Great Resources for New (ALL) Teachers

New teachers today have access to a wealth of resources for lesson plan support, classroom management issues, home/school communication, and anything else related to teaching and learning. I thought I would offer a few of my favorite online resources.  Suggestions from readers are greatly appreciated :)  Enjoy!  

Teaching Channel

The Teaching Channel is a multi-platform service delivering professional development videos for teachers. In addition to showcasing inspiring teachers in videos, Teaching Channel also hosts a community for educators to share ideas, best practices and enhance their knowledge.

TES  the largest network of teachers in the world.

TES Teaching Resources is where teachers share and download free lesson plans, classroom resources, revision guides and curriculum worksheets.   The wealth of free resources on TES allows education professionals to share and benefit from each other’s resources and lesson plans in order to drive excellence in the education sector.

Edutopia

This great site which is made possible by the George Lucas Educational Foundation is full of timely relevant content for all teachers. There is a list of educational blog categories on the right hand side of the home page, including a blog for new teacher support.  

Free Technology for Teachers

Is a place to find free teaching resources and lesson plans for teaching with technology.

Discovery Education

Discovery Education supports Canadian teachers in accelerating student achievement, bringing the world of Discovery into classrooms to ignite students' natural curiosity


ENJOY!

New Teachers Orientation, Day 2

Today was day 2 of our new staff orientation session.  Each of the presentations shared over the past two days have been provided here for your reference.  I hope that you may find them useful.

Today's Hot Topics:

Getting to Know your Students

A Framework for Thinking about Assessment

Procedures and Routines

Classroom Management and Restitution

SJASD New Teacher Orientation, Day 1

What a wonderful day! 

Thank you to all of our new professional staff for spending the day at our Professional Staff Development Center.   The day was full of events, somewhat of a cornucopia of all things teaching and learning.

We hope that through today's discussion and collaboration, most of our new staff were able to walk away with a sense of excitement and calmness.  There are many things to consider when starting your new teaching assignment and we hope that we were able to facilitate some of that thinking.

Today's Hot Topics

Professional Learning Communities & Networks

Follow me and join the "Twitterverse"

@jcordovasjsd

Digital Learning and its presence in the classroom

Classroom Community Building

How to establish and maintain Procedures and Routines in the first weeks of school

Classroom Management and Restitution
Always consider this:  Will what I am about to do or say bring me closer to the person with whom I am communicating—or will it push me further away?" 
Larry Ferlazzo

Enjoy your evening.  We look forward to tomorrow's opportunity for continued learning and professional collaboration.

Welcome Back!

Welcome back to all my fellow educators! 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nutmegdesigns/5834480898/sizes/m/

The 2012-2013 school year marks the second year of the St.James Assiniboia School Division's New Teacher blogspot.  

I anxiously look forward to a new year of learning and collaboration with both our New Professional Staff and our incredibly dedicated and passionate experienced staff.   

Last school year, I was given the opportunity to participate in various inspirational professional learning institutes of which I will share some of my reflections in the next few posts.  I have made a personal commitment to becoming a better blogger.  This space will become my place for personal reflection, learning and sharing. 

I believe that we are learners, always!  As educators we must be clear on our purpose and the importance of our work.  We must have a shared commitment to improving and upgrading our practices in order to meet the needs of all of our learners.  

Next week I will have the pleasure of meeting all of our  New Professional Staff.  We will spend two days getting to know one another, learning, laughing and preparing for that first week of school.  I will share our work as the days proceed.

Any comments, feedback or reflections on my upcoming posts are greatly appreciated:)

Enjoy the last few days of summer break!

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I Heart Wordles.....

I heart Wordles ;-)

cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo by Rdoke: http://flickr.com/photos/cobalt220/4343621338/

What are some of the ways that we can use or have used Wordles in the classroom?

Create your own visual word cloud by going to www.wordle.net.  It is as simple as copying and pasting your text into the "paste in a bunch of text" box.  The clouds give greater prominence to the words that appear more frequently in the source text.  You can customize your word cloud by changing the font, layout and color schemes.  

Check out the SlideShare(www.slideshare.net) presentation below for some ideas:

38 Interesting Ways to Use Wordle in your Classroom

I can't believe Spring is just around the corner.....

cc licensed ( BY SD ) 
flickr photo by timo_w2s: http://flickr.com/photos/timo_w2s/460045024/

I cannot believe how quickly the last few months have passed by.   I have been busy visiting classrooms and enjoying the opportunity to observe the work of our new teachers....what an amazing privilege!  

As we approach the well deserved break, I invite you to take some time to reflect on and think about a few questions & in turn, post some comments:

How can we improve student engagement in learning?

This may be a very ambiguous question to answer, but it is one of the most important issues to consider when working with our young people.  We need to think deeply about our students...the  21st century learner... and their individual learning needs.  We must examine and revisit traditional teaching pedagogy and upgrade our daily classroom practices with student engaging pedagogy.

So, what is student engaging pedagogy?  

How can we create classroom conditions that elevate learning opportunities for all students? 

Our work is sensitive and critical.  How we design learning for our students today, will affect them for the rest of their lives.   Not only is it important for students to learn today, but is equally -if not more - important for students to strengthen and develop the capacity to learn for all of their tomorrows.

cc licensed ( BY NC ND )
 flickr photo by Shopping Diva: http://flickr.com/photos/shoppingdiva/181269963/

I look forward to your hearing about your reflections ;-) Let's get the conversation started....

Happy New Year and Welcome to 2012...

Happy New Year and Welcome Back!

I hope that you all had the opportunity to enjoy a wonderful, restful Christmas holiday.  The winter break allows you the time to resume a more balanced lifestyle, with plenty of rest, food, exercise, and time for family and friends.  The past break would have been your first opportunity to think about organizing materials and curriculum with a more informed sense of the work of the classroom teacher.  You really know what this looks like through your first half experiences.   Think about putting past struggles and challenges behind you while embracing your new found acceptance for the realities of teaching.  This is a time for a fresh start, at any level.  Your experiences from the first half of the year will supply you with the knowledge of how to anticipate and prioritize problems that you may encounter in the second half of the year. 

I invite you to celebrate knowing that you made  it through the first half of the 2011-2012 school year and look forward to all that can be accomplished  and achieved in the second half. 

I am looking forward to our classroom observations and conversations for the new year.