Another resource you can find for your classroom are the “Inspiring Lesson Ideas” subscriptions. In the iTunesU store, under the “For Educators” tab, you will find all 30 of the subscriptions, varying in topics from Language arts, Science, Math, Professional Development, but each containing a large amount of information for a specific topic in your classroom. The best part about this series is that the books are produced by fellow educators, they are always free and easy to use, and they give you links to everything you will need in your classroom for a particular lesson.
The lesson I explored was under the Primary Language Arts tab and titled “Weaving your web with Charlotte’s Web.” Here is a snip-it of what the created has to say about the unit…
This unit was created by Robin Montgomery, and she suggest to allow around 4 weeks to complete the unit. Within the subscription is located a large amount of materials you need for the unit. She has provided a reading schedule, as well as several discussion/activity questions for the students to participate in. She has also provided a video she created to help get students excited about the book.
The main concept of this unit is the idea of friendship. The theme of the unity is spinning a web of friendship between classmates. All of the questions she provides are geared toward to topic of friendship, and this helps the students foster the learning of more complex ideas.
Montgomery has also provided links to books about spiders, suggested apps for projects, videos of actual farm life, and even a look into the real Zuckerman’s farm. All of these resources are simply a click away, making it quite continent to the teacher.
The concept of premade lessons available for download is a novel idea for teachers. It is often said that good teachers borrow, while great teachers steal. If you find a resource that has an entire book unit already completed, and you approve of its contents, why would you not utilize the program? 30 strong lesson plays lay within the Inspiring posts, be inspired and use them to your advantage.
