Do you Gooru the SBAC with Graphite? CCSS Resources

It's November, one of the busiest times of the school year. Between holidays, field trips, and parent-teacher conferences I always found this was the time of the year I was most likely to fall behind on lesson planning when I was a classroom teacher. Where can I find a video that will really engage my kids? I wonder if any one has a lesson already created for this topic? And...I have about 10 spare minutes to find it. Sound familiar? If you are in a similar boat check out these three websites for finding high-quality, Common Core (and content area standard) aligned resources. I promise you'll find them handy and useful.

Joe

Gooru Learning

I first heard about this site over the summer, but Rob reminded me about it from the iNACOL conference this week. Gooru is an awesome community of educators who are sharing resources and collections online. Resources are individual tools or websites searchable by topic that can then be narrowed down by grade level, content standard, or media type. Collections are multiple resources aligned to a topic that have been curated and shared by a teacher. Through Gooru you can find resources and collections, as well as create your own collections. Some districts and educational institutions are evening using the site to share curated and vetted material in the Libraries section. To get started all you need to do is create a free account.

Graphite

Graphite is a tool that was released by Common Sense Media in summer 2013 and is being used by teachers all over our school. The site has a Ratings & Review section where you can search for resources by grade level, content standard, or type of tool. You can also use the Common Core Explorer to drill down by a particular standard. However, my favorite area is the App Flows section which contains frameworks created by teachers linking together multiple digital tools through a strong pedagogical framework. Some of our colleagues including Alicia Carter, Cary Zierenberg, and Petra Luhrsen have been part of the team creating these through the National Writing Project. Simply navigate to Graphite, create a free account and you will be ready to go.

Smarter Balanced Digital Library

As part of our transition to Common Core, the California Department of Education is providing access to the Smarter Balanced Digital Library for all credentialed teachers and administrators in California. This site contains a plethora of instructional and professional development resources for teaching these new standards. Resources might include complete lessons to specific tools and websites to use with your students. All of them are searchable by standard, grade level, and many other attributes including media type and intended student population. Waaaayyyy back in July or August you received an email from the email address Smarter-DoNotReply@opentestsystem.org with information regarding how to login to the SBAC Digital Library. Your login credentials should be your school email address and natomas1 if you have not already changed your password. If you have trouble logging in please let me know and I can work with NUSD to get your account fixed.