Utilizing Classroom Web Pages for Student Engagement: Part II
By Eric Antuna on February 25, 2010
When I sat down to design my website for the classroom, I wanted to make it meaningful and appropriate for students to use in the classroom, as well as use at home and during off track time. I decided to organize the website around the skills and strategies from our curriculum. Since we're required to teach the standards using the district adopted curriculum, I thought that posting activities and resources online for students use would be the best way to help students master that week's skills through the use of online content.
In our district, the adopted curriculum is Open Court Reading. In second grade we have 6 units, and each unit is divided between 5 and 7 stories each with their own skills and strategies. I created a separate page for each story and posted the pertinent information that corresponds to that story. Here is a sample of what I have done for a particular unit:
The Home Page (Note that the units are incomplete!)
Unit 4: Fossils
The Dinosaur Who Lived in My Backyard
You can see the different skills under phonics, comprehension, and word analysis and under each of those headings, you can see a link to an "Activity 1." These activities are interactive online activities I found after searching the web. It's the same activities that you can find on fabulous websites like www.scholastic.com or www.gamequarium.com. You can also see that I post my own worksheets and homework that I've created for students/teachers to download and use in their classroom.
I won't lie - this is a lot of work. And working by myself also makes it a lot of work! The units are incomplete, however, I do feel the hard work in creating the site makes for a much more meaningful experience online for students. In addition, if parents are asking how to help their students or if a student is absent for a period of time, they can refer back to the website to maintain, review or preview skills that will be taught in class.
If you have any ideas, please share them below!
Thanks for reading!