Grin and Grab These Friday Freebies!

Grin and Grab it Freebie Day

What is Grin and Grab it Freebie Day? Today only, several TpT sellers are offering one priced product for free. Please see the product cover pictures and links, below, to Teachers Pay Teachers to get your freebies. This promotion ends tonight, but please leave feedback while the products are still free as it can't be added after the products are priced again.

We are having a give away of a $25 dollar gift certificate for Teachers Pay Teacher for our first Grin and Grab it Day! See the Rafflecopter information, below.

2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th,7th, 8th, 9th, 10th	Tiny World of Insects Magnified by a Scanning Electron Microscope This Powerpoint slide show and PDF printable file includes images of insects and insect parts.
7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, Homeschool	Persuasive Speech & Visual Aid Project with Rubric Argumentative Oral Presentation Project, Rubric for Grading, Argumentative Speech
Kindergarten, 1st, 2nd, Student PDFs includedThis product is updated each year with more calendar years, so check back and re-download each fall.	Calendar Math, Birthdays 2013-2016 and Printable Student PDFs For 2013 thru December 2016 SMART Board, Power Point, and PDFs
	Breakfast, Lunch, Desayuno, Almuerzo Vocabulary Practice Cloze“Cloze” sentences give clues to breakfast and lunch vocabulary words in Spanish.
6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th,Adult Education, Homeschool	Three Ways Authors Reveal Characters Authors reveal the physical descriptions and the personality traits of the characters they create by using either direct or indirect characterization.

Thank you for reading!
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Spring is Around the Corner!

With SPRING right around the corner (HURRY UP SPRING!!), are you 

ready for some Spring cleaning--cleaning out your bookshelves that is? 

I have enjoyed doing a little book swap with my students for the last two years!! Download it for free.

And, have some fun with these bright colors used in your SPRING activities:

And, Saving the Best for Last...

Announcing a Sale Celebrating THREE MILLION TEACHERS STRONG!!!

Almost every single item in my store will be 20% off during this two day event, including a few hard goods (such as used novels and teaching resources)!

Don't forget to enter the PROMO CODE TPT3 to receive up to 28% off at checkout!

Fall Freebies and Back-To-School

 Hi, everyone! Have you been getting back into the swing of things at school? Maybe you are still enjoying your summer vacation!! I'm back full force now, and I cannot believe how fast the summer came and went. (Then again, it usually does...) I guess you could say I've spent my vacation doing things totally unrelated to school or teaching, like focusing on that never ending to-do list for around the house. Making progress, slowly but surely.
Nevertheless, once school starts back for me, it seems like its Fall (A VERY HOT ONE) instead of Summer. That brings me to the Fall Freebies I wanted to share today. 

    

 Maybe these items can help get your room off to a good start. I like to use the Class Library Check Out with my students so that they can enjoy the novels I have in my classroom library while I easily keep up with who has what checked out at the time. Another is one of my resources for organization-Classroom Organization Labels. We all love to start out the year organized, right? And the third item contains borders to use--Fall Harvest Frames. 

Each of the three above items is in my TpT store. So, if you head on over to grab these freebies, be sure to stock up on teaching resources for the remainder of the semester or year during the fabulous back to school sale!! 
Teachers Pay Teachers' Back to School Sale is August 18th and 19th, with tons of stores putting items on sale in addition to TpT's 10% off at checkout. I'll have the majority of my store on sale for 20% off too!

Dry Erase Pocket Folders...They're Fantastic and So are Teacher Appreciation Sales!

Heads up: Be sure to see all of today's post...hint, hint.

Visit MyBinding Blog!

Dry erase pocket folders are great for a multitude of things. And, thanks to MyBinding, I have them!!! 

They are fantastic tools to have for getting students' blood flowing too! 

In my mailbox about a week ago was a nice surprise...a set of 9 x 12 reusable dry erase pockets to use in my classroom...THANKS TARRAGON! ;) You rock!
Visit MyBinding to see more about them, or just go ahead and order them...you know you wanna...Check out what I did when I received my pocket folders from MyBinding!

So, since I just finished creating a new resource for pronouns, I decided to try it with the new folders I got this past week! It was great!

