cmslearns.org

Depth of Knowledge Ideas for Lessons and Assessments in Reading and Writing, developed by Norman L. Webb, Wisconsin Center for Education Research

Sustained Silent Reading Resources: Research, Activities, and Lesson Plans

National Center for Education Statistics - U.S. Department of Education entity that collects and analyzes data related to education. Find out what's happening in education within your own state and/or across the United States.

California Department of Education - National Assessment Education Progress (NAEP) Report; look here to determine what your teaching focus might want to be to help close achievement gaps!

Videos

Brain Rules by John Medina - My favorite video that captures the essense of this New York Bestseller about the brain

Sir Ken Robinson - Any videos by him. This one is titled, "The Ideal Education" (a conversation between Sir Ken Robinson and Sadhguru where they're REALLY speaking about innovating education, that is, "reframe the conception of ability" - "the education system itself should be an evolving thing" - "motivate / educate students in what they're interested in").

Ted Talks Education - Any videos by them

Books

Dr. Darling-Hammond's book, The Flat World and Education, provides the argument and vision to a better educational system (than the United States currently has as of 2010): one that is a "capacity-building enterprise ... [that] creates a 21st-century curriculum for all students and supports it with thoughtful assessment, access to knowledgeable well-supported teachers, and equal access to school resources." I strongly agree with her statement about equity in education: "No society can thrive in a technological, knowledge-based economy by depriving large segments of its population of learning."

"Change is an opportunity to do something amazing" is the mantra in George Couros' book, The Innovator's Mindset, in which he encourages teachers and administrators to empower their learners to wonder, to explore, and become forward-thinking leaders. We teachers need to foster innovation, critical thinking, and creativity--skills for success in the 21st-century.

Dr. Medina, a molecular biologist, explains in plain English how the brain works and functions best for learning. His book, Brain Rules, shares how: Every brain is wired differently; Exercise improves cognition; We are designed to never stop learning and exploring; Memories are volatile; Sleep is powerfully linked with the ability to learn; Vision trumps all of the other senses; Stress changes the way we learn. It is a "must read!"

When you click on the book, Visible Learning and the Science of How We Learn, it will take you to the Visible Learning website that includes Dr. Hattie's world reknown meta-research rankings for what actually works in improving children's learning in school. This book discusses the science of how people learn and the impact of teacher personality, teacher-student relationships, how knowledge is stored, cognitive load, thinking fast and thinking slow, self-control, the role of conversation at school and at home, digital native theory, and more. It is meant to inform our teaching.

Dr. Baggio wrote The Visual Connection to help teachers use visuals effectively to help students learn. She stated "To understand learning, you have to understand learners: How they feel; how they think; what they do." It is a student-centered approach to teaching, visually and by designing good learning experiences.

Drs. Falk and Blumenreich's The Power of Questions helps students formulate a research question, design a study, compile information for literature review, analyze and apply the findings, and share what was learned so research and/or thinking like a researcher becomes a part of one's critical thinking and practice. It was used during my action research and could be useful for my students' inquiry-based learning opportunities.

This book, Making Thinking Visible, with accompanying DVD shows how to teach thinking. From Harvard's Project Zero, it is a research-based approach that helps teachers practice various teaching routines such as small sets of questions and the use of documenting student thoughts to visibly show how students' different points of views are expressed, documented, discussed, and reflected upon. It has helped my students and me see trends in our classroom; and, it has helped direct/focus our learning based on student-centered needs and interests.