Are You a Busy Educator?

Hi, Teaching Friends!

Seriously, is there any such thing as a teacher who's NOT busy? Hopefully, this post might help you out during what surely is one of the busiest times in the whole school year.

My blogging friend Marjan Glavac is the author of The Busy Educator blog. The current edition of The Busy Educator Newsletter is packed with 25 ideas for the end of the school year.

Take a look - you're sure to find something to keep your students motivated. After all, isn't keeping your students on-task and motivated the biggest energy drain of the last days of school? Oh, unless it's squeezing in time for the last minute testing. Or maybe completing umpteen stacks of forms that may never be looked at again by anyone. Oh, yeah, or packing up your entire classroom... ah, exhaustion! Vacation is coming!!

While you're there at The Busy Educator, consider signing up to receive Marjan's informative newsletter. He says, "My goal is to help teachers and parents make a difference in the lives of their students and children by doing things that work."  Love it!

Just a quick note on the Teachers Pay Teachers fundraiser for Oklahoma. I'm told that the package is not quite ready yet, but I'll post the link here as soon as it becomes available!
By the way, over at Teachers Notebook, the current value of the bundle (being offered for any donation of $20 or more) is over $2,200. $40,000 has already been raised for Moore through the sale of this huge resource! Go, teachers!!!!  Click on the logo in the right column for more info.


Happy Teaching!

For Moore, Oklahoma

Hello, Teaching Friends!

Our hearts have been broken by the horror and devastation that Moore, Oklahoma, has suffered. As relief efforts continue and more come forward to assist, there are some wonderful ways that you can help and also pay respect to the memory of the teacher/heroes of the day.

At Teachers Notebook, a bundle of resources valued at over $1800 (!!!) is yours when you make a donation of $20 to $100. The resources have been donated by Teachers Notebook teacher/authors, who are joining together to make a difference in this time of need. 100% of the profits from this bundle will go to local relief efforts, such as clean water, medicine, and food.

The Moore Relief Effort Bundle will be available from now through Tuesday evening, May 28th. Click here or on the logo in the right column to find out more about the bundle, and how you can help.

Come back tomorrow to find out about how the teachers of Teachers Pay Teachers are also working together to help Moore.

Free Writing Templates for Summer

Hi, Teaching Friends!

If you're working hard to keep your young writers actively engaged as the days of school slip away, this pack of 14 writing templates may be just what you need.  Each page has a small "story starter" illustration, with room for your students to add to it, along with primary lines for writing. Whether you use these pages for a directed writing exercise or simply print up a bunch for variety in your Writing Center, opportunities to write about seahorses and sand buckets (and more!) may be the motivation your students need!

Do you make a summer writing booklet to send home with each of your students on the last day? This set will make that task a simple print-and-staple!

If you're looking for more ways to keep your little learners writing right up to the very last day, check out these two resources at my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

The first includes four cubes, a story clock, and ten task cards for writing.

 

 

The second is a set of 14 picture prompts for writing, along with questions to support and guide your students as they write lists, letters, descriptions, and personal narratives.

 

 

 

 



Happy Teaching!

Wrapping Up Your Year with the Common Core - and a Gift!

Hi, Teaching Friends!

So, how has it gone for you this year with the Common Core? It is tough making big changes. I'll be the first to confess that even creating resources within the confines and definitions of  the standards has been a rough learning curve for me. But more and more I'm realizing that most of what the standards call for is the best of what we've been doing all along  - sometimes with a new name and a hard-to-locate number, but the same basic instruction. Like everything else in education (and in life), there are bound to be more changes over time, some for the good and hopefully not too many for the not-so-good.  But right now, these are our marching orders.

How have your students done with the standards? Do you see them making new connections in their learning now that the objectives are being stated more clearly? Do you think that the standards are effecting their level of achievement? Just wondering aloud... in print... :)

I just posted a new resource to help you end the school year with some Common Core literacy review, with which you'll hopefully also be able to do some informal observational assessment.

There are seven games and literacy center activities included, which address vowel patterns, digraphs, high frequency words, fiction/non-fiction, main idea, inference, capitalization, and punctuation - really the bulk of the ELA standards for first grade.

See it here at my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

As a thank you, I'd like to offer a gift to anyone who purchases this item today, May 19th. If you'll leave your TPT user name and email in a comment here, I'd be pleased to send you at no charge your choice of any item of equal or lesser price from my TPT collection.

Happy Teaching!

Hunting for Words Under the Sea

Hello, Teaching Friends!

Are you teaching about the ocean? What a tremendously fascinating subject for our little learners!
There's always something new to inspire their curiosity, from the size of the blue whale to the beauty of the sea anemone, to the whimsy of an animal with a name like "seahorse"!

Here's a little something to tie some extra literacy learning into your studies of the sea. These are "word searches plus".  The first one requires the students to complete sentences about ocean life and then locate the words they found, and the second is a "make it yourself" word search, to create and then exchange with a friend.



 

 

 

Here are two more ocean freebies, just in case you may have missed them...

School of Sharks Contraction Game

Odd or Even Fishy Addition Fact Sort


If you'd like more cross-curricular math and literacy center activities and games, I hope you'll take a look at Oceans of Fun, available at both Teachers Notebook and Teachers Pay Teachers.

      

 

 

 

 

Do you have any special projects that you'd like to recommend for ocean studies?

Skip Counting Freebie

Hello, Teaching Friends!

We spend a lot of time on skip counting in the primary grades. That's a good thing, because it's a fundamental skill for lots of other areas of math ...

-  Distinguishing odd and even numbers

-  Telling time: counting by 5s around the clock

-  Counting money: nickels by 5s, dimes by 10s, and ..uh-oh, quarters by 25s????

Could your little ones use a bit more practice in counting by 25s? Here's a simple chart to help discover some of the patterns involved in this kind of skip counting. Plus, they'll get to write some REALLY BIG numbers, and what firstie doesn't totally love that? :) I know mine did!

Many thanks to the commenter below for the correction - it's now fixed! Sorry for any inconvenience

this may have caused you!