Back to School with TpT 2016

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What a great way to start off a new school year winning stuff.

TeachersPayTeachers is having their annual Back to School Sale by providing you with 28% off of stuff on their site.

Make sure that you check out my store while you're browsing around for some great stuff to get started this year.

On top of all the goodness that TpT is providing, I'm throwing in my own. There's a $10 gift certificate to the site as well as a chance to win your favorite product from my store!

There are several ways to enter below. Make sure to check them all out.

I will be announcing the winner on Tuesday morning and sending out the winnings then as well. So start stocking up your TpT Shopping Cart with everything you'll need for the 2016 school year!

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/97c4602/" rel="nofollow">a Rafflecopter giveaway

Back to School 2015 Giveaway

Yep, it's that time again. Teachers go back tomorrow morning!! I can't believe how easy this summer slipped from my fingers. Even after 24 years in the teaching business I still get this anxious feeling in the pit of my stomach when the Great School Machinery begins to turn.

Not sure if you know yet, but Back To School means a huge sale at TeachersPayTeachers. They do this every year to help you get ready for your new kiddos. If you use the code (BTS2015) you will be able to score a whopping 28% off.

I did manage to find time to work on three new TpT products that I am really excited about. The first thing I completed was a total Brain Gem. You know how something just comes to you out of the blue? I love those ideas.

I was thinking of how to get my students more interested in one of our last Social Studies units of the year. We look at Westward Expansion, which I think is pretty cool. The kids are usually in their summer mind mode by now and aren't soaking up any new information. I was tossing around some ideas and suddenly it hit me, "Why not write a Choose Your Own Adventure story?" Do you remember those? I loved them as a kid and could sit for hours flipping back and forth trying new adventures. That's how the Westward Ho! Packet came to be. It has some fun stuff in the full packet. There's a couple of task card sets on Main Idea and Cause and Effect. There's also a ppt presentation to use as a daily writing activity as you study the Oregon Trail.

 

 

My next project was something I've been meaning to put together but never had the time. A Grammar Interactive Notebook would be a perfect addition to my class.  I sat down one day and started on it. As I kept working on it, I kept finding more information that was needed in this packet. I had the Common Core standards handy and kept finding new pages that were needed to cover a 3-5 Grammar unit. By the time I got done with this I couldn't believe how many pages were in it. Coming in at Ninety-Two, it is by far my largest single project to date. Check out Interactive Grammar Notebook 3-5

 



Last, but not least I managed to complete a full year of Mentor Sentence lessons. That's a total of 40 Grammar lessons. If you aren't familiar with Mentor Sentences, check out my post from earlier. A customer had contacted me and asked when I'd be done with a full year of lessons. Since I only had two of the 10 week lessons up, I had no answer for her. So I got to work and found some great Mentor Texts to use for the second half of the year.  Full Year of Mentor Sentences

If you've managed to get this far into my blog post, you are in for a treat.

Tomorrow is the beginning of the annual TpT sale that lasts for only two days. What are you to do after that if you've missed some of your favorite products? Well, I've put together a little Rafflecopter Giveaway to help you out with that. It ends Saturday night (Aug. 8) at 11:59 P.M.
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Hope it helps make your week just a little easier.

Leave me a blog post below and let me know what you were able to work on this summer.

Wagons Ho! Oregon Trail

I'm so excited to have finished this newest TpT product. I had a ton of fun creating it because it brought me back to my childhood curled up on the couch with a good book. I used to love reading those Choose Your Own Adventure stories. I could spend hours flipping back and forth between the pages. If I made the wrong choice I could just go back to the last page and try again. Such fun getting lost in the stories where I was boss.

When I was trying to figure out how to approach my next product I thought it would be a perfect vehicle for such a try out. Why not combine history with a little interaction?

I found this site where it would help you format your Choose Your Own idea. inklestudios was easy to use but I definitely suggest walking through the tutorial first. That was a big help in figuring out how it all works. Once you are done you can have your book formatted for use with tablets and such and it was only $10.

I had to find some other stuff to go with this idea, so I put together some task cards and a daily writing project that followed the Choose Your Own story. There are Main Idea question cards and Cause and Effect cards that take situations from the story and ask you to answer questions about them.

The daily writing  project also takes events from the story. There are twelve stops along the way out west. You would provide each student with a little journal (paper folded and stapled) to use throughout the project. You share one slide on the powerpoint each day. There is a prompt for students to respond to. I've provided a rubric to go along with it. You can print out a copy for the students so they know how this project will be graded if you like.

So, if you have to teach Westward Expansion at all, may I proudly present

Wagons Ho! Complete Pack

Place Value Stations and a TpT Second Chance Sale

How sad were you to see the annual TpT Back to School Sale come and go? That meant that school was starting and life was about to descend again. If you're like me summer came and went way too quickly. I was mired in a home remodel that took up way too much of  my time. I really wanted to spend some idle time creating some killer stuff for my TpT store.

Yeah, that didn't happen. It was too frenetic so I didn't get much anything done. But the workers are gone and the house has been officially released back into our hands. With that pressure being released my mind could get back into the groove of things and start creating again.

It felt so great coming up with ideas for my Place Value Stations pack. One of the areas I struggled with our new Math Workshop model last year was not having fun and engaging activities to help my students extend their knowledge. I wanted this kit to be something I would really use.

I created six Math games that deal with Place Value - reading, comparing, and rounding larger numbers. This is usually our first skill of the year and I wanted to crank it out to test run them in my own room. I have a broad spectrum of abilities in my room so I definitely needed to differentiate these stations. Each of the 6 games has three different versions, so essentially there are 18 games in all.

And I have them all done! Whoo HOO.

