Expectations for today's classroom teachers are high. There is enormous pressure to meet benchmarks set by the new Common Core standards, to increase student performance on standardized tests, to create a positive, learning-rich environment, and to do so with often dwindling resources and support.
Creating a classroom website to organize and manage your classroom, while certainly not a panacea, can go a long way towards helping teachers stay on top of the myriad of responsibilities, learning outcomes, and challenges that they are faced with. Having a well put together classroom website can save time with lesson planning, parent communication, and can help teachers see the bigger picture of how their curriculum comes together.
The goal of this post is to share some excellent examples of classroom websites as well as give advice on how to get your own classroom website started. With the help of reader Dale Borgeson, I've put together a short list of exemplar classroom sites to check out:
Creating a classroom website to organize and manage your classroom, while certainly not a panacea, can go a long way towards helping teachers stay on top of the myriad of responsibilities, learning outcomes, and challenges that they are faced with. Having a well put together classroom website can save time with lesson planning, parent communication, and can help teachers see the bigger picture of how their curriculum comes together.
The goal of this post is to share some excellent examples of classroom websites as well as give advice on how to get your own classroom website started. With the help of reader Dale Borgeson, I've put together a short list of exemplar classroom sites to check out:
Mrs. McDavid's Class
Mrs. McDavid's site is a perfect example of how a classroom website can help teachers stay organized and on top of their curriculum. The page is easy to navigate (even for 3rd graders) but contains a ton of useful information, links, and learning resources. Her "students" section is particularly well created!
Mrs. Connell's Class
Mrs. Connell's page is an wonderful example of how a class site can help extend learning beyond the classroom. She has a huge variety of enrichment activities that students can engage in when they're not in the classroom. On top of that, Mrs. Connell's site has regular updates on classroom happenings to help keep parents (and administrators) in the loop!
Now that we've seen some examples, and you're ready to start creating your own classroom site, what's the next step? Well, your district may already have a service that you're required to use, in which case, maybe you can get some good ideas from the sites above.
If you don't have a required service, here's a great article from Dale Borgeson on how to get started. Alternatively, Scholastic has a solid article as well which recommends using Weebly to create your site (it's what I use for the Roundup!).
For me, I'm also a big fan of Wix, the service is free, easy to use, and you can create modern websites incredibly quickly. And our school uses Moodle which is a free, open-source course management system.
Plus, if you're looking for some more examples to help get the ideas flowing, check out these teacher-created sites for more!
If you don't have a required service, here's a great article from Dale Borgeson on how to get started. Alternatively, Scholastic has a solid article as well which recommends using Weebly to create your site (it's what I use for the Roundup!).
For me, I'm also a big fan of Wix, the service is free, easy to use, and you can create modern websites incredibly quickly. And our school uses Moodle which is a free, open-source course management system.
Plus, if you're looking for some more examples to help get the ideas flowing, check out these teacher-created sites for more!
Finally, here are some additional resources to check out when you're ready to get started!
