Major SALE over at Educents!

School is right around the corner, and I'm starting to get excited!  A brand new year, a new class of kiddos, and tons of new supplemental curriculum to use that have been proven to work in classrooms!

 

Have you checked out the deals over at Educents?  Right now they are having a HUGE back-to-school blowout sale (through Saturday) and I am once again featured in the Tricky Math bundle!

Here's what's on sale:

Preschool Full-Year Curriculum Bundle - 72% OFF

Kindergarten Full-Year Curriculum Bundle - 75% OFF

K-2 The Write Stuff ELA Bundle - 68% OFF

First Grade Literacy Bundle - 74% OFF

School Year Curriculum Bundle (Grades 2-3) - 74% OFF

Poetry Curriculum & Activities Bundle (Grades 2-6) - 75% OFF

Tricky Math Curriculum Bundle (Grades 3-5) - 69% OFF

 

Complete Full-Year Curriculum Bundle (Grades 6-8) - 77% OFF

Management, Decor & Organization Bundle - 76% OFF

All the above links will go to the main page.  So many deals for a short time.  

See something you like?  Don't wait too long!!  

I'm Addicted to Reading

I love reading in my classroom.  I know I've talked about that before - I adore my Read Aloud time.  During this past year we read 12 books whole class, and I already bought a few more class sets for next year.  I am an official Scholastic Bonus Point/Dollar Book Addict!  In class I carve out time every day after lunch for us to settle down together and read for 15-20 minutes.  It's only enough time for a chapter or two, but enough to get the kids wanting more.  Many of them will continue on with the books during silent reading time.  

This past year I got smart.  I have always read every single page of every single book, but this year I found that website "Audible".  So many of our class read alouds were on there, read by the authors.  Having the authors read the characters the way that they imagined them to be, with different voices, etc... it was amazing!  I downloaded the books onto my iPod and then it was easy to plug into my speakers.  Many of the downloads were cheaper than getting a CD on Amazon.  During the chapters, I was able to sit back, relax, and enjoy the books with my students.  It felt really good to sit for a change...

 I am teaming up with Educents again with some instant downloads for you! It includes activities for so many of your favorite stories you will be reading this next year (and even a few downloads you can use with any book)! 

My products included will surely be loved by your students!  Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing and The Chocolate Touch are both books that I read with my kiddos.  Last summer I wanted to create critical thinking questions for my kiddos, so I made up 48 Activity Cards using Marzano's Dimensions of Thinking prompts for each book.  When we were reading the books, I put the cards into our ELA Workshop/Daily 5 rotation, and the kids responded to them in their journals.  

      

There is also a chapter summary grid included in both of them (just like my Read Aloud Mini Packs), that the kids responded on.  I LOVED those chapter summary sentence grids this past year.  It was a easy graphic organizer that kept the kids responsible and paying attention to what we read together.  I already have them copied for all my read alouds for this coming year!  

This bundle contains other great stories too!  

       

For a limited time it is $19.99 from Educents which is about 78% off!  

18 instant downloads with over 700 pages of materials perfect to accompany your reading list!

You can also take peek at some of the other products included in the bundle at any of the links below!

An InLinkz Link-up

Have a Great Day!  

Poetry, Oh Poetry!

My class has been focusing on descriptions A LOT lately!  We are living, breathing examples, descriptions, and tons of adjectives.  I wanted to do something FUN and create something that can go toward the big pile of Open House stuff (at this point it really is a HUGE pile of stuff - different post).  

This was one of those items I picked up in the Educents Poetry Bundle.  

Pinkadots Elementary had a complete Poetry Journal Pack included in the bundle.  Pages and pages of different poetry templates, I chose 4 of them, they did it one per day this past week.

Today was the put-it-together day.  I passed out a file folder and then we had a passing out paper party with all the different templates.  They glued in the Bio Poem, I am Poem, Acrostic Poem, and Color Poem.  Those were the four I chose to stick inside the folder.  I have more options for later on this year, but those I will be completing full page (instead of 1/2).

Yep, when I prepped the material I copied them 2 per page.  Shrinking them worked beautifully!  Still plenty of room for the kiddos to write.

Now in the middle of the kids gluing up and finishing their folders, we had our District Instructional Tours stop by to visit.  The Head of Curriculum, Assistant Superintendent, and another principal walked through the door and were admiring all my kiddos hard work!  Great activity.  :)   

Seriously, if you teach Poetry and Figurative Language I HIGHLY recommend this pack!  LOVE the activities.  

Hope you had a great day!  

Figurative Language Partner Review {Using Task Cards}

Today my kids did another activity with Figurative Language.  I used the task cards from Pinkadots Elementary and got my kids into groups.  Each pair of kids got a sheet of task cards (just printed on copy paper) and they had to solve those 4 questions.  We went over the meanings of the different types of figurative language one more time and then they were off.  

The directions I gave them were to not only figure out if the answer was A, B, or C - they also needed to underline the part of the sentence that proved that specific figurative language.  Some of them were tricky (and higher level thinking) because it could have been one or another!    

  Afterward they put their names on their papers, I collected, and then we used the document camera to review full class.  I love being able to just print and go - sometimes kids really do need to write on the materials.      

   

This product is a part of the Educents Poetry Bundle.  11 downloads for only $10.99 - It was a great deal (even though I already owned some of the products).  Saved me money picking up the remaining ones!  

Now you might be wondering why I picked up this bundle since I also have figurative language task cards in my store - also multiple choice.  I tend to use mine at the end of our unit as an assessment tool.  It's always nice having different resources that I can use pre, during, and post.  :)    

Hope you had a great day!  Linking this up with Jivey!  I know her linky is talking about poetry, but figurative language goes hand in hand with it.  We have to teach how to make the words come alive.  It totally makes sense to me with the connection!  

5 for Friday!! Exciting News!!

Time to link up with Doodlebugs!  I am SO GLAD IT'S FRIDAY!  TGIF x100!!!

Did you see the newest Educents bundle?  It started last night and is all about Poetry.  Looking at it I was so happy to see many things I already have for my own classroom.  It's such a great deal at $10.99 (70% off) though, that I'll be buying it to get the other items too. 

    

The other day I used Ideas by Jivey's Idioms set in my classroom.  The kids have added idioms to our binders all year long (the posters are wonderful), and since it's close to progress reports I wanted to do a check in on the concept.  I used her matching sheets as a mini quiz to monitor progress.  The kids did great!  As they finished they grabbed an index card and made their own card that we added to our bulletin board.  Click any of the images above to head over to check out the bundle!

On Tuesday I shared about my Shopping Spree Pack.  Well winners have been chosen via Random Number App - turns out Crystal was a lucky winner's name!  For everyone else that was interested, I put the pack up on sale (saving $1.25) through the weekend.  

Fun moment this past Monday... The kids decorated hats for the leprechauns on Friday.  They colored a Styrofoam cup and then magic happened over the weekend.  (Shh, don't tell but the magic was me taking them home, sticking them in a 250/275 degree oven for a couple of minutes to make them shrink.)  My big kids' eyes were huge when they came in and saw them on Monday morning.
  

This week was also a BIG HUGE cookie kind of week.  I grabbed a tube of cookie dough and decided to make them at home.  It was a jumbo roll that I cut into 12 pieces.  6 made it onto the cookie sheet and I squished them with my palm before baking.  They were delicious warm with a scoop of ice cream on top.

Random photo op!  We had to get a new tire this past week - somehow the school parking lot caused a flat tire, so these buds came with me to wait.  Love my boys!!

Hope you had a great day!