Teachers First - Thinking Teachers Teaching Thinkers

Teaching ESL./ELL students in your regular classroom can be a challenge. You feel great empathy for the children who enter your room, bewildered, but you have the rest of the class to think of, too. TeachersFirst offers these Top Ten Tips for Teachers working with ENL/ESL students to help you find appropriate ways to differentiate instruction and make minor adjustments for the individual student and maximize the benefit of having these new students in the class.

This comprehensive tutorial gives all the details on using gated blogs safely in the classroom, including explanations of blogging basics, a TeachersFirst Step-by-Step on how to start one, complete charts of the features of several free blogging tools for teachers, and over two dozen ideas for how to use a blog with your students. Make "writing to learn" approachable and exciting. You will even find a customizable Blogger's Agreement to download and use with students and parents so everyone knows the expectations and consequences for your class blogs.

TeachersFirst expains the essentials of rubrics: What are they, why use them, types of rubrics, and ideas for involving students in creating rubrics. The article includes links to online tools for creating rubrics or to find ready-made rubrics, ready for download. Teachers old and new will like the succinct explanations and ready tools for authentic assessment.

This recording of an OK2Ask online professional learning session is from October 2023. You can register and immediately view the archive of the session.

Are you looking for some excellent free tools to support the science of reading in your classroom? Do you want to learn how to use technology to enhance your reading instruction and engage your students? Join us for this interactive, hands-on workshop exploring three tools that align with the science of reading. Gain practical strategies that will enhance your reading instruction, discover how these tools align with the science of reading framework, and unleash their potential in your classroom. As a result of this session, teachers will: 1. Understand the science of reading framework and its implications for effective reading instruction; 2. Explore three edtech tools that support teaching reading from a scientific perspective; and 3. Collaborate and share ideas with fellow educators on how to leverage the tools to support instruction. This session is appropriate for teachers at all technology levels.