Back in the day (say the late 1980s), there were filmstrips and old reel-to-reel films, but teaching videos? Not so much. Flash forward to the early 2000s, and my librarian best friends had amassed hundreds of VHS tapes and indexed them for our faculty. We were rich!
Now here we are in 2012, with YouTube, TeacherTube, and Gaggle, oh, my! Gaggle even has a "my videos" button, but sadly, not every school system has a Gaggle subscription for its teachers.
Enter Teaching Channel, which features videos of lesson ideas in addition to exemplary lessons and strategies:
- "Teaching Channel is a video showcase -- on the Internet and TV -- of innovative and effective teaching practices in America's schools."
- "Videos labeled 'Lesson Idea Common Core' are Common Core aligned."
- It's my favorite price - free!
All good, right? Well, I saved THE (absolute) BEST for last. Once you register for your free Tch account, click on the Workspace tab, and choose Lesson Planner from the My Workspace menu, you can
The Button enables you to "pin" not only videos and ideas from the Teaching Channel website, but also those you find anywhere on the web! I just pinned this great 2-minute video from Tch :
https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/classroom-silent-communication-signals?fd=1
AND
this one from YouTube, an animation of one of my favorite children's books, Swimmy by Leo Lionni: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=442ie2qFANQ
Simply amazing!!!
My librarian friends subscribe, as they should, to the American Library Association's publications as ALA members. Since I didn't have that resource for help in choosing great books for kids, I sometimes called or emailed them to ask for recommendations and critiques. Thanks to The Horn Book, you don't have to do that, even if you have librarian friends yourself!
You can subscribe to their print or online publications, such as The Horn Book Magazine:
OR, you can read many, many recommendations and reviews for free at their website! A great example is their 2012 Summer Reading List. It's divided by level, from Picture Books to High School. I LOVE free, and I'll bet you do, too!
