Writing Wednesday - FANBOYS

Howdy,

I managed to grab a copy of my work files to start filtering through as the last two weeks of summer winds down. Must be prepared before the kiddos arrive. One of the things in Writing I definitely want to start right away is introducing my class to COORDINATING CONJUNCTIONS. I admit, I had to go look this up last year so I understood what they were.

Coordinating Conjunctions are small words that coordinate two separate sentences into one whole. In this sentence below you can see the main clause, + Coordinating Conjunction, main clause.

"I hate to waste a single second of summer, for it is precious and fleeting."

FANBOYS is a mnemonic device to help your students remember the different words that act as coordinating conjunctions. Each of the letters stands for one of the seven words that act as coordinating conjunctions. Here, read it this way

F - for

A - and

N - nor

B - but

O - or

Y - yet

S - so

While sitting on the couch watching Monster House (see yesterday's post) I created this little poster to put up in my classroom.

Please excuse my drawing skills. You can grab it for free here: FANBOYS Poster

Complex and compound sentences are hard enough to understand, so simple things like this will make understanding a little easier for students.

Hope  you can use it!

Tried It Tuesday - Sharknado!

I have a confession to make. I am a GOOBER for bad horror movies. That's why the SyFy Channel is listed as one of my favorite fast buttons at home. My family has this tradition when we get together. Everyone picks a bad horror movie to share and who ever brings the WORST wins the title "King/Queen of the Flop", until the next time that is.

SyFy has such eclectic tastes in its programming that it is never lacking in suggestions for me to bring.

This past week was no exception. Have you heard about their latest installment to sit on the shelves next to Mega Piranha and Triassic Attack? It's called SHARKNADO. Uh-huh. It really is. The premise is that a freak storm in LA pulls literally millions of sharks closer to the city where a water spout lifts them up into the air to create all sorts of havoc.

Oh, it was glorious in its cheese factor. Hilarious moments included quotes such as "I think we gonna need a bigger chopper" and one shark landing right on top of the exact car containing our illustrious heroes. Which leads me to the next factoid. The main characters are a definite dredging of the D List. Ian Ziering (from the original 90210) and Tara Reid (who is a whole other sort of hot mess) as a typical arguing couple who are separated at the moment. 

I hope I don't give anything away, but you can imagine the impression Ms. Reid gets while watching her husband battle a rainstorm of sharks with a chainsaw. By the end the couple is working towards settling their differences. Divorce lawyers take note! Throw a bunch of sharks at your client to see what they are made of.

I am sitting here giggling over how bad this movie was. I'm staging a viewing of it at my house today at 2 P.M. to get ready to bring it to my sister's house in Maine when we travel up there tomorrow. Hopefully our plane will be skirting any waterspouts full of sharks.

Oh, and just wait until you see the ending. It was truly spectacular, right down to the last cut. Ian is my hero.

As if I haven't interested you enough already, here's the trailer for the show that is due to repeat this Thursday night. Set your DVR!

Be WARNED, this video has been deemed to violent for TV.

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!

Math Literature Linky

Amanda and Stacia at Collaboration Cuties are doing their math literature linky party, so I thought I would bring this post back today. Go see them to link up your favorite math book idea.

One of the books our Math Coach uses in her series of Math Literature was the Greedy Triangle by Marilyn Burns.

It's a tale of a Triangle that whiles its day away being half of a sandwich, or sailing on a boat, or eavesdropping on people's conversations as the shape their elbows make against their body. The triangle becomes jaded with this lifestyle and wants something more. After asking for several transformations, the triangle realizes that her/his life isn't all that bad.


After you read this book to your students, you can pass out the following sheet for them to fill out on their own. (It's available here The Greedy Triangle Write Up)

 The students get to choose one of the shapes the Triangle goes through and apply it to shapes that they've seen around them. Encourage them to think of some really unique uses for their shape, like the shape made by people bending their elbows! This lesson will get them thinking about how the author gave several creative ways that geometric shapes can be found in the world around us. Their unique minds will think outside the box and show you some insight into their personalities. Just be prepared.

