60+ Peer-Recommended & NJPTS Aligned Digital Resources [Directory]
Rutgers CESP’s Alternate Route program regularly assigns interactive and collaborative coursework that goes beyond satisfying the requirements of the NJ teacher certification process. Candidates are often encouraged to apply research-based instructional strategies that can immediately improve their professional practice and to identify resources to advance their professional learning. Nearly 100 members of our cohort recently researched and reviewed digital resources that align with NJ Professional Standards for Teachers (NJPTS). Their findings have been curated and consolidated into a peer-recommended digital directory of teacher resources for the benefit of the greater NJ teaching community.
We hope that novice and seasoned teachers alike use the 60+ web resources included in this directory to enhance their performance and understanding of NJ Professional Teaching Standards:
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Content knowledge (Standard 4)
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Application of content (Standard 5)
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Assessment (Standard 6)
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Planning for instruction (Standard 7)
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Instructional strategies (Standard 8)
Teaching Resources For All Subject Areas
“This website is great for downloading resources such as worksheets and joining discussions. These are great for filler projects for the kids to work on if we get through a lesson too quickly.”
“Discovery education.com is a great site that provides a lot of resources to support what you’re teaching, it contains lesson plans, lesson starters and ideas for videos and materials to support your teaching. If your school has a subscription you are able to access more of the resources.”
“Gonoodle is a great site to use for brain breaks, indoor recess activities, or movement breaks in your classroom.”
“Lynda is a digital learning library that is wonderful. It takes the ‘how to’ out of teaching and learning all sorts of software. They’ve also recently expanded to include other vital information as well such as business know-how.”
“A nice exchange site where teachers can share lessons and materials they have developed. Many are free, while others have a cost that helps colleagues earn a little extra money. Any teacher can get an account and start sharing!”
“Very creative resources aligned with CC Standards.”
“I absolutely love this blog! It is filled with so many amazing ideas and creations. I’m constantly browsing and getting ideas of what I can do with my Kindergarteners to keep them engaged and excited.“
“Ed.ted.com features a variety of multimedia lessons as well as tools for crafting your own lessons around pre-existing education TED talks. These resources provide valuable content knowledge as well as resources for turning that knowledge into deliverable, enriched lessons.”
“I use this site as a source for safe, screened educational videos that can be used for enrichment purposes or for crafting lessons.”
“Great resources for all teachers to be used with the Smart Board. Interactive for any subject, and any age in K-12 education.”
“PE central is an online resource for health and physical education teachers that includes professional development, classroom management, assessments, lesson plans, and discussion board resources. For me, there are many benefits to this resource because this website does a good job in promoting interdisciplinary studies and differentiated instruction in the physical education and health settings.”
“Shape American is an online resource that focuses on guidelines and standards for health and PE educators. This site also offers online PD opportunities and workshops.”
“This site is dedicated to keeping NJ residents healthy. It’s always up to date with new programs, activities and statistics for our state.”
“This website keeps teachers up to date with healthy resources for all ages. If I were ever to change from the High School level I could continue using this website to teach younger students how to stay healthy.”
“This is a teacher's friend. Teachers can use Remind to share resources directly with students and parents. It’s a great way to share homework assignments, and store all of the work together as attachments.”
“For Math, I would recommend edpuzzle.com but this can be used for many other subjects as well. It basically is a way in which you can crop videos you find online (Youtube, etc.) and add questions at different times in the videos that your students will answer at home. You can track their progress of completion from a dashboard.”
“My science supervisor introduced to me to Kahoot. You make up 20-25 questions and answers and enter them in the appropriate place. Once you have that ready you can project this onto a screen in the classroom. Students use their devices, phone, ipad or chromebook to log in to Kahoot and play each other. It can be used as a review game, with color coded touch choices, scorekeeping and progress updates. The teacher is in control of the game the whole time. It’s a lot of fun and perfect for review in any subject.”
“Wonderopolis is extremely useful for reading across content areas. There are many articles to choose from in a wide array of subject areas. You can choose any age or subject you like, and their articles can be printed or used online. The articles even include higher order of thinking thought questions at the end. I incorporate the RAN strategy (reading and analyzing non-fiction strategy) when I use them. This comes highly recommended from my supervisor and is aligned with PARCC or any standardized testing.”
English Language Arts (ELA) Teaching Resources
“This website is great for supplementing the English Language Arts curriculum because of its multi faceted references. It is an essential tool to send to students for research, or for literary, historical, or social science scavenger hunts. I’ve directed students and student groups to locate information from their site so that, like a puzzle, they could realize the big picture of an assignment/activity.”
“This site is a great tool to help students of all grade levels and reading levels understand current events. Students can read and view images, and take reading comprehension quizzes. Teachers can ensure the reading is at the student's current lexile. It also allows for mastery of current lexile comprehension and acceleration to the next level based on student progress. Many curriculum-approved articles, books, and novels work in concert with the NEWSELA website. My students were reading "Monster" by Walter Dean Myers, and NEWSELA provided a real-life courtroom trial scenario where a teenaged African American male was on trial for murder. It provoked great discussion and brought in a real sense of the world around the student population that I teach. It is a great, interactive teaching tool for English Language Arts instruction.”
