Posts

National Center for Fair & Open Testing

Image
The National Center for Fair & Open Testing https://www.fairtest.org/ The mission is to end the misuses and flaws of standardized testing and to ensure that evaluations are transparent and fair for students, teachers, and schools.   Support for reading in the content areas?  ↴ The only way you will find the word literacy or reading on this site is to type it into the search bar. I did so and found articles and papers written on legislation, reform, the high stakes testing debate, funding, and assessment. There are no actual classroom or teacher resources available that support reading in the content area.     Ease of navigation?   ☺ The search bar includes the following: public schools, college admissions, newsletter, fact sheets, act now, news, and other resources.   No matter what I clicked on, except for useful links, I never left the site and the menu bar was always there.   I say it passed the Gomer Pyle test.   ...
Post a Comment
Read more

English Language Learners

Image
http://www.colorincolorado.org/ What a gem for English language learner (ELL) teachers and ALL educators. This website offers research-based information on bilingual activities and advice for educators and families of ELL learners.  Support for reading in the content areas?  🌝 Sure! In the navigation bar, click on “Teaching ELLs” and click on “literacy instruction”. Here you will find videos of teachers working with students (k-12) using various instructional methods on language development.  Also under this tab is “Language & Vocabulary Instruction” where you will find more instructional videos, research, and articles. I typed in the search bar, “reading in the content area” and found that reading comprehension should be the focus in every content area. There are articles here as well. Ease of navigation?  👀 Look at these eyes! The site is easily navigable. The menu bar never disappears and the headings are bold blue. The crisp white backgroun...
Post a Comment
Read more

Study Guides And Strategies website evaluation

http://www.studygs.net/shared/studying.htm Study Guides And Strategies Support for reading in the content areas? 8… because nothing is perfect Well, I would say so with a section of the website dedicated to reading and research. The section includes but not limited to, reading critically, which comes with a nice fill out the chart exercise: FREE resource!! Others include speed and comprehension, reading essays, reading fiction, writing lab reports, word problems, you name it! Just click on what you need and it’s all free. It's like Teachers Pay Teachers but you don’t pay.  These great little literacy resources can be applied to all content areas. Ease of navigation? 10… I lied, this is perfect. 😎 I think so. It has a site map! Want to find something fast or arbitrary? Click on search and voila! So, I typed in art. Ads sites! Scroll down for the juice! I clicked on visual/spatial learning and read about myself and how to work with this MI. Such as, study habits, usin...
Post a Comment
Read more

National Geographic Education evaluation

National Geographic Society is AMAZING!!! Click now, you won’t be disappointed! https://www.nationalgeographic.com/education/ Support for reading in the content areas? 👍 Click on the little magnifying glass and type in “writing”.   It leads you to 208 results! You can narrow your search by subject, grade, and type (lesson, video, activity, etc.).   Just a few of the lessons I saw were robotics, oceans, history, geography, and energy. The list goes on and on! Type in ‘reading” and you will see 252 results. Again, a multitude of sources!   For kicks, I typed in “reading in math”. Guess what? There were 297 results! I know. I was shocked too!   Currency, STEM, measurements, golden ratio, it’s all too much for my brain to handle! 😲 Go to teaching resources in the navigation bar and click on units. Under subjects, choose reading. A project based learning unit with nine lessons that incorporate literacy? Yes, thank you!       Ease of...
Post a Comment
Read more

Evaluation of edutopia!

edutopia.org requires you to sign in but it’s totally painless. Just click on your icon of choice (Twitter, Google, etc.) and you are automatically signed up and signed in!   Support for reading in the content areas 👌 edutopia.org There is no “button” for this but I did put in a search: literacy in the content area. This yielded 176 results to a variety of blogs and articles.  When I searched for “reading in the content area”, I found 435 articles and blogs that offered a variety of content areas from math to technology to STEM.  Many of the articles include videos. You can even comment on the article and start a discussion.   Ease of navigation ⛜ Topics, videos, community, sign in, and the magnifying glass icon are the five buttons on the orange navigation bar.  Super clean!  The orange bar also has the edutopia logo that takes you to the homepage. No matter where I visited within the site or what I clicked on, the orange bar was al...
Post a Comment
Read more

Evaluation of readingrocket.org

readingrocket.org When I opened this site, I was immediately wowed! The bright colors , graphics, and photographs were eye appealing.   Did I want to investigate more based on the visual aesthetics? Yes! There is however, more to a website than visual appeal. Okay let's get practical.  The purpose of this website is to provide information. Bring on the meat and potatoes!  🍴 What about support for reading in the content areas ? 📖 This site contains over 100 articles from 2008 to 2017 that support reading in the content areas. What areas? Everything from science to math, to ELL and STEM.  I was impressed.   The articles appear to be a mix of Reading Rockets authors and university professors.  There is a nice variety of primary and secondary articles.  It's an all-you-can-eat meat and potatoes smorgasbord!   Ease of navigation ? 🔍 I must admit, I was a bit overwhelmed ...
Post a Comment
Read more