I would love a comment on the download at TpT on how you might be using this little idea for your classroom. 

Friday Fun - Freebie Library Tags

I am currently working on a huge Library Tag pack to put in my TpT Store. I was making my own classroom set and thought how perfect to offer as a product. Here's a picture of what I'm doing.

And how I am using them in my classroom:

I bought some circular rings and name badge holders for this project. Saw it on Pinterest and love the idea. Last year I just printed out the tags and stuck them to construction paper, hole punched them and use zip ties. Yeah, they fell off. A lot. I tried using box tape, but that didn't stay put either. Hopefully this idea will save me all that headache.

For my set I changed the color slightly to fit my class and also added a gradient that made it look grunged up. 

The 3" by 2.25" tag set will come with rounded edges,  and AR levels from 1.0 up to 6.4 for the elementary teacher. I'm putting together a list of favorite authors and some general topics to add to the pack as well. The starburst pattern background can be changed to fit your color needs, so send me all your requests.

For today's fun part, if you leave me a comment telling me which color set would work best in  your room I will let Rafflecopter pick a winner. The contest will end next Friday and the winner will get this set for FREE in their very own color selected background!

Make sure you tell me all the specifics on your color choices. If you tell me green and yellow I'll have a hard time picking the proper tints. But if you tell me grassy green and yellow sun, that would make it  much easier on me.

Another way to win  TWO more entries will be to throw a link from your own blog back to this one and then leave me a comment where I can find you. Your name will be entered twice.

For a third way (isn't this fun?) you can go to my TpT Store and click the little 'Follow' button and your name will be entered twice more. Wow!

I'm so excited to see who wins!



a Rafflecopter giveaway

A Liebster Award - For me?

What a great way to wake up! Only to discover that someone you just met has nominated you for an award! A Liebster award at that.

Nick over at Sweet Rhyme & Pure Reason found the time amidst all his flooded basement and attack of the killer bee problems to nominate me and some others who are blogging with less than 200 followers. Yeah, that would be me.

The fun part is I get to to nominate some other blogs as well and answer a few questions to let the world know more about me.
Here goes:
Mrs. K over at  Sixth Grade Scoop
Amanda D over at Teacher at the Wheel
Foreman over at Foreman Teaches

Nick asked me the following questions -

Why do you blog?

 I love connecting to other teachers who understand what I'm going through. They totally get it when I say that the Common Core is driving me crazy.

What's your favorite linky?

Collaboration Cuties has a great Mentor Text one

What's your favorite grade to teach?

I think third has a special place in my heart 

How many schools have you taught in?
I substituted for awhile, so probably a ton. But actually hired teacher? That would be a total of 3. 

Who would you most like to meet?

 J.K. Rowling. I'd just like to pick her writerly brain and convince her to share some money with me.

What's your favorite teaching memory?

When my third grade teacher gave me a big hug before I had to leave for a scary operation.

What is our favorite hobby?

Scrapbooking. I love documenting photographs and events in unique ways. 

What is your favorite restaurant?

The Jules Verne at the top of the Tour d'Eiffel in Paris. I'm going to be talking about that meal for years!

What is your favorite movie? 

It's going to have to be a series. Harry Potter is my all time favorite. I'm such a huge fan of the books and the movies.

What piece of advice do you give out the most?

Stick with it, the rest will come. 

What's your favorite teaching tip/trick?

I do a lot with Classroom Meetings and run them like a town meeting with a  mayor and everything. The kids love getting to make decisions. 

Here are 11 Random facts about me - 

*I almost bought a beach house on Amelia Island in March. 

