Templates for Teachers
By Linda Starr, Education World®, 10/17/2001
Copyright © 2001 Education World

Editor's Note: This field trip was created based on the recommendations in the referenced article by Linda Starr. Original text of article can be viewed at http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/tech101.shtml.

Are you spending your evenings writing welcome letters to parents, carefully ruling seating charts, designing award certificates, and creating learning center signs? Why reinvent the wheel? All those printable documents are available online at the click of a mouse. In this virtual field trip, Education World tells you where to find them! Included: A list of the best sources for often-used and hard-to-find teacher templates.

A template, according to Whatis?com "is a form, mold, or pattern used as a guide to making something." In the classroom, a template can be anything from a traceable oak tag elephant to a field trip permission form.

Some templates -- such as most award certificates, student progress updates, and seating charts -- are available in word processing documents. You can modify and individualize those before saving or printing them.

Other templates are designed to be printed and used "as is." You can make modifications, such as adding a specific name or date, after printing the product. Most non-modifiable documents are created in PDF (portable document format), a file format that has the advantage of maintaining all the formatting of the original document.

Enjoy!