A Cool Cat Teacher
Vicki Davis, creator of the Cool Cat Teacher Blog is a magnificent woman with a variety of tools under her belt. According to the article I read, she has been a teacher and IT Director since 2002. Not only that, but she has worked in global collaboration by creating an app called MAD About Mattering. She has worked as a freelance author for many websites on the web such as Edutopia and the Washington Post, AND she has co-authored two books. She is very successful on the internet such as her Twitter, her blog, and her podcast called 10 Minute Teacher show (which I am definitely subscribing to because I love podcasts!).
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One of the books that she has written is called Reinventing Writing. As we move into the future, we are straying from the old methods and moving towards new methods of teaching and sharing content. As teachers, we should always be looking for new and inventive ways to improve our classroom. Davis includes the table of contents on the page so that you get a sense of what the book contains. Many reviewers have praised this book endlessly for its useful information and ingenious ideas to reinvent writing. She also includes a book trailer with the article.
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Davis also has an article on 10 Habits of Bloggers That Win. I would recommend this little article without a doubt if you are planning on making a blog of any kind. She also includes a graphic that I find undeniably adorable!
The right-hand sidebar of her blog features a section called “What’s Hot On This Blog” which contains a list of links with a lot of wonderful articles. One that I especially liked was 5 Fantastic Peer Feedback Strategies For Your Classroom. The link led to a podcast clip and there is a transcript on the bottom of the page for those who are hard of hearing. The article also includes a bio and twitter handle (@mssackstein). Starr Sackstein, the guest on the podcast. No matter what grade you’re teaching, you can always use peer feedback with students. They discuss a lot of the essentials of teaching in the podcast such as modeling so that the student doesn’t have to guess what the teacher expects of them. I can already brainstorm some strategies on how to implement them in my future classroom with the ideas discussed in the podcast.
Another great podcast included in the list of links was How Do Kids Learn and Remember? Being an elementary education major, I found all of the information considered in the podcast to be beneficial.
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I found a real gem of a link when I perused the top bar; I found her online store! It’s full of pretty inexpensive resources like power point presentations, instructional videos, manuals, and kits to help you in your future classroom. I will absolutely look through these; what really caught my eye was the Substitute Teacher Success Manual, the Kindness Reminders Motivational Kit, and the e-book full of Tips for Minimizing Teacher Stress. I will totally add those to my shopping cart!
The last feature on her blog that I will discuss will be the search functions. On the top right of the screen, there is a useful search bar if you want to find something specific on this blog. I tested it out by searching for “STEM” since I had just learned about it in my classes. I found a vast amount of articles on the site that mentioned STEM learning and they all looked fantastic.
Not only can you search that way, but on the bottom of the right-hand sidebar, there is a drop-down arrow of many topics that Davis writes about on her blog. I found the amount of articles on her blog to be completely mind-blowing. I searched for Kindergarten (ages 3-6) and immediately found a podcast called App Smashing with Kindergarteners #ipadchat that I saved to my favorites. I dare you to search for something you’re interested in; it’s astonishing! |
Overall, this website is definitely a magnificent resource chock-full of articles for those who are teachers and those aspiring to be teachers. I have already added this website to my favorites on my browser! I cannot stress this enough; this website is incredible! I hope that you check it out and find it as fascinating as I do.