*I recently lost 40 pounds using TapoutXT.
*I celebrated my 20th anniversary with my partner.
*I'm planning on heading to Sydney, Australia for New Year's Eve.
*I just spent a ton of money getting my hair colored. (sad since my hair's so short, it'll be out in a month)
*I love bad horror movies like Sharknado (a tornado made of sharks!)
*Jessica Ivey is my inspiration.
*My sister lives on the Canadian border, and I am going to visit her next week.
*I live in a neighborhood where most of my students come from. Makes it interesting at the pool.
*I'm organizing a Scrapbook convention for October in Atlanta.
*I can fit into a 30" waist. Surprising since three months ago I was pushing out a 36".

  

Now some questions for my nominees -
Where would you like to be in five years?
What's your favorite guilty pleasure?
How many years have you been blogging?
Which color goes best with brown?
Do you play any musical instruments?
What grade do you like to teach the most?
If you could win a million dollars what would you buy for your classroom first?
Which book do you think teaches your students the most?
Which person is your inspiration?

 Thanks again Nick for this amazing honor. I truly appreicate it!

Thursday Tutorial - QR Codes

Hello again,
I found something I've been meaning to figure out for myself and now have some time to focus on it. There has been rumors at our school about the coming of TABLETS. This idea opens up a whole different can of worms as to the logistics of using them in a classroom. That journey is going to take a while to implement.

One thing that I've noticed tons of teachers who are already using tablets mention in their lessons is the use of QR CODES, or quick response codes. A QR code is  "a specific matrix bar code ( or two-dimensional code ), readable by dedicated QR bar code readers and camera phones. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background. The information encoded can be text, URL, or other data." Now, I've seen those weird looking squares all over the place and have no idea what they do. They're on the bus, at the movies, on the table tents in restaurants, and even on candy bars. I think it's time I figure out these little buggers.

Here's a picture of one:

This one has to do with Altrex range of aluminium access towers and access to a user manual. Umm, o-kay. 

So, how are they useful for students to use on an iPad?

I raced over to Google - again - and searched for how to use qr codes on worksheets. They had an amazing suggestions on the first site that popped up. Can you imagine sending kids home with a math worksheet that has a qr code the students can read on their parents smartphone that will lead them right to a video tutorial about the main points in the lesson. For real?

In order to create and use these on your worksheets, you are going to need a few things. You'll need a qr code, a qr reader program with an internet connection, and a site to send them to. Thankfully all of this is free. There's a site called QR Stuff where you go through three very easy steps (type of data, url info, and color choice) before you are presented with your very own downloadable qr code. 

You can download several different qr readers for either iPad or Android devices. I just downloaded one called QR Droid, such an inventive name! 

Here's the rub, you need to decide how to use your qr code. What information do you want to present and how do you want to deliver the information? Do you want your students to access a short youTube video that goes back over the pertinent info regarding simple subjects, or do you want a homework cheat sheet that students can read back over to remind them what you taught earlier. Once you've uploaded your instructional tool, copy the url and use it to create your very own qr code. 

Angie Sigmon over at iPads in School came up with an amazing interactive way for her Open House. She was able to get 30 iPads for her classroom and had one out on each student's desk. They went around on a scavenger hunt to find out information about their new teacher and things they will need for the year. This sounds so amazing. I wonder if I can use one Samsung Galaxy tablet in the same way. 

I'm going to have to play around with this a little longer and create a classroom hunt on my own. So stay tuned next week when I share my results!

Writing Wednesday - What Kind of Teacher

It is now exactly three weeks until school begins. Teachers will go back for preplanning on July 31st (yes, it says July) and students come into to 'Meet Your Teacher' Day on August 1. One of the things I am going to grab them with right away has to do with writing. As their parents are filling out paperwork or asking me questions about what to expect during the year, my new class will be adding to 2 wall charts entitled 'What makes a good teacher?' and 'What makes a good student?'

I got this idea from Pinterest and have it pinned to my board  here. The original idea was to ask 'What kind of teacher do you want?' I changed it up a bit to let them give a more rounded response than just a list of adjectives.

