Testing, Standards and Changes, Oh My
By Ria Mastromatteo, Educational Technology Consultant ()
When I was a classroom teacher, one of my favorite things was getting ready for school in the fall. You know how it goes ... you get your room ready. You buy new school supplies. You get your textbooks. You are ready!
Now let's add one more item to the list: you get your state standards and you carefully read them so that you know exactly what topics you're going to be covering. But wait didn't you always do that?
Sure you did! It's just stressed a lot more now. Why not look to the Web for some help in aligning the current standards to your curriculum?
First things first: if you don't have a copy of the standards, you can find them online at http://www.ode.state.oh.us/academic_content_standards. They are posted as both Word and PDF files. (Be prepared to spend a lot of time if you plan to print them.) If you'd prefer a hard copy from ODE, you can call Karen Paschal at .
Once you know the standards, you need to write lessons that apply to the goals. Lots of sites have ready-made lesson plans that apply directly to national standards. The Marco Polo site at http://www.marcopolo-education.org/index.aspx has lesson plans keyed to the standards in art, economics, the humanities, mathematics, reading and language arts, science and geography. These sites are all excellent and offer tons of ideas.
Perhaps you have your own ideas that you want to relate to the standards. Marge Ford shares a great site that has a template called The Lesson Planner (http://www.ncrtec.org/tl/lp). You simply fill in the information you want to include, save your lesson plan and then hit the button that says "Printer Friendly Version." Any cells left blank are simply left blank on the printed version.
If you want more information about standards in general, here are some sites in which you may have an interest:
- Eric Kurts, technology specialist for North Canton, has a terrific site he calls the Viking Treasure Chest of Tech Resources. Subjects are classified by grade level and by objective. You can add your own sites to this "treasure." Go to .
- Take a look at Teaching to Academic Standards at http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/month3/index.html and The Teacher Internet Use Guide: Standards at http://www.rmcdenver.com/useguide.
- At McREL: Lesson Plan Index, you pick the subject and age. Check out http://www.mcrel.org/standards-benchmarks/activities /index.asp.
I've only scratched the surface of information from the Web. Tap into the power of the Internet to try to make your job just a little easier. Have a great year!
|
