Mentor Monday - Planet Cookies

We are in the thick of it with our Planet/Stars/Moon unit. Next week will be Week 3, totally nice to have an extra week to get through all this content. I think this curriculum is fun. I learn something new every year and the kids love soaking up as much as they can with me. I learned that there is to be a replacement telescope for the Hubble sent up in 2015. It was supposed to be this year (which would have been totally cool!), but something must have happened. Another thing is that Pluto is not the only Dwarf Planet categorized in our Solar System. There are four more!
One question I had from this year was how did they manage to get a satellite through the asteroid belt to explore the Outer Planets? Pretty intelligent stuff.

The point of this post was to be about this cool thing one of my parents did for us. So I guess I'll stop babbling about Planets and talk about that now. The second student to leave us this year was going to have his last day on Friday. His mom contacted me and asked if she could bring in some cookies for the kids to decorate as a treat. Never the one to miss out on a teachable moment, I wrote back and said that would be perfect. Could she come during our Science block and we could have them decorate the cookies as planets to create a Solar System model? She agreed.

We had the BEST time. She brought so much frosting, jimmies, sprinkles, and two types of cookies. We talked about how the sugar cookies were better than the oatmeal ones for the Outer Planets because the bumpy ones looked more rocky like the Inner Planets. Content with a twist!

Monday Mentor - Math Lit Connections

Today was a teacher workday, which translates into we were in meetings all morning. First we had an ESOL check up to make sure we were following our little darlings closely and adjusting curriculum to hit their weak areas. A lot of mine have problems in listening and speaking. I don't see much of a problem with their talking, they do that very well. But I digress.

Our next meeting was with our Literacy and  Math coaches to plan out the next nine weeks. I can hardly believe the first quarter is done and gone. This second one always flies by. This year is going to be even worse because I literally will by flying by on Week 8 to Australia!! But I digress. The math coach did an awesome job collecting a ton of books for each teacher to have in their classroom. Each title addresses some math concept in fun new ways.

We had to pick from the bucket of goodness and come up with ways that we could use the book in our classroom. We could make mini lesson, whole group instruction, or station idea suggestions from our book. I grabbed this neat little book called Mystery Math: A First Book of Algebra by David A. Adler. It's October and this cover had all those perfect little ghosties and ghoulies on the cover. I used to love Halloween growing up but it seems to be squeezed out of the school system now.

This little nugget starts off teaching students what an equation is and why the two sides of an equal sign need to be balanced. Then it goes into variables and how to find the solution to algebra equations using all four mathematical operations. Mandy and Billy foolishly stop by a haunted house and have to solve the algebraic riddles to make it through. They count ravens on the wires, bats inside the belfry, and the obligatory skeletons in the closet. It's done in a simple and manageable style that I can't wait to try out on my students and make this a station for them to design their own story problems.

Hope you enjoy!

Monday Mentor - Goal books

I've been meaning to start this since the summer, but haven't thought of the perfect way to do it. I want my students to set weekly goals for themselves. It can be anything from finishing their AR goals, to bringing their SS grade up, to staying in their seat. They get to pick, but I try to guide them into choosing things that I have to constantly remind them to stop doing. I repeat the same instructions to the same children over and over that I should bring a tape recorder to school.

But, like the good man says, doing the same thing over and over expecting different results is the definition of insanity. It's time to shake things up.

It came to me out of the blue as I was walking around during math class on Friday. What about small individual notebooks that they can keep in their desks? Then I can write in the goals and make notes or do little punchouts on the pages for each day they are successful during the week. It will keep them on track and hopefully keep me sane.

I found all these cute little notebooks at Target and Jo-ann's. I now need to figure out how to let them pick their notebooks. Do I let the frequent flyers in my room go first so they they buy into the whole idea? Do I do it by the best behaved kids? Or pick names from a hat?

Monday Mentor- Snowball Fight!

