Holiday Freebies

Every year my favorite teacher authors and clip art artists give away great freebies. For the past few years I have wanted to join in on the gift giving and offer a holiday freebie of my own, but like most people life gets extra crazy once Thanksgiving hits. This year I have actually been getting a head start on some holiday goodies, and I created a fun little math activity just in time.

And......I'm super excited and honored to share that I have been included as one of the 50 teacher authors to have a page in the 2014 Winter Holiday Tips and Freebies: Grades 3-5 Edition e-book.

You have to go check it out, there are so many amazing holiday tips and resources that I'm sure you'll find many that will really make this time of year more fun and engaging for your students as well as help reduce some of the stress that comes with this time of year. Rachel Lynette of Minds in Bloom is a TpT ROCKSTAR and puts together this generous holiday gift. She is amazing!

My holiday tip and freebie link are on page 45! Go grab your FREE copy now! Or you can check out my holiday freebie first, but don't forget to download your holiday e-book.

As a kid I loved doing MadLibs. My friends and I would come up with the silliest stories, and I'm sure this is how I learned parts of speech. This was my inspiration for the Holiday Mad Math Stories. I thought this would be a fun way to make math problem solving more fun too! I created two stories which students fill-in-the-blanks to personalize, all while they practice adding and subtracting decimals. These two stories can be customized to any gift-giving holiday, so you can include students from a variety of backgrounds.

I hope the tips and freebies help make the holidays cheerier for you and your students!

Matter Poster

We are just returning from a lovely two-week fall break. Teachers returned to work for a couple of days and students return tomorrow. It's great to have these two days to ease back into work and school. I had great intentions of blogging over break, but I was too busy being lazy. Actually, I was quite busy, but that's no excuse.

Before we finished the quarter we had been studying matter. We made bag bombs, elephant toothpaste, and tested mystery powders. As a culminating activity, and instead of a traditional pencil and paper test, I had the students create a Matter Poster. I just provided them with a basic set of directions and let them be creative. I had some interest when I posted this on Instagram and so I decided to make this a freebie! I LOVE freebies!

The class did a phenomenal job on their posters and they are still hanging in our room. They are all unique, yet still convey the learning that took place. I hope you find this useful with your own students. 

Cheers!

Vocabulary Cootie Catcher

My new {awesome} teammate showed me a simple yet wonderful idea today - make cootie catchers (aka fortune tellers) for vocabulary. Now, I know that these fun and sometimes pesky little paper creations can be overdone and can sometimes get out of hand, but I honestly haven't made one of these since I taught 3rd grade (over eight years ago!). I couldn't get this super idea out of my head, and since I came home to some nice news, I figured this was just the thing.

The news isn't anything big, but for me it kind of is. Today I reached a small, but personal, TpT milestone. I'm nowhere near being a top seller (and I'm totally cool with that!), but the few bucks I've made has certainly far exceeded my expectations from when I started. I'm blown away and amazed by everything TpT and I absolutely love creating and sharing my ideas. Plus, I've grown and become better at what I do both as a teacher and teacher author. I've also found some GREAT teacher authors who have been so kind to share their creations and I love being able to by quality goodies from them. To celebrate and thank my awesome followers I was going to make one of my paid items a freebie for a short time, but since my co-worker showed me this cootie catcher a few hours ago i figured this would make a perfect (and permanent) freebie.

Clicky-click! Get your cootie catcher and go crazy with vocabulary fun!

Confined to the sofa

In my last post I promised more classroom photos, but we've been so busy learning I've been forgetting to take photos, and then, I did something to my knee. It started feeling stiff on Monday, so I figured some yoga would help stretch things out. The next day it felt a bit worse so I went to work anyway, bought a brace after school and iced it. On Wednesday it was even worse so I knew that I needed to get off of it. I went to the chiropractor on Thursday and he said no work for a few days. So I've been confined to the sofa, either in pain or uncomfortable, and having a hard time sleeping. The chiropractor worked on it a bit more on Friday, but I'm still here on the sofa, kinda miserable.

Lesson plans took about 4 hours, but I had a fabulous sub on Thursday and Friday. Today I ventured out to a coffee shop to meet my pal Laura from Daisy's Book Bag to work on some TpT stuff and get some crutches from her. Thanks Laura for the company and crutches! 

While I have been confined to my little nest I've been working on a few things...one new product and spiffying up some of the first things I posted on TpT. They are great products, but my covers weren't the most attractive. When I first started I was hesitant about purchasing clip art and graphics because I was new to the whole thing and wasn't sure what I was getting into. Now I'm kinda going crazy with the digital papers and cute graphics! 

