Assignment #3

Toolbox Assignment: Resources for Elementary Teachers

There are many helpful online sites that can enhance learning in the classroom. As an upcoming teacher in today's era, I believe that all teachers should be encouraged to incorporate technology and online resources into their lessons to some extent, if not as much as possible. A compilation of some websites that would be helpful for teachers to use are available at my website. You can view my website and the compiled Teacher Toolbox by following this link to Miss Lauryn's Website.

Since I believe that education is a gift that should be available to every person, I thought of the phrase, "From every tongue, tribe, and nation...people experience the gift of education." I made this the main focus of my website, and included pictures of people throughout the world on my home page. I also have two other pages on my site, one of which includes my purpose statement and the other one has the Teacher Toolbox.

In the toolbox, I included 10 websites regarding the teaching of math, in addition to the other educational online resources. I think the main reason why many students don't like math in secondary grades is because they never built a solid foundation of understanding. I really enjoy math and I want my students to enjoy and use it, as well. Therefore, teachers could incorporate some of these math websites that I've listed into their teaching plans in order to better enhance the teaching of math within the classroom. Overall, all of the websites in the Teacher Toolbox would be helpful for teachers of any subject to take a look at.

In compiling my website, I realized that there are so many excellent sites for teachers on the internet that should be used for additional ideas and lesson plans. As a teacher I know I will refer back to the sites I have chosen to include in my toolbox, but there are also many more available on the web. One of my favorite sites I included has SMARTboard lesson plans on it. If I am teaching at a school that uses the SMARTboard, I would ask the teachers there if they knew about this site, because it has very useful lesson material for all grades. In addtion, if I someday have a class blog for my class and parents, I would also want to include a link to Miss Lauryn's Website and let other teachers know about my website for ideas and online teaching resources.

Within this blog post, I reviewed three of the math websites in my Teacher Toolbox:

Proteacher.com
This website is very helpful for teachers who would be looking for lesson plan ideas regarding geometry and measurement concepts. It seems to be geared more toward upper elementary or lower secondary classes of students that are beginning to immerge themselves in these concepts. The website offers a collection of resources concerning geometry activities including area, perimeter, a fractals unit, lines, angles, circles, congruency, rays, reflective symmetry, geometry art, and a Pythagorean puzzle.

Teachervision.com
I love this website. It is full of inspirational ways for educators to teach math at any grade level. For elementary school teachers, there are specific resources grouped into either K-2nd or 3rd-5th grades. The goal of the website it to provide many math lesson ideas that teachers can use to challenge their students creatively in the realm of math. In order to keep students interested in the subject area of math; however, this site encourages teachers to incorporate other subjects into their math lessons. For example, the site includes ways to connect the subjects of art and math as well as history and math. I think this is an excellent resource for teachers to use when planning their math lessons.

Math.com
This site is a place where teachers can explore various lesson plans, classroom resources career information, math worksheets, national standards and more. There is also a link to a problem of the week with which teachers could challenge their students. I think it would be great for elementary teachers to pose a math problem every week on the board for their students to creatively solve.