Flippity, Lesson Plans & Organizational Resources for Teachers

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This week I learned about a new resource called Flippity! Flippity is an awesome website that allows you to turn a Google Spreadsheet (Google Sheets) into many different learning tools for the classroom -- flashcards, crossword puzzles, bingo cards, an interactive hangman game, and my favorite -- a quiz show with gameshow-type questions. I used it to make a memory game (in about 5 minutes!) for my preschoolers matching pictures to beginning letter sounds -- check it out!



I also explored several online resources for Lesson Plans this week. Sometimes it's hard for me to find reliable, standards-based lesson plans for my Head Start classroom because so many websites are K-12 and don't include early childhood, but if you dig deep enough, you can definitely find some good ideas. My personal favorite website for instructional resources is Teachers Pay Teachers. This website community is growing, and I like these lessons because they're created by teachers and are extremely relevant and visual. Everything I find on this site, FREE or PAID, is engaging and relates directly to what my students are learning. If you're an early childhood teachers as well, you may find these lesson plans I bookmarked helpful too:
  • Highlight-A-Letter: This set of worksheets allows young students to practice upper and lower letter identification. I like that there are two different pages, one for lower students who are only working on identification, and another for higher students who need less practice finding them and are more ready to start tracing and writing them independently.
  • "America the Beautiful": Even though this lesson plan is for K-2, I think my preschool kids could still benefit from it, it just may need some adapting for shorter timed lessons and a different way to practice vocabulary. This lesson involves 6 class sessions (about an hour long) using music and art to learn unfamiliar words in the song "America the Beautiful". Students talk about scenery throughout the United States, and use a combination of photos, illustrations, and language to create a mural of the country. I would probably integrate some other age-appropriate texts and use a map to teach my students a little bit about our location. 
  • I Am Five: This is a lesson plan specifically about the number 5, which is an important number for my preschool students who turn five before going to Kindergarten. First, you read the book "I Am Five" then do some instruction, introducing the visual number 5, making 5 on their hands, and having students count and engage in "The Elephant Song" helping them understand the quantity. Students receive their own copy of the "I Am Five" book for guided practice, then they practice independently with the "Number Five Gumball" worksheet.
As any teacher knows, organization is key to being successful and not drowning in a list of things to do. Fortunately for us, there are many resources that aim to help make our lives a little easier -- websites like LiveBinders can help us store and share files (while saving paper) or GoNoodle can quickly help with brain breaks and transitions. ClassDojo is a big time-saver when it comes to communicating with families and tracking classroom behavior (and can be translated for English Language Learners!) and SignUp Genius can help you organize volunteers for any situation. There are SO MANY great resources for teachers on the internet -- Click here to see the Adobe Spark page I created highlighting (and elaborating) on my favorites! 

One new resource I was introduced to this week is called Plickers. I think it's pretty amazing and I can't wait until I have an opportunity to try it in my own classroom someday. Watch below to see how it works:








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About Me

My name is Megan, I live in Overland Park, KS, and I'm a Head Start early childhood teacher. I love music, art, and I'm a little bit stuck in the 90's. This is a blog about useful Google features & technology tools that can be applied to any classroom setting. Teach on!

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