5 Instructional Materials

Critique of Five Instructional Materials

Corey Galbreath

Instructional materials include a wide range of items that are used to reinforce educational learning. There are many ways to teach a particular subject area, but in order to meet the needs of all students, you might have to think outside the box and explore all of the possible instructional materials out there. Not all children learn the same way, so a prior technique that may have worked for another class, may not work with your present students.

Thinkfinity

Thinkfinity is a website put on by the Verizon foundation that is geared to help students and teachers in the classroom. There are many resources on the website that can help educators gear lessons towards a particular grade level, subject and core standard. Thinkfinity also uses a lot of credible websites within their organization. For example, there are a lot of ideas and strategies present on Thinkfinity from National Geographic and Illuminations; which is the math resource area on Thinkfinity. I personally love this website because it is free and has so much to offer to teachers. I can find anything from a video to a free worksheet on Thinkfinity and use it in my classroom.

SmartBoard

Technology is evolving rapidly in todays society; especially in the classroom. There are many different forms of technology used, but the most common and funded strategy is the use of SmartBoard. Not all schools have a SmartBoard in their school, but the schools that do are very fortunate. I do believe within a couple of years all schools will have the option to have at least one SmartBoard in their school. Even though SmartBoards are very expensive, the possibilities it brings to the classroom is endless. Not only are the children constantly learning something new and staying thoroughly interactive in the lesson, but teachers are always learning different applications that are being offered through SMART technology. On SmartBoard, you can create your own lesson or there are ideas already posted that are applicable to a variety of lessons and grade levels.

Graphic Organizers

There are endless amounts of graphic organizers available and every organizer has its main purpose. Graphic organizers can be found free online and are easy to modify for the particular grade and subject you are planning to use it for. I was still using graphic organizers in college because it helped my thought process and everything was laid out in front of me and easy to understand. Graphic organizers are also beneficial in the fact that if you have to get up and leave, when you come back to your work you can pick up right where you left off, hence the name graphic “organizers”. I loved that I was able to drop whatever I was doing and still be able to finish my work in a complete and thorough manner.

The student that I am working with is a second grader who has low comprehension. Sarah (name changed due to confidentiality reasons) is a good reader; her reading level is 2.1-3.1 which is right where she should be testing during this part of the school year. To help her with comprehension I made up my own version of a graphic organizer. I checked out a book from my local library and had her read the book out loud to me. The book was, If You Take A Mouse to the Movies by: Laura Numeroff. During this book there are things the mouse does in a particular order that are vital to the story at hand. Therefore, I went online and printed out a mouse outlined head. I drew lines on the head and made 6 copies of the sheet. Once I was all done cutting out the heads, I created a little book for her to use to organize her comprehension of the book. The front cover was a completely blank mouse head so she could design and color her own mouse. Inside I was looking to see how she wrote down what happened in the story. This gave me a sense of her comprehension level and if she understood that detail 3 happened before detail 5. After she was done, I brought the book home so I could analyze and draw conclusions, then took it back to Sarah and allowed her to take it home. I did all of this for free and she had a great experience drawing and coloring and she didn't even realize she was learning at the same time.

United Streaming

UnitedStreaming.com is correlated with Discovery Education. This website is free to all subscribers and is geared towards administrators, teachers, parents, and students. Once you create a login name and password, all information you access can be saved to your account and you are then able to go back and revisit that information later. There are great educational videos for students to watch and worksheets and assessments for teachers to implement in the classroom. United Streaming is a culmination of teaching strategies and helpful information.

Super Teacher Worksheets

Super Teacher Worksheets is a website that offers many variations of worksheets. Anything from grammar, phonics, and handwriting to science, math and holiday brain teasers. There is a worksheet for every subject out there and it is even possible to create your own worksheet through their template. This website meets the needs of all ages and differentiates for learners. The only setback for this website is that it is not free. It is a yearly subscription for $19.99. A lot of teachers I know have this subscription and they absolutely love it and say that it is worth the $19.99. They have allowed me to navigate under their usernames and explore the website so I can become more familiar with the various teaching ideas that are out there.