Good morning! I am happy to share that we have released a new demonstration video that demonstrates the components of an effective lesson in a middle school ELA classroom. I think this will be very helpful to MS ELA teachers who are striving to work on the structure of their lessons and looking for ideas of what the components of an effective lesson can look like. I think this will also be very helpful for teachers in other content areas because the principles are easily transferable to other content areas and grade levels.

I hope you find this video helpful in your classroom! Let us know what you think and if you have ideas for other 
videos.

Components of an Effective Lesson in a MS ELA Classroom

We are always working to create new videos to post here on Wiki-Teacher. One topic we often hear requested is more videos on differentiated instruction. I am happy to share that today we released a new video showing what differentiated instruction in a core reading block can look like. It is a great model and I hope you take a moment to watch this video!

http://www.wiki-teacher.com/resourceView.php?id=0000003012

Over the past few months we have worked hard to create a series of videos that highlight some of the instructional techniques you can use to practice phonics skills in your classroom. Explicitly teaching phonics to students is a very large topic that you could take a whole college class/PDE on (e.g., PDE #2842 - Explicit Phonics Instruction), but we felt it was important to produce videos that highlight some specific techniques that can be used by classroom teachers. In the following videos, you will learn what purpose behind each instructional technique, the procedures for using the technique, and when to use them in the instructional cycle.

Phonics Instruction - Sound-by-Sound Blending
Phonics Instruction - Continuous Blending
Phonics Instruction - Sound/Spelling Review
Phonics Instruction - Word Reading - Spelling Focused

We hope you enjoy these great videos!

I have recently received requests to upload files larger than our existing limit of 10mb. I am glad to share that this morning we increased that limit up to 25mb per file for resource uploads. This should allow users to upload even larger files, especially Power Point files with lots of graphics. Don't forget our Resource Help page that has more information about uploading, what is permissible, and allowed file types: http://www.wiki-teacher.com/resourceHelp.php

I am excited to release today a newly redesigned footer for Wiki-Teacher. Although this isn't a large change, I think it will help users quickly and easily get around the site and access resources. This is one more way that we are striving each day to make Wiki-Teacher a better resource for educators. If you have any thoughts about the footer redesign, or ideas of how we can further improve the site, please share in the comments section below.

I am excited to share that you can now stay up to date on all of the newest resources and features on Wiki-Teacher on either Facebook or Twitter.

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/wikiteacher
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/wikiteacher/

We look forward to using both of these sites to help quickly and easily inform users about great new resources without having to wait until the next newsletter.

We are excited to share with everyone a series of Kindergarten demonstration videos from a 1/2 day kindergarten reading block. Mrs. Moore at Hayden ES was kind enough to allow us to film all of her reading and writing instruction. She did an amazing job and we think that after watching the videos, both new and veteran teachers will gain ideas on how to improve their instruction. The links to all of the videos are below and are also available in the demonstration video section of Wiki-Teacher. Enjoy!

We are excited to share a brand new feature that should help Wiki-Teacher users find more resources on the site that will be useful to them in their classroom. When viewing a resource like a lesson plan, unit plan, or demonstration video you may notice a new box in the right column that says "Users who viewed this resource also viewed ..." This section of the page will provide you up to ten links to different resources that other users tended to view when looking at the current resource. In addition, it automatically screens out resources you have already seen so you always just see content that is 'fresh' to you. To flip between the different resources, just use the two arrows (< and >) that are found in the top right corner of this module.

We hope that you enjoy this new feature and find it to be a great to discover new and useful resources on Wiki-Teacher!