Great Debates and Taylor Swift
EconEdLink is a resource that I’ve recommended to social studies teachers for many years now. In addition to great economics lesson plans like this one about lemonade stands and this one about owning your first car, EconEdLink provides professional development opportunities throughout the year. Next week EconEdLink is hosting two free webinars for teachers. The […]
160 Free Lesson Plans on Teaching With Historic Places
I’m going to Philadelphia next week. I’m going to attend the ISTE Conference, but while I’m there I’m also going to visit a few historic landmarks that I’ve not visited in a long time. One of those landmarks is The Liberty Bell. While looking up the visiting hours for the Liberty Bell visitor center I […]
Seven Good Activities for National Poetry Month
Over the weekend I watched two baseball games on television while the rain and wind howled outside my window. I watched because I love baseball and because it was the start of a new season. The start of the baseball season is full of hope and for all but one team ends with heartbreak. There’s […]
Physical Education Activities for Pi Day
Pi Day is just one week away (as is the start of my new course). In recent years I’ve shared some video lessons about Pi Day and some hands-on Pi Day lesson ideas. This year I’d like to highlight some physical education activities for Pi Day. OPEN Phys Ed offers five free physical education lesson […]
Lesson Plans for The State of Union Address
Tomorrow night President Biden will give the annual State of the Union Address. C-SPAN Classroom offers more than one hundred resources for teaching and learning about The State of the Union Address in historical and current contexts. If you don’t have time to review all of the resources that C-SPAN Classroom offers (honestly, who does?), […]
“Dad, It’s Still Autumn” – Corrections from My Daughters
Those of you who have been following my blog with regularity over the last couple of years have probably seen my informal series of posts titled Questions from My Daughters. Those posts have been about answering the questions that my daughters (now ages five and six) ask me. Questions like “what do worms eat?” and […]
Lessons on Compound Interest, Rent, and Mittens
Last week I got an email from the Council for Economic Education. The email listed the ten most popular resources on their site. Two of them stood out to me and one of them led me to an additional resource that wasn’t included in the email. The Compound Interest Calculator is the most popular resource […]
A Great Place to Find Lesson Plan Ideas
Disclosure: TARA is currently an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com. Earlier this week I published a lengthy piece about a new tool called TARA and how it can help you save time this fall. My favorite of all the features in TARA is the strategy resource bank that is available to any teacher who wants to use […]
Five Ways TARA Can Help You Save Time This Fall
Disclosure: TARA is currently an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com At the end of the last school year I spent some time exploring a new edtech tool called TARA. It’s a service that solves problems for new teachers and veteran teachers. Those problems are having more time to do the parts of your job that you love […]
TARA – A Planning Tool for New and Veteran Teachers
TARA is a new tool designed to help you streamline your lesson planning process. It was designed by a couple of teachers for teachers. Earlier this week I had the opportunity to see a live demo of TARA. There was one feature of it that really stood out to me as something that can be […]
A Huge Collection of Resources for Fun Phys Ed Activities
OPEN Phys Ed is an organization that hosts tons of great resources for physical education teachers. Additionally, OPEN organizes initiatives to encourage students to participate in physical education activities. One of those initiatives is National Field Day. OPEN National Field Day is an initiative that runs through May and June. It has a social media […]
Kikori App – Social Emotional Learning Activities for All Ages
Kikori App is a new mobile app and website that offers a large library of social emotional learning activities for students of all ages. The mobile app (Android and iOS) and the web versions of Kikori work the same way. On Kikori you can search for social emotional learning activities according to age, energy level, […]
Research Starters from the National WWII Museum
Last week at the end of one of my classes we were talking about how everyone was adjusting to wearing masks all day and social distancing in school. A couple of my students grumbled about it. That grumbling was met by a reply from another student who said, “Guys, it’s not that big a deal! […]
Great Ideas for Mystery Skype & Hangouts
This week I am welcoming some guest bloggers. This one is from Sarah Fromhold. Mystery Skype is a concept that first began around 2011. The premise is that students Skype with another class somewhere in the world, and each class tries to guess the location of the schools by asking yes or no questions. When […]
1766 Free Lesson Plans for Art Teachers
My refrigerator is quickly getting covered with the art my toddler makes with her Crayola crayons and construction paper. Looking at one of her boxes of crayons over the weekend I was reminded of Crayola’s huge collection of lesson plans. Crayola’s lesson plan library contains 1766 free lesson plans. There are lesson plans for every […]
How Birds Learn to Sing
Spring isn’t too far away and soon we’ll start to see and hear the songs of more birds around my home here in Maine. If you also live in a cold, northern climate the sounds of the birds is a welcome sign of spring. Why do birds sing? And how do they learn the songs […]
Geometry at Mount Rushmore – A Math Lesson
CyArk is an organization building an online library of 3D models of the world’s cultural heritage sites. Mount Rushmore is one of the places that CyArk features in their galleries of 3D models. You can find the entire collection of places here. Applications for Education In the CyArk lesson plan collection you will find a handful of lesson plans […]
One Image Inspires a Lesson
This is a guest post from Rushton Hurley. Rushton is the founder of Next Vista for Learning, a great place to find and share educational videos. Imagine starting class without saying anything. The students look at you, awaiting something. You wait long enough to catch their attention, and then project this image in front of […]
OpenEd Adds Thousands of New Science Resources
OpenEd offers a massive library of free educational games, videos, practice assessments, and tutorials. This week they expanded their catalog by adding more than 1,000 new resources aligned to Next Generation Science Standards. These resources come from notable content producers including SciShow, CrashCourse, and Minute Physics all of which have been featured many times on […]
10 Thanksgiving Lesson Resources and Ideas
American Thanksgiving is less than two weeks away. Should you find yourself in need of some Thanksgiving-themed lesson ideas, take a look at the following resources. Favorite Thanksgiving dishes, like all favorite foods, vary from region to region. The New York Times has a neat site about the favorite Thanksgiving dishes served in each state (and D.C. and Puerto […]
How to Use the Lesson Plan Add-on In Google Docs
Update June 2020: OpenEd was acquired by ACT and is no longer online. This add-on no longer exists. Last month OpenEd released a new Google Docs Add-on that makes it easy to search for and organize lesson plan materials from their humongous library of resources. With the Lesson Plan Tool for Google Docs installed you […]
Wizer.me Adds Folders for Sharing Resources With Colleagues
Wizer is a neat tool for creating a variety of interactive assignments including writing assignments, multiple choice quizzes, and labeling assignments. You can distribute your Wizer activities to your students through Google Classroom or through the use of a link and pin system. Back in February I published a video about how to use Wizer. […]