As school starts I pull this chart back out and see if we can organize the ideas into categories. From there I can go right into the idea of paragraphing. We can craft a main idea sentence and use their responses as the supporting details. By the end we have a writing piece that establishes expectations for me right away.

I love it!

Tried It Tuesday - Class Dojo

Howdy!
Welcome back for another edition of Tried It!

Holly over at Fourth Grade Flipper is also working off this same theme. Go check out her post as well.



 I'm starting to have 'Teacher Dreams' with only three weeks left before I say Sayonara to Summer. You know those dreams that put you into a classroom situation and then you have to figure out what to do? I'm talking those nailbiting situations like someone throws an eraser at you, or one of your little darlings talk back, or you forgot to pass out the report cards, or the principal shows up right as the science experiment blows up.

What? You've never had these? Hm, maybe I'm just weird.

Anyway, it's these 'walkthroughs' of what would you do that I start analyzing my classroom strategies and trying to figure out, well, what I would do. I'm constantly having to discuss the idea of talking and how it is NOT good during worktimes. I have gone through so much research on what to do with an overly chatty class, and they always offer the same stunted suggestions such as move clips, or give a child three cubes, or a behavior chart. I've tried everything! Nothing curbs those eager mouths that sometimes talk right over you no matter how close to their desk you stand.

One program I ran across that I thought would solve it all was a cute little site called Class Dojo. It works on the idea of a visual reminder for both positive and  negative behaviors. Each student is assigned a funny little monster icon. Look below:

 And you get to set the awards into categories of your own selecting, such as the list below. I'm sure you can guess what types of Negative choices there are.

The site allows you to make some custom settings for your room:

As the day progresses you have the class screen up for all to see. Then as someone  makes a great choice or needs to rethink their behaviors you can simply click over and reward or take away points. You'll need to discuss with your class beforehand what types of rewards will occur if they have so many minuses (maybe they lose 5 mins of recess for -2) and what happens when they have so many pluses (extra computer time, or call home with a good note) at the end of the day, or week as you move to wean them off this process.

Now, for my experience the first time it didn't work for me. Analyzing the hows and whys and whatfors during my 'Teacher Dreaming' I believe it was because I started this process way too late. It was something new but they never really bought into it. I want to start it right from the beginning of school and see how that affects their behaviors. Also, I don't like to keep my monitor on all day. I'm stingy and those lightbulbs in the machine are very expensive. I wouldn't want the school shelling out tons of dollars just to keep my kids quiet. I might be trying to have it on only during the major worktimes such as reading workshop or math class.

I will check back in with you in September after a month of school to let you know how it is coming. But until then I'd love to hear your responses to this program if you've tried it, or suggestions on how to make it work better in your room.

So, give it a try and let me know your thoughts.

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!

O-M-G! Huge TpT Giveaway Contest

If you aren't already aware of this huge (over 50+ items) Scavenger Hunt  happening over at I'm Loving Lit you definitely need to rush over there right away. You can choose from any of the following packages or all of them!

It was super easy to do. Choose the set you most want, click on it then go to each of the websites listed to collect the secret words to turn in on a form. Then a huge set of Freebies arrives magically in your inbox. I can't believe how much work Erin at Loving Lit put into this project. Makes my head explode.

But you will definitely benefit from it, so go take a look. You'll thank me.

BlogLoving Blog Hop

I'm awake at 6 A.M. and school's not even in session. So why not throw down another post, eh?

Since today was my first ever Linky Party (see the post below this one), what better way to celebrate than to join one myself. I am linking up with A Teacher Without a Class and her awesome LAMINATOR giveaway to let folks know that Google Reader as a blog reader is gone. I'm trying out Blogloving as a means of keeping all the blogs I'm following in one neat little place for me to go through.

It's free and fun as you scroll down all the recent posts from each of the blogs that you are following. You can even catch up with your blogs on your mobile phone, how cool? You can follow my blog once you've signed up on Blogloving by clicking  on the button on the right column of my blog.

