Resource Name: How Telling Stories Helps Kids Learn (article)

Grade Level/Subject Focus: Early childhood to Elementary age range (ages 2–8)

Summary: Telling stories helps kids learn by improving language skills and emotional understanding. It also strengthens parent-child bonds and encourages creativity.

Rationale: This article is a strong literacy resource for teachers because it highlights how storytelling supports language development, emotional growth, and creativity in young learners. It offers practical strategies that educators can use to foster engagement and comprehension, making it especially useful for early childhood and elementary classrooms.

Resource Name: DOGO News (articles, videos)

Grade Level Subject: Middle School (6th through 8th grade).

Summary: DOGO News is a web-based news outlet for both serious and funny news articles that are organized based on subject area.

Rationale: Using a DOGO news article in health class makes real-world topics more engaging and relatable to the students. This keeps the students engaged with the current events and helps them tie these events into the health classroom or any other class they are in.

Resource Name: A Beginner's Guide to Sketchnoting

Grade Level: Social Studies...Grades 9-12

Summary: Sketchnoting is a notetaking strategy in which imagery and pictures are drawn to remember key concepts. Fewer words, more doodles. You don't have to be an artist, and it's not about creating beautiful images—visual notetaking forces you to think differently, which can lead to a better recall of information. 

This type of notetaking will help visual/creative learners and all students from our basic PPT/Canva presentations with instructional learning. Seems like a good tool for differential instruction through lesson plans and different topics.

Resource Name: A Beginner's Guide to Sketchnoting

Grade Level/Subject Focus: Any grade

Summary: A notetaking strategy which utilizes images and pictures to remember key concepts

Rationale: Students don't know how to take notes anymore. They either write word for word what's on the board instead of summarizing or they don't take enough notes to grasp the concept. Visual notetaking allows students to think differently which allows them to recall information better. It also allows them to organize their notes better.

Resource Name: PBS Learning Media

Grade Level: All

Summary: PBS Learning Media has videos for all subjects and grades that you can filter. You can filter by grade level or subject. These videos range from 'Why is Pumpkin Spice so good?' to individual biopics.

Rationale: Most videos look to be between 3-15 minutes in length. You can use them as a bellringer or build an entire lesson around them. There were almost 7,000 videos found in 6th-8th grade social studies alone.

Resource name: Dolly Parton's Imagination Library

Content area: Foreign language

Summary: This site provides a list of bilingual books that can be read with the students. It is geared towards families, but can be used in the classroom as it provides instructions for appropriate pacing and questions to connect to them personally.

Rationale: Our C's are communication, comparing, contrasting, connections and culture. This hits them all.

Resource Name: DOGOnews

Grade Level/Subject Focus: Grades 6-8, Science

Summary: DOGOnews is a web-based source for articles on content ranging from serious to silly. It is broken into current events, science, social studies, world, environment, sports, video, and fun.

Rationale of "why" this resource might be beneficial: This resource gets the students reading current events in our content area and AT THEIR LEVEL. Often science articles contain vocabulary that makes comprehension difficult for younger students. The articles available in this resource are geared toward different literacy levels.

Resource Name: AI in the Classroom Spotlight: Scaffolding Learning in High School Chemistry

Grade Level/Subject Focus: Grades 9-12, Science Focus

Summary: In this resource, a high school chemistry teacher walks through how to use Khanmigo to scaffold student learning and differentiate instruction. This resource also demonstrates teacher tools in order to effectively streamline instruction and maximize classroom impact.

Rationale: This resource is beneficial through the differentiation of instruction and implementation of problem-solving skills. The resource helps to foster a sense of confidence over helplessness and also develops problem-solving skills, which are essential for workplace success.

Resource Name: Career Guide

Grade Level/Subject Focus: 9-12; PCC, Career Clusters

Summary: This is a flip book that breaks down what each career cluster is, what you can do within each cluster, and what type/level of education is required to do each job.

Rationale: The flipbook gives an inclusive list of the different career clusters. This can give students' an idea of career fields they may not have thought of. This also shows students how much education would be require to do the chosen career/be in the chosen career field.

• When searching employability skills, many of the videos on Learning Lab are showing up as errors (things we could use in class)

Resource Name: Indiana Assessment Framework Mathematics

Grade Level/Subject Focus: Grades 7-8 Math

Summary: Includes test blueprints, item specifications, performance level descriptors, and example problems to be used in the classroom. These example problems are super helpful. It is broken down by checkpoint and standard and match the process tasks (which are replacing the performance task)

Rationale:

This is a strong literacy resource because the format of the word problems for the math ILEARN is changing. They have different language, require lots of switching between fractions and decimals, as well as transitioning among types of thought processes. These examples give teachers tools to teach the language and the process necessary for our kids to be successful.

Resource Name: Sketchnoting

Grade Level: 9-12 (English, but can be applied to any subject)

Summary: drawing pictures to remember key concepts -- using a blend of drawings/text to identify and analyze key ideas from the text

Rationale: This helps unlock a part of students' brains that isn't typically used and challenges them to think about concepts in different, more creative ways

Resource Name: Checkpoint One Performance Level Descriptor

Grade Level: 6-8 ELA

Summary: Boring Resource, but useful. We found an ILEARN table that breaks down each standard in CP1. It then shows what the student will demonstrate at Below, Approaching, At and Above. It was a comparison document for 7and the 8th grade.

We love that 7th and 8th are worded differently but the levels are the same.

Rationale: ILEARN Prep.

Baker, Foxworth, Weber

• Resource Name- Audacity

• Grade Level/Subject Focus- 7-12

• Brief Summary of the Resource- Audacity is free sound editing software.

• Rationale of “why” this resource might be beneficial- It make sounding editing easy enough for kids to create podcasts or songs.