I found this great idea in a book on Differentiation. Here's what you do: As you are studying a unit or concept, have the students write something they've learned today or the past week on a slip of paper. They come to the carpet and make a circle. Have them crumple up the paper and flex their muscles. At the count of 3 everyone TOSS their snowball into the center of the circle. Next, have a small group of kids at a time reach in and grab a snowball. When everyone has one, at the count of 3 have them TOSS it into the center again. Do this for as long as you can stand it (a minute was all I could take).

Finally, everyone grabs a snowball to read out. You can applaud the interesting new facts students have put in their memory banks and also say, "Let's talk about that," when misconceptions are brought up. Everyone gets a chance to participate without feeling pressure that they might be 'wrong'.

Fun, right?

Monday Mentor - Science Weather Reports

One of the most fun projects I assign my Fourth Graders is to do a weather report. I love watching them get into videotaping themselves give a weather forecast, or create a powerpoint with super cool pictures of tornadoes and hurricanes. Some of them have TOO much personality! I always find myself laughing while watching the videos parents have either emailed me or sent in on a flashdrive.

This is the first time that I grade them on public speaking. Makes for some nervous bunnies on presentation day. And it's usually the kids that talk the most when they aren't supposed to. Yet, when you ask them to speak they get all shy and mumble their words. Why is that?

Here are some shots of my kiddos giving their presentations:

One of the best things from this year was when my newest student, who speaks broken English, came in with a huge bag. When it was his turn to present, he begins handing out papers to everyone with cute little Smiley Face lollipops on them. He brings me this biggest lolly of all attached to a poem he had written. It was incredible as he read it out loud for the class, but I have a sneaking suspicion he was trying to buy votes. Future politician?

Monday Mentor - Mentor Sentences

How was your weekend?

If you've read the last few posts of mine, you'll know how amazing mine was.

First I released my 100 Follower Giveaway with incredible prizes (have you entered yet?). Then my favorite new play toy arrives in the mail, the Classroom Friendly Pencil Sharpener. Yes, the caps are necessary because it is that cool! Finally, out of the blue I get notice that my donorschoose projet has been FULLY funded! That was completely unexpected.

The fun continued on Saturday when I got to hang out with my BBB, Jivey, at the Farmer's Market. We shared tomatoes, we shared basil, but for some reason she wouldn't share the fresh made mozzarella. Hmm. Well at least one of us enjoyed a caprese salad.

I also talked to a really helpful crusty Old Salt at the Sport's Authority. He was able to help me pick out a much needed knee brace and give me full details on how to get rid of the pain I've been having in my patella. After icing it a few times, it already feels better. Yay!

So, hopefully your weekend was full of unexpected goodness, good food, and helpful advice.

If it wasn't, I might be able to help. I've been doing some grammar work in my classroom for the past three years called Mentor Sentences. I first heard about it when I attended a Summer Literacy Institute put on by our county. One of the guest speakers was Mr. Jeff Anderson, he of the 10 Things Every Writer Needs to Know fame. On that day he detailed the entire process of Mentor Sentences and the genius behind it simply blew my mind. I knew this was one staff development I would get a lot out of.

I began the school year with this new procedure and found that the students took to it easily and readily. It was so much easier to understand than another worksheet given at random. I used to have my students look at a sentence that had at least four or five things done incorrectly to it. They had to find it and correct it. Boy, was I wrong. Research has shown that students were actually remembering the incorrect way of writing and using that in their own work than recalling how to do it correctly. WHAT?

Jeff suggested a five day plan that would introduce students to great sentences and invite them to find what made them so great. You can read the book that includes your Mentor Sentence ahead of time, but I prefer to read it on the second or third day of the rotation so students can have the joy of discovering the sentence as I read. They get so excited when they hear it. Also, there involvement in the story increases as they attend more to the text. Win-Win.

I decided to use one of my favorite beginning of the year texts, Thank You, Mr. Falker, by Patricia Polacco,  to start out the lessons. I get so much from this book (check out my TpT product: Mr. Falker Activity Pack) and find something new every year. It was perfect for my first foray into Mentor Sentences because I knew the book backwards and forwards. I could find that excellent nugget sentence that would show students the correct way of using a grammar concept.

