Tag: Extend-A-Menu

3-12, Bloom's Taxonomy, Education, Independent Study, Student Products, Teaching Tools

The New Differentiator

Terri Eichholz

Ian over at byrdseed.com has revised his Differentiator tool, and it looks great.  This is a great resource for teachers (or students who are good at working independently), allowing you to target different thinking skills for groups of students based on their needs.  You can add depth and complexity to the required content, offer up different choices for resources or products, and select the number of students in each group.  The best part?  It now works on iPads! (I previously mentioned this tool in my “Extend-a-Menu” post.)

Education, Independent Study, K-12, Research, Teaching Tools

Extend a Menu (Reblog)

Terri Eichholz

For the summer, I have decided to use my Tuesday and Thursday posts to reblog some of my favorite posts that some of my readers may have missed the first time around. I think that you can find some of the best resources for differentiation at http://www.byrdseed.com. For more of my posts about tools and lessons from that site, check this out: http://engagetheirminds.com/?s=byrd

This is an invaluable tool for teachers to help with differentiation for all levels.  If you click on the “Demo” at the top, you can create your own menu using “The Differentiator”.  You do not need to pay to use the demo, but there is a $20 subscription service that allows you to save your menus online.  These are brought to you by www.byrdseed.com.

Education, Teaching Tools

My Favorite Teacher Tools

Terri Eichholz
Many schools are out for the next two weeks, which gives teachers the opportunity to catch up on their personal lives.  Sometimes, though, teachers like to use this time for planning.  As the number of subscribers to this blog climbs, I am aware that many of you may not have had time to read all of the posts, or might have missed some of the earlier suggestions.  So, I thought this might be a good time of year to summarize and emphasize some of the most valuable resources I have reviewed so far.  Today, I would like to offer my Favorite Teacher Tools:
#3 – Thinkfinity:  This site is a great place to look for quality, standards-based lessons in a variety of subjects.  Many of the lessons are linked to free online printables or interactives that will enhance your own prepared lessons.
#2 – Extend-A-Menu:  This tool is invaluable for any teacher who would like to differentiate by using menus.  By selecting from his or her own online menus, the teacher can create a printable task sheet for any number of topics.  (If you do not want to purchase it, you can use the demo option at the top.)
#1 – Triptico:  Download this tool to your desktop, and you will be amazed at the ease in which you can incorporate it into your daily routines.  Once you load a class list, it will select teams for you, randomly choose names, create word magnets (with 42 different backgrounds to choose from; it’s great for an interactive board!) and many other really neat tasks.  It is very user-friendly, and the students love it.
Here are links to my posts on each of the above in case you would like to read more about them (the above links will take you directly to the sites for each resource):  Thinkfinity, Extend-A-Menu, Triptico