Today I Learned: classroom website creation

Every night at the dinner table my dad would ask each of us kids what we learned that day at school. Well, this weekend I learned how to make a website for my speech-language classroom. Our district has moved to a 1:1 iPad initiative for our 7th and 8th grades, and nearly all communications with parents have become digital. Each class from 5th grade and up at my building has a website where they post assignments and news. Seeing as this summer I am all about learning new things, I decided to create my own website for better communication with parents.

Weebly for education has a great site for teachers to create their own classroom websites. The basic service is free and intuitive. Adding text, titles, and pictures is simple with an easy drag and drop editor. Some extra features include password protecting student pages, a place to upload assignments, and the capabilities to add your own photos and videos.

I started off by picking a basic layout and within 30 minutes I had a home page that linked to 3 additional pages. Here's a peek at the website I created!

Because I work with 9 different grades, I split up my website to include an area for the younger grades and the older grades. I focus very heavily on vocabulary as it's a great way to improve generalization and so I created a K-4 page and a 5-8 page that includes the vocabulary word of the week and other things we'll be working on. If you provide theme-based therapy, this is also a great way to share the vocabulary and skills you are working on with students.

Overall, I would recommend creating a Weebly classroom site and I'll keep you posted on how it goes this year!