First my new product! Last week I was copying my Biography of a Scientist mini-research project and one of the 3rd grade teachers was checking it out. She said she wanted one for explorers, and I thought, hey, we do explorers in 5th too! I should totally do this! So here is the Biography of an Explorer. Aren't the graphics sweet! 

It was makeover Saturday for a few of my other products! They are so shiny and new now!

       

Next week shall prove interesting. On Wednesday the entire 5th grade is off to JA BizTown and I am so glad that we finished all of the prep work before I had to be out. Hopefully I won't miss out on the simulation on Wednesday!

Facebook Fan Only Freebies

I have just added a Fan Freebie section to my Facebook page! After about an hour of fiddling with the Static HTML app I think I've managed to get it set up and added my first freebie!

Last year I created a classbook bulletin board in my classroom. Some of you were interested in purchasing this for your own classroom and I finally put together the files.

If you'd like to purchase it, I just added it to the store. But...if you'd like it for free just head over to the Upper Grades are Awesome Facebook page, click the "like" button, and you'll be see the Fan Freebie link which will take you to the free download! It seems fitting that my first Facebook Fan Freebie is for the Classbook bulletin board!

Please let me know if you have trouble downloading the file from Facebook, but when I tested it out it went smoothly! Enjoy, and thanks for being a fabulous follower!

100 Acts of Kindness

Ahhh, summer vacation is here . . . and now I have time to work (what's wrong with me?!)! I have so many blog and TpT items on my to-do list for summer. Some are a bit ambitious, and I'm sure I won't accomplish everything on our short 6 week break (we're on a modified year-round schedule), plus I'm going to be out of the country for two weeks! But today I got together with my friend Dana from Learning Required to initiate her into TpT (go follow her brand new store)!

While she was working on her first freebie I went ahead and updated my very first freebie. It is perfect timing because I was planning on posting about it anyhow.

With the last few weeks of school approaching my class seemed to becoming a bit meaner to each other (surprising because I had a very sweet class!). It was time to put operation 100 Acts of Kindness into action. It is such a quick, easy, and low maintenance way to get students thinking about being kinder to each other and recognizing their peers for their kindness.

In the past I have done this as a whole month challenge, but I obviously didn't have a month, it was our last full week of school. I cleared a bulletin board and stapled up a folder to hold the tickets then copied a bunch on brightly colored papers, cut them apart and placed them in the folder. A quick explanation and model of how to fill out a ticket and my 5th graders were all ready to go!

The students were excellent about filling the tickets out at appropriate times of the school day and they would quietly leave the left side of the ticket on my desk and give the right side to the classmate who was caught in an act of kindness. A few times during the day I would staple up the kindness tickets and seeing them go up on the wall prompted students to be more alert and active in giving them out.

Here is what our bulletin board looked like a few days later.

I updated the TpT FREEBIE to look prettier (but the tickets are the same). This is one of those easy-peasy activities to remind students of the importance of kindness and recognizing and thanking others, even if it was just for lending a pencil or picking up a piece of trash.

If you have used, or plan to use, the kindness tickets with your students I'd love to hear your ideas!

Wonderopolis Trifold

I'm sitting at the computer, working on my end-of-year slideshow (which is already very long and a fraction of the way complete), and falling asleep. So, why not head over to blogger and write a post, I tell myself...makes sense!

I had been meaning to write this post for a couple of weeks. It's not like I've been busy with piles of grading, lesson planning, and year end tasks! This will really be a short post as the photos will be explanation enough.

All year long I have been following Wonderopolis on my news feeder. {Quick aside...I was a loyal Google Reader user until they announced that they will be ending the service this July. I tried out Feedly and I LOVE LOVE it!} I knew that I wanted to use Wonderopolis in my classroom, but didn't get around to creating something until this quarter. Last month I took a district PD course on CCSS ELA - specifically close reading. In this class we had to analyze text for complexity. While I am still not  totally comfortable gauging exemplar text, I have a better understanding of it. The Wonderopolis posts that I have read are clearly complex text! Perfect!

I started by making a one page sheet with a Frayer Model graphic organizer and tried it out. Insert "wah-wah-wah" deflated sound here. It wasn't anything special. Then I started fiddling around with placement and inspiration hit! Why not a trifold brochure type page?! It's perfect for students to fold and be able to fit in that limited table space next to the computer keyboard. Plus they can focus on each task and not be distracted by the other tasks in the trifold.

We used Wonder of the Day #935 (Who Wrote the Pledge of Allegiance?) for our first go. Here is a shot from a few different students' work. You can get an idea of what they did for each of the 6 tasks.

 

 Great question! Also - hilarious spelling of astronaut! ;)

 Obviously students would get better at using the trifold every time, but I was pretty impressed with their first try. We are still working on our second one, question #873, What is a Solar Storm? There are so many wonders on a variety of topics, they are almost at question #1000! I WONDER what that one will be?