For this week, I choose subjects and predicates which is always interesting to teach nine year olds. They aren't even sure which words are nouns or verbs and now I am throwing them into the lion's den with locating the complete subjects. Oy. I picked this sentence from the first page:

The little girl knew that the promise to read was at last hers.

I just love that line. It sounds like poetry and offers so much hope. But like life, Trisha's journey is not an easy one. However, Mentor Sentences are!

I printed out several copies of this sentences on one piece of paper, cut them apart, and handed them out to the students to glue onto their Mentor Sentence sheet. 

Now I would print this sheet out for them to cut and glue into their notebook maybe for the first week or so, but then they start writing it out for themselves each week. I don't have a separate notebook just for Mentor Sentences, but I have seen people do this. It is completely up to you. 

If you can see from the Mentor Sentence sheet, Day one is called Invitation to Notice. The students look at the sentence and try to pick out a feature they think I might be focusing on this week. They might write down *Nouns. I have to stress to them to also include what the nouns are in the sentence so they get some practice if finding the different parts of speech. Their notices are usually very simple at the beginning, but we build on it each week. Eventually, their notices start looking like this:

I Notice:

*Nouns - girl, promise 

*Verbs - knew, to read, was

*Adjectives - little 

*Capitals - at the beginning of the sentence

*Punctuation - period - Declarative sentence

For Day Two, I pick another sentence from the same text and display it on the board. They are to copy it onto their Mentor Sentence sheet and then try to decipher how this sentence is similar to the one from yesterday. 

I might use:

The other kids would crowd around her and watch her do her magic with the crayons.

Again, their notices are simple things. Both sentences include nouns, or verbs. Or they are both telling you something with a period at the end. We discuss what they have found whole class. If no one picked up on my focus for the week here is where I point it out. I would highlight the complete subject for both sentences and have them do the same on their sheets. 

Day Three is about imitation. They've seen each sentence and we've discussed them so they are familiar with the format. I invite them to give it a go and try to write a sentence that is similar to the ones we've been looking at. Some kids will copy the sentence but change a word or two, yet others will go off on their own to write different context. Can you say Differentiation? Yay! I am walking around the room as they write their sentences and asking them questions about what is similar between their sentence and Ms. Polacco's. Here is where I can point out capitalization errors or lead them towards a subject that includes at least one adjective. I am also looking for a student or two that has a really great example. I give each a sentence strip for them to copy out their sentence. Then I 'make them famous' as I put their work on the board and we all look at how well they did with the assignment. 

Day Four is the hardcore grammar lesson. The one from the book. You use this time for whole class instruction on your chosen concept for the week. You can discover who is getting it quickly and who needs more attention. 

Day Five is a little quiz to assess their understanding. Jeff Anderson calls this day an Invitation to Edit. The students are presented with the sentence from Day One with a few changes to it. Hopefully they remember enough about the correct way to write the sentence that they pick up on the glaring errors right away. They use proofreading marks to fix the sentence and then rewrite the whole thing correctly. There might be some multiple choice questions about the concept and a short answer for them to explain what they know. This hits all of the angles of assessment that the Common Core would love us to use.

I have been keeping a record of their responses during the week on anchor charts and keep it posted around the room. During the next week I tell them to keep an eye out for other examples of sentences that we could add to the chart. There's a little bucket of index cards for them to copy out any they find and we glue it to the chart.
 

With Mentor Sentences, I find that my students are watchful and aware of what author's are doing to create good sentences. As we move along their understanding and attention becomes much more elaborate and they can notice such higher order skills such as the author used cultural idiom to help the reader get a better sense of the character. Well, they aren't that eloquent, but you get my meaning. Give them a try. Your students will thank you.

Monday Mentor- I am AESOP-lutely FABLE-ous

I love finding new lessons that just make teaching that much more fun. My grade chair fearless leader, Jennifer, showed us all this super cute lesson on teaching fables to our fourth graders. This fits perfectly with our study on THEME and author's purpose.

We started out the week reading tons of fables, such as the Lion and the Mouse, the Tortoise and the Hare, the Fox and the Crane. We also discussed each lesson the author wanted us to learn. The themes of the short tales were easy to pick out. I went a little deeper and asked them why they thought Aesop would have picked this particular animal to represent in this fable.

