Welcome to the ProfessorGarfield.org Blog! I hope you didn’t miss the first entry, but if you did, you can access it from the Blog Archive in the right frame. In this entry, I will give you some information about the Professor Garfield Teachers’ Lounge, a place where you could get (happily) lost for hours! We also encourage you to listen to the new podcast that accompanies this Blog.

Purpose of the Teachers’ Lounge

The purpose of the Teachers’ Lounge is to provide free, user-friendly, and standards-based learning materials for the classroom teacher, parent, tutor, or mentor. The materials are intended to support and supplement the ongoing work of the classroom teacher by providing level materials that are retrievable by grade level or standard.

Grade Levels

The materials on the Professor Garfield site range from grades pre-kindergarten to eighth grade in terms of difficulty. Please use these grade indicators only as suggestions. That is, feel free to try the activities with children who are both older and younger than the suggested grade level. If you are a teacher, using the activities “out-of-level” is an efficient way to differentiate your instruction.

We have posted this graphical site overview to display a broad perspective of the subject matter covered on the Professor Garfield site. You might find it helpful to print it out and keep a copy on your desk as you write your lesson plans. The Graphical Site Overview is interactive, providing a direct link to the various sections of the site. The upper portion of the flowchart outlines the curricula covered in the kids' section of the Professor Garfield site, while the lower section reflects the content addressed in the Teachers' Lounge portion of the site.

Standards

Due to the variability of state academic standards, we have chosen to link the activities on ProfessorGarfield.org to the standards developed by Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL). The McREL standards are a compendium of a number of related documents produced by organizations such as the International Reading Association and the National Council of Teachers of English, and thus represent a synthesis of vital standards and benchmarks for student achievement in reading. We feel that teachers using the content provided on the Professor Garfield.org website could easily match a McREL standard or benchmark to one within the prescribed standards for their locale. In addition, using a universal format allows teachers to have a common framework that will facilitate collaboration across state and international boundaries.

Professional Development

Our hope is that in addition to interactive activities for children and high-quality instructional materials, we can provide a measure of professional development for educators who are using the Professor Garfield site. For each of the major collections of activities and materials on the site, such as Orson’s Farm, The Garfield Think Aloud Series, and the Easy Reader Books we have provided instructions, a teacher’s guide, or some lesson plans to make your use of the materials easy, efficient, and beneficial for children. When possible we also offer assessment materials, such as the review questions and story retelling checklist for the books in the Garfield Think Aloud Series.

Finally, in each Teacher’s Guide we offer extensive helpful Internet links and recommended reading in case you want to learn more about an area of literacy development. You can also find those Internet links listed by topic under the Educational Links button in the left frame.