ED 638-40
Dr. M. Rivera
IRA Newsletter Project: Effective Literacy Websites #5 –
betterlesson.com
Betterlesson.comoffers free account signup to gain access to a good deal of curriculum
resources. It was founded by a group of teachers from Atlanta and Boston public
schools in order to create a place where educators could do what makes them
better, share their curriculum. The site does not offer a search and filter
means of navigation, however the available lessons in Math, ELA, and Science
are separated into categories that can be browsed through, which are broken
down by grade levels and subjects. Once into a lesson it is possible to employ
a dropdown list from the navigation bar to jump around other units and lessons
submitted by whichever teacher submission you are viewing through. This is nice
because sometimes you come across a teacher’s lesson style that closely matches
your own and can be easily jumped around to other submissions looking for other
ideas and lessons.
The
Lessons are displayed with tags identifying what standards are covered by the
lesson as well as the big idea. They provide an estimated time for delivery of
the lesson and the amount of resources included with the lesson. There are TONS
of lessons to go through (almost 7500 between all grade levels upon my time of
review in ELA alone!) and are written in a lesson format (in all the lessons
that I read through) that identifies the Objective and Big idea, Sets the
purpose (anticipatory sets), explains and guides through the learning activity
along with pictures and any requires resources needed, sets the stage for
independent learning, and closes the lesson with a short exit-ticket or closure
activity.
Interestingly,
there is a category of blended lessons that support interdisciplinary units and
there are links at the end of lessons which provide jumps into related lessons.
One note of observation is that these related lessons are not linked in exact
precision to content and sometimes are related because of the activity or
strategy the lesson uses. For example, upon reading through a Charades Activity
lesson for 5th graders learning inference skills and visual clues
the recommended related links were a lesson on Thomas Edison (shared a
strategy) for 3rd graders, a lesson on Interview Reporting for 6th
grade ELA Journalism (reporting on inferences), and a 5th grade
Archaeology scavenger hunt (couldn’t find any connections aside from the
teacher who submitted the lesson being the same).
Regardless
of those small oddities, betterlesson.com has a high amount of literacy
activities and lessons that are not pigeonholed around reading passages and
comprehension questions, which is very refreshing as both a teacher and
student. That is of course not to say there are no passages and comprehension
question style lessons. There are also sections on professional development and
instructional strategies that can be used to grow and strengthen your practice
but require support from BetterLesson who will provide support and guidance to
educational leadership or instructional coaches to bring to their districts.
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