Also, here's the code to enter your link if you decide to join in on the Linky Party fun.

Friday Fun - Math Literature Linky Party

You may use this title icon on your posts as well. Just right click on the picture and "Save Link As" to your own post so that it links back to this page.

Here's the fill-out form for your book to post on your blog:

As promised, here is my first Linky Party EVER!

For this section of Friday Fun, I am going to ask y'all to share your favorite Math Literature connections. Last year we had an amazing Math Coach at my school that loved tying math and literature together for students to further their knowledge of both topics.

One of the books she used in her series of Math Literature was the Greedy Triangle by Marilyn Burns.

Now for my write up:

After you read this book to your students, you can pass out the following sheet for them to fill out on their own. (It's available here The Greedy Triangle Write Up)

 The students get to choose one of the shapes the Triangle goes through and apply it to shapes that they've seen around them. Encourage them to think of some really unique uses for their shape, like the shape made by people bending their elbows! This lesson will get them thinking about how the author gave several creative ways that geometric shapes can be found in the world around us. Their unique minds will think outside the box and show you some insight into their personalities. Be prepared.

Go ahead and click on the link below to add your Math inspired literature ideas. Can't wait to see what everyone posts. Thanks for joining my party!

OH, if you want to add the links to the bottom of your post as well, there's a neat little "grab the code" button underneath the Add your Link button below. Just stick this HTML code at the bottom of your post and Voila!

An InLinkz Link-up

Thursday Tutorials - Linky Party

Happy Independence Day y'all!

I heard the history of this day put into perspective by my niece's FB status this morning:

"Okay guys, one more thing, this summer when you're being inundated with all this American bicentennial Fourth Of July brouhaha, don't forget what you're celebrating, and that's the fact that a bunch of slave-owning, aristocratic, white males didn't want to pay their taxes." ;)

 She's so cute.  Love that she used the word brouhaha, it's such a throwback to seventh grade English class with Ms. McGovern.

 Today I thought I'd focus on providing a little tutorial. This is going to focus strictly on technology and not specifically for use in your classroom. Once I got the idea settled I had to think what I wanted to share on this day of Independence. The problem I've been trying to solve in the past few days for myself was the mysterious phenomenon known as a "Linky Party." A ton of the blogs I've been visiting through the TpT community seem to have conquered this strange method of binding themselves together into a tight knit group. 

 Never wanting to be left out of the loop, I want to decipher the code that surrounds the Cool Group. As I struggle to get it working for my blog, you are coming along with me for the ride. Are you ready? Got a cool drink and a cookie? Let's go!

1. The first thing I always do when trying to create something is to head over to Google. So I typed in: How do I create a linky party. The first site it took me to was It's a Blog Party that claims to  know the secrets behind linkies in the post "Building your Blog: Host a Linky Party." We shall see. 

2. One of the things you definitely need in order to host a linky party is a 'button.' This is a little image that acts as a link back to your blog. You can see mine off to the right under the Grab My Button heading. You can add this to your Blogger site by adding the gadget HTML to your blog and sticking the code you see under my button into the gadget box. Just make sure that you change the information between the parenthesis over from my blog site to yours and then change the information between the second set of parenthesis from my image location to yours.

You'll have to load your image up to a separate  sharing site such as Photobucket and grab the direct code from that site in order to plug into the HTML code above. 

3. Next you'll need to build your own linky platform. There are two choices that I looked into Inlinkz and Linky Tools. Both are free to join, but if you want the real benefit from the program, you'll need to pay about $2 a month for the upgrade. YES! There's money involved. Just wanted you to be aware of this before we move forward. 

I think I'm going to go with Inlinkz. Their website just looks cleaner and they offer a discount of $20 for the year if you pay at once. Save yourself $4 for some Starbucks, right? Once you are all logged in and confirmed your subscriptions through your email (there will be two, one for newsletter and one for the site itself, make sure you confirm both or it won't let you log in) you'll have two choices: Go to Dashboard, or Project Manager. 

