Resources for Teachers, Families, and Community Members

Great Sites for Online Books

• www.getepic.com - ebook subscription
• www.raz-plus.com - Online guided reading program with interactive ebooks, downloadable books, and reading quizzes.
• http://www.storylineonline.net - actors and actresses reading their favorite books
• http://readtomelv.com - books read by famous performers 
• http://wegivebooks.org - each book read mean a donation will be made to a charity 
• http://starfall.com - Students can follow along as the story is read to them and can, in some instances, help create their own story.
• http://abcya.com - Has a variety of resources including stories with highlighted text.
• http://ngexplorer.cengage.com/ngyoungexplorer/index.html - Listen and read to NonFiction books. 

Educational Foundations for Teachers to Follow 

• https://www.edutopia.org/ - Variety of Educational Videos and Articles ranging from growth mindset to project learning to social and emotional learning. 
• http://www.neafoundation.org/ - Provides Learning and Leadership AND Student Achievement Grants to Educators. 

Communicating with Parents and Families (and Vice Versa) 

• Reading Rockets Building Teacher-Parent Relationships 
• Have a Twitter/Instagram - Post pictures or share updates with parents and members of the community (check me out at @chelseabradsha5)
• Here's a great article about how to connect with Parents through social media 
• Send out newsletters - I love Smore.com (easy to use, good graphics, very organized). EDUleadership says to avoid these three things when writing a newsletter to staff or parents: 

• "Being long-winded. Be concise. People are busy, and they appreciate it when you get to the point quickly.
• Making it optional reading. If your newsletter isn’t the essential source for school [or class] happenings and information, people won’t read it.
• Making it hard to read. You want people to actually read your newsletter, so make it easy for them to get the information they need quickly. Don’t send a Word document that can’t be read on a mobile device, or a PDF that’s an extra step to open. Just send a regular old email." 
• Bloomz - With Bloomz, teachers save time by having all the tools they need to communicate with today's parents in one easy-to-use (and free) app.

I have a number of Reading Specialist experiences under my belt. Check them out! 

First things first... What is a Reading Specialist? A Reading Specialist can take on many jobs. A reading specialists job primarily is providing support to teachers, parents and the community. This job can vary from coaching, collaborating, supervising or all of the above! To find out more about Reading Specialists, you may click here (Reading Rockets) or here (International Reading Association). 

• Program Evaluation - I compared two literacy programs, Raz Plus and Reading Street. I did a program presentation for these programs to be hypothetically implemented into my district. Below are my recommendations. Take a listen! 

• Grant Proposal - This is a grant I applied for. We are still waiting on a response but feel free to take a look. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Professional Development Plan - I created and implemented a professional development plan that teachers educators strategies about how to teach sight words using the website: Sightwords.com. After presenting my material, teachers also received some "takeaways" so that they could implement some games and teaching tools immediately. 

FUTURE PLANS 

• Offer Parent Workshops
• Join Educational Foundations
• Continue providing professional development (whether formal or informal)
• Continue establishing good relationships with colleagues
• Take leadership opportunities within the school/district
• Stay up to date with reading and writing research