The most compelling moment of the lesson came as I explained that Aesop was a Greek slave who's master taught him to read. One of my boys raised his hand to answer my question about why Aesop chose a lion to explain this lesson. He was thinking that the lion could actually stand for Aesop's master and that Aesop was in fact the mouse. Aesop could have done something big to help his master out and that's where he got the idea for the story.

GASP!  What insight! I had to hold my breath for a bit, but thanked him and told him that is probably the most intriguing idea behind the Lion and the Mouse ever told. He smiled and we went on.

After reading tons of fables, we were ready for the next step. I posted three posters around the room that included the title of the fable and its moral.

You can get all six posters Here. I cannot take credit for this file. The images are from Microsoft Clipart and the idea was borrowed. The frame is mine, though!

The children were to walk around and sit near a fable that they have a connection to. They were to write the title, moral and their connection on paper. At the end of about ten minutes they turned and told an Elbow Friend about their connection. This way they could see how many different versions of the same tale could be told. I then explained that through the years, the tales have been retold with different characters.

Here's information from Wikipedia I shared about the Wolf and the Lamb:

The fable also has Eastern analogues. One of these is the Buddhist Dipi Jataka in which the protagonists are a panther and a goat. The goat has strayed into the presence of a panther and tries to avert its fate by greeting the predator politely. It is accused of treading on his tail and then of scaring off his prey, for which crime it is made to substitute.^[7] A similar story involving birds is found among Bidpai's Persian fables as "The Partridge and the Hawk".^[8] The unjust accusation there is that the partridge is taking up all the shade, leaving the hawk out in the hot sun. When the partridge points out that it is midnight, it is killed by the hawk for contradicting.

We did it again the next day with three more fables. Sometimes it was hard for students to make connections to fables, so I had to get broader in my description. I suggested things like "have you ever had a friend who wanted something of yours" or "you procrastinated on a chore or assignment?"

 Since it was now Friday, I told them that next week we would be creating our own fables. Over the weekend they were to think about a lesson they have learned in the past and what character animals they could use based on their traits to teach this lesson.

I will give out this recording sheet for them to organize their ideas.

And then this writing paper for them to write down their very own fables.

You can get this file from Here. Just remember this is in no way my design, I'm simply sharing a resource!



Next week we are going to delve into Greek Myths (part of our curriculum) and tie them into the concepts of fables. Should be much easier to get this across to them having set up the FABLE-ous groundwork. 

Mentor Monday - Saturdays and Teacakes

I thought it was time I posted a completely creepy picture of me manhandling a children's book. Actually, I took this as a joke to show Jivey that my long awaited copy of Saturdays and Teacakes by Lester Laminack had finally arrived in the mail. She got a big kick out of it.

I've been hearing everyone rave about this little memoir story in staff developments and team meetings. I've even met the author when he visited our school, great guy by the way. I finally broke down and bought a copy online. But it was taking so long to arrive that I had to borrow a copy from our media center to read to the kids.

The story just wasn't appealing to me. My own grandmother was a large scary woman who had a loud brash voice, so visiting her was not a happy occasion. I just didn't have the same connection that Mr. Laminack was sharing in his story. After all of the peer pressure, I read it to my class. They loved it. But more importantly, I saw tons of great lessons to use this book throughout the year.

Sigh, everyone was right. It does deserve a spot on your Mentor Text shelf.

One of the lessons I taught last week was about sensory details and how it allows the reader to experience the story hand in hand with the author. I pulled a short selection from the text. It starts with the great crafting of
Pedal - Pedal - P-e-d-a-a-a-l-l-l

and end with the crunching of gravel underneath his bike tires as they shower his Mammaw's flowers.

The kids immediately picked up on the use of the stretched out words to show that the author really wanted to show the effort it was taking to climb the hill on a bike.

I had them make a sensory chart for the five senses and we managed to find something for everything, even Taste which is always hard in a story. They could TASTE the salty sweat as it dripped into his mouth.Umm, ew, but okay. Their responses to the text were fantastic. I can't wait to pull the craft into their writing. Check out this Wednesday's post to find out how that lesson went.

