Resources for the Primary Grades

I’ve been looking for a place where primary teachers are sharing ideas. I realize that here on Edutopia many are looking for alternative teaching, but many of us are in public schools following Common Core. As teachers, whatever we’re teaching, we want to engage our kids and help them be successful. Of the Common Core resources on the web a very small percentage apply to the youngest kids. There are some good ones, including Edutopia. (See http://www.edutopia.org/discussion/project-based-learning-early-years for an impressive post, though not strictly Common Core.) Most of my favorite sites have video lessons. I hope others will add to this list, perhaps with other sites, great books to read, or terrific lessons you’ve taught. I’m hungry for meaningful discussion about teaching.

https://www.teachingchannel.org/

For anyone who has managed not to hear about Teaching Channel, this is a great resource for well-cataloged teaching videos. You can search by grade, subject or both. You can also sign up and they will send you emails suggesting videos for your interests.

http://www.insidemathematics.org/

Inside Mathematics has great extended training videos, as well as lots of other resources. They’ve had second grade through seventh for quite a while. I was pleased to see they have added a first grade video series under public lessons. These videos seemed to be the least polished and most real. There are large classes and kids who actually go off task occasionally. Sound familiar?

http://www.engageny.org/video-library

Engage NY has lots of resources and background information, including their video library which includes a couple of videos each for grades K-2.

www.achievethecore.org

This website has a huge collection of resources, including specific student writing samples to show what is expected by the standards at different levels. There are ELA training videos if you are at the very beginning of implementation and a link to Marilyn Burns Math Reasoning Inventory videos, which feature older kids but are still interesting to watch.

http://commoncore.americaachieves.org/

This site has a number of lesson videos for K-2, including one on a close read of The Ugly Duckling.

http://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/2014/02/first-grade-close-reading.html

Here’s a post on why close reading isn’t really appropriate for most students before second grade. Shanahan recommends “close listening” in its place. He has a number of useful posts for primary grades.

http://standardstoolkit.k12.hi.us/common-core/common-core-video-resources/

Hawaii’s common core site has links to videos on Vimeo, such as this one on the writing process: http://vimeo.com/38117932