PBS Learning Media

I have long been a fan of Teachers' Domain, so was eager to go see its new incarnation as PBS learning media www.pbslearningmedia.org

You need to set up free account with email and PW; there is an email account you can use (they will help you set it up) so you can set up an account for students to use

34,000 digital resources, includes:

• Short clips from longer PBS national programs and local productions, some are from high-quality partners (e.g, NASA, Smithsonian), and some are produced specifically for the site
• all clips are selected to be tied to particular curriculum and all are tied to standards
• many clips are associated with a lesson plan that indicates how to use the clip appropriately

All clips are searchable by keywords, grade level, subject area, and by CCSS standards and some national stantdards

• Clips can be saved using favorite buttons and saved to folders; folders can be shared
• There are also clips organized by public media series, state and local collections, curriculum topics and theme
• There is a whole collected of "characteristics of highly effective teaching and learning" that could be used for PD within your school--short videos showing many best practices for teaching and classroom management

Themed-content in middle school literacy practicing reading and writing in the content area (pbslearningmedia/collections/midlit), including science (energy, plate tectonics, health), ELA (character development, personification), social studies, mathematics--most populated at science and social studies

• Lesson plans go with all topics and have been created and vetted with and by experts/teachers
• Includes a number of literacy strategies--categorize, compare/contrast, find evidence, etc etc

We looked at 2 excellent lessons -- one on cowbirds and one on Pocahontus.  The workshop participants all agreed that the lessons were engaging (actually fun and very interesting), and there were some excellent student activities and assignments embedded into each one.    These would make excellent assignments for supplementation, homework, self-paced work in a topic area.

Many, many middle school math lessons and activities will be added soon