Saturdays and Teacakes is a great mentor text to add to your reading list. I promise!

Mentor Monday - Number Talks

During a summer Math Institute I was introduced to the teacher's resource, Number Talks. It is a method used to get students to talk through their mathematical strategies. Questions such as 19+24 are posted on the board. Students try and solve it on a white board or paper. When they do, they hold a thumbs up against their chest to show they are done.

Now, if they can explain the strategy in one way, they hold up one finger along with the thumb. If they can explain two ways, they hold up two fingers and so on. This takes the stress away from those students who take a little longer to answer, or get frustrated and stop when they see all their friends already with answers.

The teacher's role is strictly as facilitator. This is the hardest part! You listen to the students as they explain their thinking to solve the problem. You then write or represent their explanations onto the board. Some may pull the numbers out into expanded form:

10 +9  and 20+4

10+20=30

9+4=13

30+13=43

Then add the two tens and the two ones and solve that way. 

Or they might want to make 'friendly numbers' by taking one from the 24 and giving it to the 19. 

24-1=23

19+1=20

23+20=43

Some  may want to use a number line and use 'chunks' of numbers to find the answer. The teacher interprets their explanations into visual representations on the board or a chart. Then leaving the chart up for awhile so that the students can reference it during the next Number Talk.

I'm finding it a bit difficult with this new method in deciding what to do when the student's method is incorrect, or they have difficulty explaining where they get their numbers from. I want to lead them down the correct path, but I have to hold myself back. It's interesting though to hear them talk through their strategies. I'm learning so much math right along with them. It's definitely going to be an interesting journey since math is not my best subject!

Mentor Monday - Landform booklet

Something we do in Fourth Grade every year is sneak in a little geography. There are several terms that the students are responsible for knowing. But with all the other content we need to cover, it's hard to get this little unit in. We usually slide it into the other content areas. Take our unit on Native Americans, for example. We study the Inuit, Kwakiutl, Nez Perce, Hopi, Pawnee, and Seminole. As we are discussing each of these we can talk about the locations they chose to live and the landforms that surround that area.

I'll go through the Kwakiutl for you, since its such a fun word to say. They settled on the Pacific coast in the Washington - Oregon areas. I can cover oceans, continents, coast, gulf, and bay throughout my discussion of this tribe. When I mention one of the landforms I have them pull out this little booklet that we handed out at the beginning of the year. It's just 3 regular pieces of 8.5x11 paper that have been folded width-wise and stapled to form a book.

Each page can fit up to two different landform definitions and pictures. Since it's the beginning of the year I have printed out the text to glue down, but I want them to draw the pictures to get a clearer sense of what the landform shapes look like. I've had them copying from the board everything including the text, but they took 4-EVA to get it done. I want to see if this helps them get it done faster. Any extra text pieces they can slip into their binder baggie I talked about here.

When I need them busy for a bit while I conduct the reading records we are charged with every year, I will run all of the pictures they need to know into a powerpoint presentation that I have running on a loop with a slide separation of 7 minutes for now to see if this is enough time for them to draw and stay on task. That's 27 students that I need to sit and listen to read complete books while I take notes. So I need the others to stay busy with something. This is a great project for them to complete individually.

I have placed the ppt and the text printout into my TpT store for free. So make sure you take advantage of that. I'd LOVE it if you leave me a little comment there on how it works for you.

Have fun!

Monday Mentor - Setting up Notebook

Last week I showed you how I set up the student binders. Another thing we do at the beginning of the year is set up our Math Notebooks. Like a lot of you, we use the marbled composition notebooks for this purpose. The school provides us one for each student, so I can save a little money there.

The first thing I have them do is decorate the cover with ways they use numbers (photos, stickers, magazine ads, etc). This year I am going to follow the advice of Mrs. Hawk's Nest by hot gluing a ribbon into the back of their books so they can mark their place. So often they just flip to any old page and start working. I am WAY too OCD for that. I want the work to move chronologically through the book, so if I want to refer to something we've done in the past, I have them just open to that date.

