I grab a lot of texts online to use with students. I often wonder, “How challenging is this text? Will my students have trouble reading this text?” In the past, I’d rely on Google’s Advanced Search option that allowed me to search by reading level. Unfortunately, Google dumped this feature, so I’ve been on the hunt for a new way to assess online texts.

Finding online documents can a challenge, here's a 12 min video of 3 search strategies - curated content, LOC search and using a search operator.

Technology is in every room at P.S. 101 in Brooklyn — it’s even in the hallways. Scan the QR code with your phone outside of the fourth-grade classroom of co-teachers Vanessa Desiano and Jamie Coccia and a video will pop up of a student giving a history presentation on early explorers. Step inside, and fourth-grade students are working together to discover the themes of chapter 13 in their latest book, The Birchbark House, and typing what they find on iPads.

“People have this fear that if you put technology into a classroom, kids will just be staring at computers,” said Principal Gregg Korrol. “But this class is using technology to engage each other directly in learning.”

Educators often wonder how they are going to meet all the demands of Common Core. One important point is that the standards require more depth and less breadth. Meeting these standards can be done by doing less, not more. In this post, we’ll look at three effective ways to do this: integrating curriculum, combining test prep into daily learning, and cutting topics.

However, there are many ways to work within the constraints of the Common Core standards and still foster creativity in your classroom. The key can be summed up in one, Common Core-friendly term: synthesis, or combining ideas from multiple sources and creating a new theory or system of ideas. Let’s take a look at some ways that working with your students on synthesizing can promote creativity in your English class.

Game-based learning is a topic we have revisited numerous times on EmergingEdTech. The implications it has on student engagement and learning are powerful and cannot be overstated. If you have not already experimented with game-based learning with your class, make 2015 the year you do!

Educators today are facing two major shifts in education–a move to the Common Core Standards and increasing pressure to teach students with the technology they’ll be expected to use in their lives beyond high school. Both seasoned educators and those new to the teaching profession must confront

When The Common Core State Standards initiative was first announced there was a collective eye roll amongst veteran teachers. There have been so many shifts in pedagogical theory and practice over the years that nobody really thought these national learning goals would come to fruition. And then they did.

While leading a training in Alaska this weekend, a participant mentioned The Smithsonian Tween (& Teen) Tribune. This free resource is a great place to grab informational and nonfiction texts written at various Lexile levels to support a wide range of reading abilities.