Your first Linky Party with thumbnail images is totally free. After that you are allowed text only Linky Parties. If you want thumbnails (much more fun for me) you'll need to change your subscription over to the paid service. Let's do that first. Click on "Account" at the top and click on the blue "Extend your Plan" button next to link-up tool subscription. You'll see payment options there. I chose the $19.99 for one year - save 18% option and paid it off. 

If anyone also wants to join this site, here is My Referral Number

4. Now you're ready to start your very own Linky Party, or "Collection" as Inlinkz calls them. Click on the "Create New Collections" button and give your Linky Party a name. 

5. Give it a duration of time that you'd like it to run:

6. Then set up the information for how you want the links to display:
(here I am going to go with the suggestions provided by It's a Blog Party
since they seem to know what they are doing).

7. Finally, you have the option to be emailed when someone links up. This way you can check for spammers and such to delete that mess right away. Also, if you are going to repeat this type of collection again in the future and want to save the settings, create a "Meme" name for it and it will show up under the "Add new based on" pull down at the beginning of your dashboard. Save yourself some time.

SUBMIT!

8. You'll get this gobbledy-gook HTML code that you can include in your post. When you're ready to start the Linky Party, create a new post and go through the motions of explaining it all to your loyal readers. Then when you are ready to include the Inlinkz information (usually at the end of your post) you can switch the post content "Compose" to "HTML". I see it sitting at the top left of the screen underneath the Blogger icon and my blog name. Once in HTML, just insert the Inlinkz HTML code you saved earlier at the end.

9. Preview your blog to see the actual link box happening to see if it all looks perfect.

10. Then you are ready to publish your first Linky Party.

I really hope this was helpful. If you have any questions, please feel free to leave me a comment or email me (that icon is at the top of the page in the far right corner, just click on the little envelope icon).

Stay tuned tomorrow when I release my first ever LINKY PARTY! Hope to see you there. 

 

 

 

 

Wednesday Writings - Mentor Text

TWO LINKY Parties for me in one day! 

I love writing. Words fascinate me, especially how several different people can take a handful of words and put them together is such different ways. Writing is a way to express your soul and connect with others through visual experiences. Writing opens up doors and gives people impressions of you before you even walk in. I love writing.

For this week, I thought I would try up a LINKY party with those Collaboration Cuties. They are compiling a list of great mentor text to use at the beginning of school. Check out their site for a terrific list of books to use when those fresh new faces wander into your room.

My book choice for the sheer fun of it is definitely:

I Wanna Iguana by Karen Orloff and David Catrow is a personal favorite. The letters written between an overeager son trying to convince his mother, and a mother having some serious doubts is wonderful. I think it's the illustrations that really grab me about this fun little nugget. They just so fun and goofy that the kids love looking at the book over and over.

I would use this text to get them started thinking about the Opinion Genre (Persuasive in another life). They have to express and opinion and back it up with proof, just like Alex in the story. He does do a little begging, which is a trap we don't want students falling into when writing this genre. Rather, backing up your ideas with evidence will convince your reader to agree with you. The students would write to me or another student in regards to something they feel strongly about. Then that person has to write back to give the author that sense of communication, just make sure to remind them to be positive with their responses.

If you like this one, you'll love the new edition to the series: I Wanna New Room. Check them out.

For my second Linky of the day (last week, I didn't even know what a Linky was, ha!) I am linking up with Ideas by Jivey for her ideas on setting up a workshop in your classroom. Since my topic today is Writing, I will stick with that.

One of the things I do before the kiddos arrive is to create a Steps to Good Writing board. This is an area in the classroom where the students come up and move a clothespin from each of the steps to show where they are in their writing. This way I can quickly see who is spending too much time in the Drafting stage. Now I've used tons of things for this in the past. I've had separate pieces of paper, plastic plates, one long wall chart, etc for the students to show where they are. None of these has worked perfectly for me. The chart gets ripped, or the clothespins don't stay on the plates and they fall behind my bookshelves (GRRR). If anyone has the perfect method for this, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE leave me a comment below!