“One of the websites that I have found most useful and am more than happy to share has been www.newsela.com. My supervisor suggested this site to me and it is worth its weight in gold! As a Writing teacher, I try to find texts that 1. Relate to the task at hand and 2. Are relevant to current events and the student's understanding. I found that www.newsela.com has many articles on current events that an educator can sort through based on both subject matter and grade level. I will usually find an article per week for the students to read, write, and share.”
National Council of Teachers of English
“This site provides resources specific to English/Language Arts teachers. It’s tailored for my particular discipline and provides information for all grade levels. It also provides different avenues to connect with other English teachers.”
“What I like about ReadWriteThink is that it provides tons of ideas and comprehensive lesson plans in my discipline. Like NCTE, there are avenues of communication and networking with other English teachers using this site.”
“I use their videos as story starters with my Creative Writing classes, as well as for Do-Nows and other random writing assignments in my English classes. It allows for a lot of creativity on the part of students and gets them engaged in ways that traditional written prompts do not.”
“This site uses Google map technology to take students on tours of the settings of different stories. It is great for helping students understand the setting of the story they are about to read, as some struggle to paint a vivid picture for themselves and therefore lose interest in a book quickly.”
“This site is really cool because it lets teachers form vocabulary games using the words that they choose. When students get correct answers, the site makes a donation of food to a country in need! This can motivate students by giving them a sense of contribution to society through their efforts!”
“Great for Eno/Smart boards! For every word that students get right, 10 grains of rice get donated to UN countries in need. Also, you can change the level to work as a simple review of words they should know, or grade level vocabulary practice.“
World Languages Teaching Resources
“The Alliance Française has locations all over the world and is a pretty extensive network. They offer short and long workshops specific for French teachers, but also offer many French cultural events that are often free of charge. Any of these experiences could help enhance the classroom!”
“The French Embassy has more than just a section about education. They focus on French Language Teacher professional development, offering courses, scholarships, cultural events, workshops, and even online distance learning courses for French Teachers. The site also provides plenty of culturally authentic materials to pull ideas from. Finally, opportunities for students are also made available on this site. There are often contests, and student tour/homestay offerings.”
“I’ve used Celebrate Languages to get a deeper understanding on foreign language learning and teaching.”
“I learned how to teach a song in a beneficial way to students and have fun in class from Everyday Language Learner.”
“Yabla is a very good site for foreign languages. It has many audiovisuals and all their videos can have English and foreign language subtitles.”
“This app allows students to practice their language skills and apply their knowledge through the completion of various activities. Students can also interact with other world language learners or native speakers from around the World. My students have used it to interact with users in Spanish-speaking countries, however Spanish is one of many languages supported on the app.”
“Has interactive resources like games, videos, and music.”
“Has easy and short videos, great for worksheets.”
Science Teaching Resources
PHeT Interactive Chemistry Simulations
“Great simulations for all areas of science. Some of them are being updated to HTML5 and are compatible with the iPad which is great in my school.”
“This is a fantastic website for teachers, students and parents as well. It's affiliated with the Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman and offers an endless variety of science-related visual simulations: Interact, Discover and Learn.”
“A lot of really nice worksheets, quizzes, and slides. The quizzes and slides are also slowly being updated to HTML5, so I look forward to using it even more next year.”
Earth Science and space science projects | Education.com
“Useful site to get ideas on activities, lab work and projects for students.”
UC Berkeley Understanding Science
“It is a great resource for learning more about the process of science. Their resource goes much deeper than the standard "PHEOC" model of the scientific method by emphasizing peer review, and the testing of ideas. It also contains a science flowchart and "what is science?" checklist. Understanding Science provides a variety of teaching resources including case studies of scientific discoveries and lesson plans for every grade level. One of my professors recommended this website.”
“This is a great website where you can find articles and lab ideas for your students. The articles on the website relate chemistry to real life situations.”
American Association of Chemistry Teachers
“This is a great website for chemistry teachers who need an activity idea. The ideas set forward here are engaging and will get your students to think critically. There are different resources for a host of chemistry topics.”
“This website is extremely useful for when teaching Lewis dot structures or just introducing molecules. A virtual model kit is free online and there are possible projects that can be formed using this tool.”
“This is a generic website useful for teaching the basics of biology. It contains lots of premade worksheets and a few interactive experiments and activities.“
Notable others:
Art Teaching Resources
Art Curator for Kids (On Pinterest)
“Art Curator for Kids also has wonderful resources that are set at age appropriate levels.”
“The Graphic Artists Guild is a professional organization that provides many tools and resources for graphic and interactive designers, illustrators, animators, web programmers and developers. The website is a content specific resource that is best used for secondary students and professionals working with a digital art platform. The Graphic Artists Guild is also an organization that artists can join to stay up to date on the latest industry trends and news.”
