Opportunity for 2012

At the beginning of a new year there is a certain feeling of a fresh start. For educators, this opportunity occurs in the middle of the academic year. This often gives us a boost to finish the second half of the year with the same enthusiasm we with which we started the school year.

Below are two links to some recents posts by Dan Rockwell a.k.a. Leadership Freak. Both provide simple and straight forward encouragement for leaders of all kinds.

Enjoy!

http://leadershipfreak.wordpress.com/2011/12/30/creating-a-life-of-opportunity/

http://leadershipfreak.wordpress.com/2012/01/06/10-sure-fire-ways-to-find-your-greatness/

Free Literacy Resource!

Attention K-6 teachers!  Have you been looking for some lesson ideas for teaching main idea, sequencing, plot, cause and effect, or anything else?  If so readworks.org is a great site for you!  Once you register (it's free) you can save lesson plans to your binder.  The lessons are aligned to state and common core standards.

http://www.readworks.org/

Common Core Livebinder

Livebinder for an introduction to common core

The End of Cursive Writing????

Interesting article about teaching cursive writing...or the lack of teaching.

"Within every school there is a sleeping giant of teacher leadership, which can be a strong catalyst for making change." (Katzenmeyer and Moller, 2001)

Tag my doc

I was playing around on My Big Campus the other day and ran across a video from tagmydoc.com. This is a cool website that allows you to store your documents in the "cloud." Then people can upload those documents from their phone, rather than you bringing a million paper copies. They scan the code off your document and the document uploads immediately to their phone (or other device). It will also allow you to make changes at a later date, and they can rescan the original code to upload those changes. So cool!!!

Teacher Leaders Model Standards

Check out a cool article about Teacher Leaders at teacherleaderstandards.org. If you click on the standards and read the domains, you will find some very interesting information. Happy reading!!!