Did I mention that my trifold is free? Totally FREE? Well it is! Go get it! 

Science Performance Assessment

Performance assessments are the ideal way to assess students. Unfortunately it isn't always practical. I know I don't do nearly enough performance assessments, but science is the perfect for this!

I think I've already mentioned before that this quarter is my favorite because we get to learn about the American Revolution in social studies and Space in science. Last week I demonstrated the Earth's rotation, revolution, axis, and explained day/night and the year. We also went over the moon's revolution around the Earth (we'll get into the phases more soon).

Today we reviewed and each group got a beach ball and ping pong ball to practice with.  These photos are intentionally blurry because they are ACTION shots!

This student was demonstrating the rotation of the Earth on it's axis. 

This student is acting as the sun with the Earth revolving around him!

Tomorrow I'll be pulling each student aside to assess them as they demonstrate each of the concepts we practiced. My rubric is pretty basic. I may spiffy it up for TpT, but regardless it'll be a freebie. So, if you want it now, here is the Google Drive linky. 

Do you use performance assessments in your classroom? Please share, I need more ideas! 

FREEBIE! Wonderopolis Trifold Activity Sheet!

Followers are Fabulous FREEBIE! I wanted to thank all the followers I have on TeachersPayTeachers, Blogger, Facebook, and Pinterest! You all rock and I wanted to include a freebie that I hope most of you will be able to use!

Have you heard of the site Wonderopolis? I LOVE it, and so do my students. There are currently over 900 "Wonder of the Day" articles posted, and more added everyday. They cover a variety of subjects and are interesting and engaging for students. To help guide students along, and hold them accountable, I've created a Wonderopolis Trifold Activity Sheet.

Just print this FREEBIE back to front, have students fold on the dotted lines, and then they can go to wonderopolis.org and get started! You can give students the freedom to choose their own "Wonder of the Day" but I prefer to narrow it down by having them choose a specific subject or by assigning a specific wonder that relates to what we are currently learning.

All students need to do is follow the numbers on the trifold to complete pre-reading, vocabulary, and post-reading activities.

Follow the links to download the Wonderopolis Trifold Activity Sheet!

One of the favorite "wonders" in my class has been #435, Do Potatoes See With Their Eyes?  At the bottom of the wonderopolis page there are links to their long list of categories, this quarter I will be pulling from the Space category to enhance our science unit. I'd love to hear which "wonders" your students like best! 

Smart Smarties Fraction Fun

Back in September I posted about a quick Smarties activity I used with my intervention math kids. I was still getting a feel for where they were, and we were jumping into fractions, so I figured why not start with something extra fun. Using Smarties for fractions was not my original idea, I just used the concept and tweaked it to include ordering and comparing the fractions as well. The kiddos enjoyed it, and I felt that it helped them master the concept. I didn't even think to post it to TpT since it was pretty basic, but I had someone interested so I figured why not share it with others. So, here it is, FREE!

Back to School Sale and new Freebie

We've been back in school for 3 weeks now and I am a bit jealous of those teachers that are enjoying their last bit of summer vacation. But I'm also happy that we've started! I'm enjoying my new grade level, my new classroom, my new team, and my sweet 5th graders (I didn't know 5th graders still give hugs!).

This week was pretty rough. Last Friday I flew to Seattle for my grandmother's memorial. My sister, nephew, and I were so lucky to get to spend time with her as she passed away a week after our visit. It was a beautiful memorial and it was great to have technology so that my sister and cousin who couldn't make it could say a prayer through Google+ Hangout, and my cousin also streamed the event on YouTube for other family members to view. I was out of school Monday and we all know how much work it is to plan for a sub, and then recover after a sub. The rest of the week I was at school late and then I started to feel allergy symptoms. Yesterday afternoon it hit me that it wasn't allergies, it was a cold! So, I'm feeling pretty achy with fever and chills, and hoping that I don't have to call in sick again next Monday.

Regardless I wanted to participate in the huge sale at TpT this weekend. EVERYTHING in my store is 20% off August 12-13. On top of that TpT is offering an additional discount of 10% when you use code:  BTS12

This is a great time to take advantage of all the wonderful resources created by teachers as many are participating in the sale. I know I'm excited to purchase some of the things in my wishlist!

I've also added a new freebie! I am on (the soon to be gone) Career Ladder and we have to complete a Student Achievement Plan each year. This year my team has decided to focus on personal narrative writing and hone in on the traits of word choice, organization, and conventions. We looked for a narrative elements graphic organizer, but couldn't find one that was just right for our needs, so of course I had to create my own, and I am offering it for free in my store!