Busy Teacher's Cafe

The Busy Teacher’s Café website, offers great ideas for new and veteran teachers. This website allows teachers to relax from their busy life, and check out new ideas that can be used within the classroom. On the website teachers can find:

·         Themes Section: This section offers lesson plan ideas for a variety of themes in many subjects, which coordinate with bulletin board ideas and story books.

·          Strategies: Here teachers can find ideas on how to better manage their classroom, along with lesson plan ideas, and information on literacy centers in the classroom.

·         Printables:  Varies printable activities are available for grades K through 6. My favorite part of this section is that it offers a classroom management section that includes weekly behavior reports, and other papers that help keep teachers on track.

·         Resources: This section has tips for new teachers, a list of recommended books to use in the classroom, and tips for getting back into the school years.

So if you need a break, or help with coming up with ideas for what to do in the classroom, this website is a great place to start. It will also be a major help to new teachers, who can use all the resources available.

Best Education Site for Teachers in K-8

Funbrain is an interactive website that keeps students actively engaged in learning by offering fun educational games in subjects such as math, reading, and writing. Teachers, whose grade levels are between Kindergarten and eighth grade, will find this website beneficial to incorporating the computer use in their classroom curriculum. However teachers above those grade levels will not find the website useful.

How Funbrain is helpful to teachers:

Funbrain has a section towards the bottom of their website that is just for teachers.  This section includes multiple links such as: Funbrain for Teachers, TeacherVision, and MyGradebook.  All of these of links are very helpful to not only first teachers, but also master teacher.

·         The FunBrain teacher link includes printable flash cards for grades K - 8, a curriculum guide that helps teachers determine which games on the website best fits what is being taught, and other resources. Also, the site allows for downloading the games, instead of having students play them on the internet, for more safety. Likewise, there is also a Funbrain section for parents, which teachers may want to show parents, so that their students can continue their learning practices at home with the help of their parents.

How Funbrain is helpful to students:

Funbrain has multiple games for students, all students have to do is select their gender, grade level, and which game piece they want to play with. After that is set up a password is given to them, and they can choose which game they want to play. Some of the games included are:

  ·         Mad Libs – which teaches students new words and reinforces reading and vocabulary they already know.

·         Math Arcade Games – Which teaches math in a fun way, so that students don’t get stressed out and will want to continue learning.

·         Grammar Games- which reinforces plurals and other topics of grammar.

·         FunBrain Blog – gives facts that are age group appropriate  

Students can continue playing on their Funbrain account at home instead of only being able to play it at school to reinforce learning outside the classroom.

To take a look at the website for yourself please click the link: http://www.funbrain.com/index.html