Framework for Professional Practice

INTASC
Learn more about the INTASC standards at this website.

Praxis Tests
Learn more about the Praxis series of tests from the web site of ETS, Educational Testing Service.

The Teacher as a Reflective Decision Maker

Lesson Plans Links
In addition to their own collection of lesson plans, the staff at AskERIC have collected this set of links to many of the Internet's major lesson plan sites for teachers.

Yahoo! Directory of K-2 Lesson Plans
The giant directory Yahoo can link you to many sites that offer lesson plans.

New York Times Lesson Plans
The New York Times offers daily lesson plans related to current news stories for grades 6-8 and 9-12. There are also daily news "snapshot" activities that can be developed into lesson plans for grades 3-5. In addition, you can link to related academic standards for many states.

Education World Lesson Planning
The Education World web site offers an extensive database of lesson plans, as well as "new lesson of the day" every day, and teacher-submitted lessons.

Funbrain
This site provides thousands of games and assessment quizzes that teachers can integrate into their daily lesson plans.

GEM
The Gateway to Educational Materials (GEM) provides you with access to materials from hundreds of organizations. You can search by subject and grade level.

FREE
Federal Resources for Educational Excellence (FREE) links you to materials from 35 different U.S. government agencies.

Aspects of Reflective Decision Making

The Reflective Educator
You can take sample lessons from this online professional development course presented by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

What Attitudes Does the Effective Teacher Possess?

Admirable Teacher Traits
This article from the Teaching for Excellence web site includes a list of "15 Key Characteristics" of effective teachers.

Teaching with Heart
In this article from the Education World archives, author Brenda Dyck reflects on the characteristics that make teachers effective.

Parent Involvement
The weekly online publication, Education Week, has prepared this "hot topic" summary of trends in parent involvement in school. The article includes links to many organizations and related news articles.

Education World Parent Issues Archive
The Education World web site offers this archive of articles with tips for working effectively with your students' parents.

Supporting Ways Parents Can Become Involved in Schools
This is one of a series of "Critical Issue" multimedia reports prepared by the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory. It includes video and audio clips of researchers and other experts discussing the why and how schools should involve the families of students.

Playing Their Parts
This report of a survey conducted by Public Agenda reveals that parents and teachers often have different ideas about what "parental involvement" means.

What Subject-Matter Knowledge Does the Effective Teacher Need?

Qualifications of the Public School Workforce
This 2002 report from the National Center for Education Statistics is subtitled "Prevalence of Out-of-Field Teaching 1987-88 to 1999-2000," and it examines "the phenomenon of 'out-of-field' teaching, in which teachers are assigned to teach subjects and grade levels for which they have little training."

All Talk, No Action
The Education Trust has published this special report, which explores reasons and solutions for the problems created by out-of-field teaching.

What Teaching Skills are Required of an Effective Teacher?

What is Your Classroom Management Profile?
This 12-item questionnaire will help you assess your classroom management style: authoritarian, laissez-faire, or indifferent. From Teacher Talk, published by the Center for Adolescent Studies and Indiana University.

Education World Classroom Management Archive
The Education World web site offers this archive of articles with tips for effective classroom management.

Classroom Management Tutorial
The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development offers a free online tutorial on classroom management.

Classroom Management
This section of the I Love Teaching web site has been created to offer new teachers practical, down to earth tips on how to manage effectively, starting from the very first days.

Effective Questioning Techniques
This online booklet offers ideas to help teachers ask good questions and create environments in which students are also encouraged to ask questions.

QUILT
AEL (formerly the Appalachia Educational Laboratory) has developed the QUILT model (Questioning and Understanding to Improve Learning and Thinking) to help make classroom learning environments more active and student centered. This page is titled "How better Questioning Leads to Improved Learning"

A Questioning Toolkit
This 1997 article from From Now On, the educational technology journal, discusses the many kinds of questions students should learn to ask.