I am thankful that I have a test group to run these games through. They found that ONE mistake that I know y'all appreciate me fixing before sending your way. They had a lot of fun running around the room to play the Round Up Them Doggies. I posted ten posters around the room that have a rounded number at the top and a question at the bottom. Students are given an answer sheet and their small group was given a card to start with. They were to solve the problem on each card, record it on their sheet and then find the card in the room that has there answer on it. Then solve the next question and so forth until they had answered all ten cards.

The next station is called Around the Corral. Students play against one other person. They roll dice and each move that number of spaces around their game board. Both compare their numbers written in standard, word, or expanded. Whoever has the larger number gets to pick up a counter. The person with the  most counters at the end wins the game.

My group is having difficulty reading numbers that are larger than thousands place. They really do have the basics for reading numbers and I know they will easily pick up larger values. These games hopefully will give them added practice in a fun engaging way.

I'll be posting how they respond to the other four games, so be on the lookout.

For now the games are already up at TpT and you can get them here:

Place Value Stations


OooOoOOh, but hey, if you wait until Wednesday, August 20th, TpT is having a Second Chance Back to School Sale for ONE MORE DAY!!

You can grab this pack for 20% less, or not and I can finally afford those extra Oreos for my class and our Moon Unit.

Leave  me some comments below to let me know how you plan on using this pack.

Friday Fun - Last Summer Weekend Sale and Giveaways!

OoooOoooOhhh, it's here. The last Friday of Summer vacation. I saw this coming a long time ago, but was hoping it would get lost.

It didn't.

School begins for teachers next Wednesday. Even though we won't get paid for it, most of the staff will probably be in their rooms sometime on Monday and Tuesday as well. I know I will. I've got to put my huge beginning of the year pile together to send to the printer. Can't wait!

Since it's the last weekend right before my 23 year of teaching, I thought what other time than now to have my first sale in my TpT Store. So, rush right over there and grab all the things off of your wish list because the 20% Sale (they wouldn't let me type in 23) will end on Sunday, July 28th at midnight!!

 Now for an even better idea. How about winning some of those things on your wish list for FREE?

I've put together a little Giveaway to make up for the last 3% I couldn't tag onto my sale. This means there will be three prizes given away next Friday. Go ahead and enter as many times as you can below. Can't wait to see who the lucky winners are going to be for:

a Rafflecopter giveaway


The Winners are:

 

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

Math Exemplars - Gotta Love Them

I have a kinda Love-Hate relationship with math word problems. I see the basic need for the students to be able to attack these kinds of questions with skill. But teaching them to pull a four sentence prompt apart is harder than it sounds.

Exemplars is just a fancy term used to cover math word problems that require the kids to do a lot of thinking to find the answer. They combine reading skills, analysis, computation, reasoning, vocabulary, and writing skills to complete. They are a complete educational package in one! I've been using them twice a week in my classroom as part of our Calendar time.

I print out a word problem that uses their names to increase the participation. The students glue them into their math journals and then use a variety of techniques to complete them for the morning activity. I teach them simple strategies first, such as the CUBES method I found on Pinterest this summer. The kids just Circle important numbers, Underline questions, Box math vocabulary, Explain their thinking, and then Solve the problem.

Getting them to do this every time is a chore reminiscent of pulling teeth. But if you keep after them they will start internalizing the process. After the first quarter of school, I boost it up to the next level. G E P P S. This is more labor intensive but you get a really good insight into how they are thinking and if they can explain their process in a coherent manner. I've uploaded an explanation of this model over at TpT.

You can check it out here: GEPPS MODEL

I also put together my first set of 20 exemplars that start the school year off in one package that includes an Answer Key here: Set 01

I do believe the effort and time is worth putting in with these word problems. It really helps the kids focus on what the questions are asking and not to get tripped up in too much verbage. The BIG TEST is always chock full of these and this is a great way to help prepare them for that day. Have fun!

Planetary Project - Text Features

I was wracking my brain trying to figure out a project to do with the kids for our Science unit on Planets. I didn't want to be stuck doing the same old model of the solar system and have to grade tons of painted styrofoam balls this year. Flipping through our pacing guide for the second nine weeks, I spy my salvation. Text features!

I know, it doesn't sound like such an inspiring topic. But I began to think of how to make it work for me. Why couldn't I have the students create a research project on the planets that makes use of all the text features I have to teach? Kind of like a first hand experience, eh?

So I came up with this little seven page project that you can print out for the kids. You can pick it up for yourself, right over here: Planetary Project

 

Let me know how it works out for you!

Planet Postcard - FREE resource

I am so excited to start teaching our unit on Planets tomorrow. One of the first things I plan to do is share the story from Loreen Leedy, Postcards from Pluto. It's a tale of six children that venture out into the solar system and send their parents postcards from their stops. I plan to have my students make their own postcards to hang out on our bulletin board. The front has a spot for them to illustrate their choice of planets. The back has a traditional postcard format for them to write home with some amazing information they've learned on their journey. What's great about this is I am giving y'all the postcard for FREE! Send me a comment and let me know how you plan to use it. Teacher's are always the best at sharing, aren't they?

Planet Postcard

New Venture - TpT

If you haven't already been redirected to the site, TeachersPayTeachers, while browsing educational ideas over at Pinterest, then you are missing out! There are so many incredible resources available for the classroom and some of them are even free! Well, I have decided to throw my hat in this particular ring and give y'all a way to access my AWESOME brain. Actually, bragging aside, it's a way to acquire some really cool ideas and have someone else do all the hard work. So, if you are interested head on over to my 'store' at TpT and pick up some cool resources. Thanks! ScrappyGuy at TpT