Back to Professional Page

Evaluation of Teaching Resources

This is an evaluation of some of the resources I used during my year at Centennial.  As an educator I am constantly looking for good resources, but think I could be better.  I rarely looked for resources outside the school and think that in the future it would be advantageous to seek resources within the school, but to look outside the school as well.

Saxon Math Program: An Adaptation for Special Populations
Advantages:  This was a good program for teaching students who were extremely below their grade level in mathematics.  The program focused on teaching lower level concepts without seeming to elementary.  Therefore, the kids were not insulted by doing work that was designed for students much younger than them.
Disadvantages:  The program is extremely worksheet based.  If a teacher was to teach exactly as the program suggests there would be little use of manipulatives.  In order for this program to be implemented effectively I believe the teacher must find alternate manipulitives that relate to the concepts that the program covers.

Proteacher.com
The web site provides many lessons and activity's for elementary school teachers.  I used this web site frequently to find lesson plans that I could adapt to meet my own style.  The lesson plans on this page are very broad and provide good overviews on what could be taught in the lesson.  These lessons can be used as a base from which the teacher can develop their own original lessons.

Second Step:  A Violence Prevention Curriculum
This is basically an intense social skills curriculum designed to meet the needs of students with emotional disturbance.  The curriculum is very effective in covering skills that students with emotional disturbance lack.  I really think that this program is good in that it often requires the students to be actively involved in the lessons.  Students are asked to do skits relating to tough situations and are required to do reflective writing about their own behavior, which really requires the students to think about what is considered appropriate behavior.  The situations provided in the curriculum are very basic and can be adapted to meet the needs of specific students.