I break the composition book into two sections. If you close the book and hold it up so you can see the top of all the pages, you'll notice a definite hole that marks the middle of the book. I have the students open to this page. We dog-ear (fold down) that page and make a chapter header for our 'Calendar' section. This is where they will complete all of their calendar activities during our Math block.

The front section is used for problem solving. I have them paste in a copy of the C.U.B.E.S. method that I found over at Elizabeth's site Fun in Room 4B. You can go to that link and grab your's for FREE!

I then print out a math exemplar related to the topic of study that week and have them go through the C.U.B.E.S. method to help them organize their thinking. You can actually purchase these exemplars by the set in my TpT store.

Math Exemplars Set 01

Math Exemplars Set 02 

Just in case you were curious. 

It helps me to keep all of their work in one place for CRCT review future reference. Plus they can see the progression of their knowledge throughout the year. 

We have a section set aside in our binders for our interactive notes. They can flip through that to help them support their explanations when writing about their solutions. 

Leave me a comment below and let me know how you use your math notebooks!

Mentor Mondays - School Binders

This will mark the turning point for my Mentor Monday posts. I am switching over entirely into school mode since I have to report for duty at 7:00 A.M. this Wednesday. To help you get ready as well, I am switching to more school related posts instead of blog set up.

For the first topic, I wanted to show you my school binders that my students will use to keep everything in this year. I tried this out for the first time last year and I really liked it. I went with a 1" binder for all the students and it went okay. The only part I didn't like was when I had to pull out the 'chapters' from the Social Studies and Science sections when we were done. Otherwise there wouldn't be any room to add more paper.

This year I am going with the 2" Front View Binder.

They'll put their Homework Agenda notebooks in the front followed by four tab dividers. One for Math, Language Arts, Science. and Social Studies. I provide them with the dividers and the little tabs to write the subjects on. This is a good introduction to how well the class can follow directions as they write the titles and insert the tabs.

I usually give them an Accelerated Reading Log to keep in the front of their Language Arts section. They record the books they read and how they did on their tests on the computer.

You can grab the 2 page PDF file here so that you can print them double sided from here

I am giving each of the students a cardstock 8.5x11 sheet to decorate as a cover for this binder. You'll remember it was part of my QR Code postings.

I also made a little Prezi slideshow attached to the QR Code to help parents with the layout, Binder Covers


The final thing that I put into these binders is a gallon sized ziploc baggie that has been reinforced with duct tape and hole punched.

The students will keep homework papers, unfinished work, and works in progress in these packets. They could also slip in a book to read so that important materials won't get lost in between school and home. Now everything is in a neat package that fits inside their desks. They will also pick up some responsibility skills by making sure that this binder goes home every night and returns every morning.

I'm looking forward to this little bit of organization this year.

Mentor Monday - Rafflecopter

Not sure if you noticed but I added a new piece to my blog. Last Friday I posted a contest to win a free set of library tags for your classroom in a customized color choice. If you haven't entered yet, you still have until this Friday to sign up here: Library Tag Contest

I'm using Rafflecopter to set it all up. It's a free service that allows you to post contest entries to your blog posts. I think it's great because they offer you  many means to conducting your contest. When you sign in and start a new plan, you see this page:

You name your contest, provide details to your prize, and add some options as seen below

Love the 'Invent your Own Option' idea where you can ask your followers to link back to your TpT store, or have them link their blog back to your original post. I'm sure you can come up with some other things to add to this button as well.

If you are thinking of having a Giveaway on your blog I would definitely recommend you check out Rafflecopter!

Mentor Monday - Social Media Buttons

I've been on such a journey in just a short week. This time last week I had a BBB on my hands - that's mespeak for boring, blah blog. Through the help of some very creative people I brought that mess into the future and made something I like looking at each day.

This is a good thing, because I also have developed a format for my blogging that will keep me coming back more and more to share my world with you. Before I just posted things I thought you might want to hear. Which, if you look back far enough, you'll notice the thoughts were few and far between. With an established routine, I will blog more and be more consistent so you aren't waiting forever to hear from me.

