During our last professional development session, we created crossword puzzles as a way of developing alternative methods of assessing student learning. A great, free resource is ClassHelper.org, which can be reached by clicking on the image below: This site offers a variety of puzzles that the user can design with specific content for various grade levels.

At the most recent professional development session, three PowerPoint games show templates were shared: Hollywood Squares (for science), Jeopardy (for grammar review),  and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (for history). Clicking on the image below will allow you to download the slideshow. After downloading, you can edit the text and images of the templates [...]

During our November professional development session, we looked at organizing events using a free online timeline creator called timetoast. Timetoast is a great way to organize events in time and is easy to use.  Here is a sample timeline about the Civil War: All timelines don’t have to be about historical events. Timelines can be [...]

Webspiration and Prezi are two great web-based (and free) resources for the classroom. Webspiration is an online graphic organizer (similar to inspiration) that supports the organization of ideas, concepts, facts and events. It’s also useful for brainstorming activities as part of a pre-writing process. Here is a sample:   Even better, Webspiration will allow users [...]

Comic life is a software that creates comic book pages. It’s a great resource for writing activities, especially for helping students develop their skills in identifying main ideas and in summarizing texts. As part of a teacher professional development activity, we began by considering a comic based upon the opening paragraphs of “The Tell-Tale Heart” [...]