“They make you feel there is a place for art teachers to be with other art teachers and be heard.”
“This website is applicable for a wider range of K-12 art education, and is provided by an online institution called the Art of Education. They publish classroom strategies in the form of daily articles, videos, lesson plans, podcasts, and more. They provide a range of resources and all lesson plans are accessible without fees or a requirement to sign into an account.“
Metropolitan Museum of Art website for Educators
“This website has a wealth of resources for art and art history teachers. Not only does the site contain lesson plans for a variety of ages, but it even has a comprehensive timeline of art history and lists upcoming school trip opportunities. What I like most about this site is that its focus is mainly on non-Western art, which is often overlooked in school programs.”
“Dick Blick is an art supply store, but it has a lot of helpful resources for teachers. There are tons of free lesson plans for a variety of mediums and ages, most of which are pdfs containing instructions and material lists—some even include videos. The lesson plans typically encourage you to use Dick Blick supplies for their projects, but this can easily be ignored or substituted if necessary. The site also promotes scholarship opportunities that teachers can encourage their students to apply for.”
“This website contains a wealth of links to digital art. I’ve directed students to this site many times for research assignments where they present an artist working in digital media.”
Notable others:
Math Teaching Resources
“This website, xtra math, is awesome for elementary fact practice. You sign yourself and class up for free and the class can log in to answer fact questions. Students’ results are recorded—how many facts they got correct, incorrect and how fast they were able to get them—and emailed to you. It’s an awesome way to let students practice facts and quickly check on how everyone is doing.”
“Prodigy is a free elementary math game resource that helps students boost their math skills in a fun and engaging way. Teachers can also use it to track student data.”
“Hosted by Stanford University, this is a great website for teachers, students and parents. It's affiliated with Jo Boaler, Professor of Mathematics and author of a book on growth mindsets. I found this website to be as useful for teachers as it is for students.”
“Math-Aids is a free resource for teachers, parents, and students. The site offers several different randomly generated math printables and dynamic worksheets on a wide array of math topics. It’s great for all grade levels. The flexibility and textbook quality of the math worksheets makes Math-Aids.Com a distinctive resource for parents and teachers. Answer keys are included with their math worksheets, which is great for parents.”
“This is a blog run by a math teacher named Sarah Carter. She has tons of great ideas that she shares for free, including interactive notebooks, foldables, worksheets, reference sheets, and game ideas, with special emphasis on Algebra and Algebra 2.”
“Numberphile has tons of videos on numerous math-related subjects from universities across the globe. While some of the content is not the most flashy and could be considered very dull by students, they do come up with unique experiments and simple explanations for very complex math problems. It’s an excellent resource for students that need a challenge, or have a question that is perhaps outside the normal context of classroom material.”
ELL Teaching Resources
“This site is geared toward ESL instructors and teachers who have students who are English Language Learners. TESOL has a wealth of publications, peer-reviewed professional articles, standards to cover, teaching pedagogy, events, blog posts and a myriad of other resources that instructors can use to refine their craft.”
“This is a website that requires a subscription, and very much so exceeded my expectations. While sites like tesol.org focus more on teacher development and subject matter knowledge, esllibrary.com provides plenty of resources to help ESL instructors prepare thorough lessons.“
BBC's "Learning English"
“This website is designed for use with English language learners. It has a lot of interesting videos, articles and activities. It focuses on British English, but the grammar is the same. It could also be used for cultural lessons on how British English differs from American English.”
Notable others:
Special Education Teaching Resources
“Special Education teachers can use this site to better serve students with Autism, ADD, LD, and other disabilities affecting learning. The site’s resources focus on behavior management and picture card communication.”
“Intervention Central provides plenty of resources for intervention in the classroom. It includes both academic and behavioral interventions, which may be very useful for Resource Teachers or General Education teachers with students who may be struggling.”
“This site is perfect for special education students because it allows them to practice content, awarding them points for completing problem sets. It feels more like a game than learning.”
Learning Disabilities Association of America
“This a great site to find up to date research on special education as a teaching discipline. Teachers can use it to deepen their understanding of state regulations and laws in regards to special education.”
“Piktochart is a site that seamlessly makes visual infographics for teachers. As a special education teacher, I often must differentiate long, wordy text for my students. The best way for me to do this is by providing visual representations of information. With Piktochart, I can create a fully customized infographic on any topic. Infographics can include texts, photos, embedded videos, in-screen surveys and quizzes so that teachers can check for understanding while reviewing them with the class.”
Heather Ngoma has over 25 years of experience collaborating with educators across New Jersey to drive education innovation. She currently serves as the Director of the Rutgers-GSE Alternate Route Program in the Department of Learning and Teaching, a program which helps career changers, recent college graduates, and other aspiring education professionals become licensed teachers in New Jersey. Follow her on Twitter @heatherngoma.