Mentor Monday is just a rehash of what I've learned in the past week that is will make my TpT store better and how I can share it with you. The biggest lesson I've learned this week is that you have to promote, promote, promote to get your message out there. Especially if you are brand new to the blogosphere. You've got to literally SMEAR yourself everywhere to increase the amount of people that see your presence and will come in to visit your site. More people means more sales, more sales means more vacations!

In order to get yourself out there make sure you've got all the social media arenas covered. There's the biggies like Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and of course Tpt. Then you can add in some other personal favs like Instagram, youTube, and flikr. All of which you can direct them back to your humble blog. If they like you, they want to know more. Once you've set up accounts at all of these places come back to your blog and make sure that your visitors can find you at all of these places, so they can tell their friends all about you.

If you do a Google search on Social Media Buttons that you can add to your blog, you'll find a ton to download and most of them are free. There are so many styles of the same buttons you are sure to find a set that works perfectly with your blog esthetic. Here's a site that had a lot of different styles to choose from called Slodive.

Download the set you love to your hard drive.  Next you'll have to upload them all to a sharing forum such as Photobucket which will give you some HTML codes that you can post onto your blog. You'll need to add a gadget that includes all of these codes that link the image icon say of Facebook to your actual FB page.

Go to your blogger design section and click on "Layout" where you can click on the "Add a gadget" section and select the HTML choice that's about 2/3rds of the way down the selection window. In there you can add in the HTML code for each button. Here's the code for you to use:

I found this idea on the All About Kimberly blog.

So, count up how many different social media icons you have and cut and paste the above code that  many times into your new HTML gadget. Then go through each HTML code and put in the website link and the photobucket image code for each.

When you are done, your visitors have easy access to all the places that you hang out.  Now you can sit back and watch the traffic to your blog multiply. Believe me,  it works! Last week I had a view count of 0 for the past six months. Today, I have over 200 views in the past week. Whoo HOO!

Hopefully, this helps you on your path to greatness. If you have any questions feel free to contact me in the comment section or click on the little envelope icon at the top right of my blog to send me an email. If you like this and it does help you out, I'd love to hear that as well.

Until tomorrow!

Mentor Monday - FB Tabs

It's JULY already? My poor teacher heart is shrinking three sizes at this news. That means I only have 30 days left of summer vacation. Oh WOE is me! To take my mind off of this, I thought I would use my corner of the blogosphere as a way to let you in on all the things I've learned over the past week.

Now this column is probably going to take many weird turns as the weeks progress. Right now it's going to be a lot about how it's going with my TpT store. That's Teacher Pay Teachers, which you can find my stuff for sale here: TpT.

When school begins again (EEK) it will probably morph into a Common Core tornado, so just be prepared.

Today's lesson is going to be about how to add some really cool links onto your Facebook page, I think they are called tabs. They are the buttons that sit under your cover image next to 'Photos' and 'Likes'. Christi Fultz has an incredible blog full of great tips and advice for the teacher bloggers. In this particular post I read, she was discussing how to add these buttons through a free program called WooBox. You can read her tutorial here: Ms. Fultz's Wednesday Work your Blog. Her video is very helpful in figuring out how to get these links to list to all your important information such as your TpT store and your Pinterest boards. Make sure you check out the one about how to add a FanGate in case you are thinking of including some giveaways. Very interesting.



The only trouble I had with following her tutorial was I couldn't figure out how to add a tab. I spent a lot of time clicking on the little drop down arrow next to 'Likes' on my page and trying to decipher the cryptic choices FB gave you to add stuff there. It wasn't until after I watched Christi's two videos that I figured out I had to go to another site (WooBox) to design the tabs. After that, I put up three in no time flat. Oh, while you are designing make sure you notice the teeny tiny size of the tabs you are to create. 111x84 pixels, really? That is small.

Tune in next Monday to see what else I learned. Should be fun since the Fourth of July is fast approaching. I think I might go white water rafting. If I don't make it back next Monday, you'll know what happened.

G'night.