The Steps I use are Planning, Drafting, Revising, Editing, Peer Editing, Final Draft, Publish. Each has a little reminder about what to do at each step. I am going to try and provide you with what I remember for each of the steps. Since I'm not at school right now, I don't have easy access to my files. So bear with me.

Planning: (15 min)
*Get your ideas down
*Jot down everything you know
*This is not the time for complete sentences

Drafting: (1-2 days)
*Choose one idea from your jots
*Jot everything you know just on this topic
*Choose one main character and two supporting
*Don't worry about spelling
*This is your Rough Draft
*Skip lines

Revising: (1 day) I usually attach a colored pencil to this step so they remember to use one for revising
*Make your verbs stronger
*Add sensory details
*Organize your thoughts
*Look for moments to EXPLODE (give more information to your reader)
*Take away extra ideas

Editing: (1 day) A different colored pencil is attached
*Check all spellings
*Watch your punctuation
*Have you capitalized correctly?
*Does your story make sense?

Peer Editing: (10 mins)
*Read your story outloud to a partner
*Partner is allowed 3 suggestions
*Make changes with colored pencil

Final Drafting: (1 day)
*BEST handwriting
*Don't skip lines
* INDENT

Publish: (1 day)
*Create a cover for your story
*Think about new ideas

Hopefully this helps you out as you get started in your Writer's Workshop!

Tried It Tuesday- Blog Makeover

WHEW!

I just spent five hours making my blog all pretty and inviting. It took me a while because I just switched my router over and it didn't help make it faster. Now it's slower. Grrr.

Thanks to Jessica Sprague and her Bloom Your Blog class I think I made it more open and inviting. I love the handwriting font. It just makes it look more personal. Jessica's classes are so great. She's got this way of making things that would boggle the mind so easy, even HTML!

For my Try This I would definitely tell you to go check out this self paced class if you want to give your blog some more flair. Don't worry. If  you have questions there are mentors available to help walk you through it.

Oh, what do you think of the new look? Post a comment or two, if you'd like. Thanks.

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. 

Have you seen my TpT?

It has just about blown up overnight!

Remember how I was telling you that Jessica Ivey had a great idea? Turns out it was much easier than I thought to repackage all of my old digital scrapbook kits into items to sell on my TpT Store. I was able to bang out SIX new items yesterday and they are all up at the store. If this keeps happening, I might need to have a sale soon.

Oh, it also kinda helped that I had to sit and watch the four gents from CoolRay troop through my house for nine hours while they replaced the entire air conditioning and heating units. Boy was it hot in here. We upgraded our system from an 8 SEER rating to a new fangled wifi 17 SEER rating. You should see the new thermostat we got. It talks to the internet and provides weather reports and can show us how much daily we are using for gas and electric. So cool.

Now if it would only do the dishes. But, I got a lot done and hopefully the trend will continue and you'll have tons to choose from the next time you visit me over at the TpT site.

Can't wait to hear from y'all about how you're using these products.

TpT New Upload

Okay, so while Jessica Ivey and I were cringing and covering our eyes watching World War Z, she came up with a plan.

She is doing some wonderful stuff on TpT and gave me the idea to go back through my old scrapbook kits to use for selling on this site.

*Lightbulb Goes Off*

As a way to get started on that, I came up with a little freebie for y'all to use. It's a little tutorial with screenshots and such to help you figure out how to put frames, papers, and clipart onto MSWord documents.

It's free, so go and download it today! My MSWord tut

Would you like a Free book?

In honor of my anniversary, I am giving you a present. If you go to this link and follow the directions on the contest post, you could win a free (FREE!) copy of my book.

You just have to like the post, or you can like it and share it. I would love that.


 Our Month in Paris Contest