I just slipped them right into the pockets! Of course, to create a little twist, I tied some yarn on them, hung them in "stations" around the room, and had my students pair up and work each set while I played music...when the music stopped, they shifted to the next station. It was fun for them and such an easy way to get middle school busy bodies up and moving --trust me, they need it.  
(I didn't use pics of actual students while they were doing it since they were moving station to station/standing up--I didn't want to worry about photos of students and such.)
Anyhoo, there are 101+ things I can think of to use these handy pocket folders for, so I am looking forward to utilizing them more and more and more. ;) They are universal...great for all subjects, grades, skills, students. And, honestly, what student doesn't love to play with your dry erase markers? Mine always do!

Here's the resource I used with my new pocket folders-- Working with Personal Pronouns-Cases and Functions: Nominative, Objective, and Possessive Cases
I just uploaded it in my TPT store and in my TN shop too, just in case you want to grab it there. See my post about it on Blog-K-12.
And, last, BUT DEFINITELY NOT LEAST, I'd like to mention  shout out about is the big TpT Sale going on May 7th-8th! TPT APPRECIATES YOU! 
Don't forget to enter the promo code at checkout: TAD13

(Don't you just love the cute graphic, designed by Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah Designs)

I'll have the majority of my digital resources on sale for 20% off both days. TPT will be throwing in another 10% for a total of up to 28% off all sale items! Happy Shopping!

Have a great week, FABULOUS TEACHERS!!! 

YOU ALL ROCK, and you are appreciated!

Teachers Notebook Teacher Appreciation Week Sale!

News Flash, Friends!

Teacher Appreciation Week!

It's a Week Long Sale at my Teacher's Notebook Shop! 
Running from May 4th to May 10th, you'll find numerous resources for language arts...reading, writing, vocabulary, and grammar items of many sorts. 
Tons of shops are offering big discounts, so you can get up to 55% off while you save an additional 10% on sale items that Teacher's Notebook is giving all customers! 

And that's not all...

Oriental Trading will be giving away a $100 Oriental Trading Gift card EVERY DAY! 
Don't miss the Oriental Trading Sweepstakes! 

So, head on over and stock up on great resources for your classroom by TN teacher authors!



I hope you enjoy!
Have a great week and we are nearing the summer....yay!

Cooperative Learning with Reading Response and Writing Activities

Busy, Busy, Busy...   

I wanted to share some student samples from a couple of cooperative learning tasks involving reading response and writing. 

We are in the midst of our final unit of the year called "The Spirit Within" and I wanted to share some of our work. 

So, here is what we've been up to lately...

 Literature Circles: Sequence of Events Map-

A "During Reading" Group Task for Night...

After reading a section of Elie Wiesel's memoir, students created flow maps in their literature circle groups. These are just two of the creative ideas they came up with to show the sequence of events. I like to have them work in groups because they learn so much from each other. 

Partner Allegory Writing after Reading "Terrible Things" by Eve Bunting...

I gave them the option of working independently or with a partner to compose their own allegories based on the idea presented in "Terrible Things" and, to my surprise, I had a good handful choose to do it independently. Either way, the originality and imagination that came out was amazing. 

Students read their allegories to the class after taking a couple of days to compose allegories and then illustrate them--in the form of a children's book. They really had fun with the project.

We thoroughly enjoyed hearing the different avenues taken to present the same idea!

As you can see, my kiddos have been busy with various hands-on tasks, in addition to getting ready for our upcoming state test! 

(I won't even yap about state testing...lol)

What have your students been doing in class these last couple of weeks. Please share your fun ideas and cooperative learning activities with us.

Happy Easter Sale: Language Arts Teaching Resources

I'm having as sale on 50 teaching resources for language arts! Teachers, jump in on the savings...

This is just a random "Happy Easter" sale for the opportunity get a 15% discount on many resources you should will find helpful in your classroom and may have already stored in your "cart" for a later date! Get them at a discounted price today!
Visit my TpT Store and empty your cart!
While you are there, check out the many FREE resources and grab them too!
Swing by my Facebook page and let me know what you found or liked!
Meanwhile, I hope you and your family have a happy and blessed Easter!

My Favorite "Go-To" Books for Language Arts Teachers

So, I've been "de-cluttering" my house lately, and I've been trying very hard to let go of old books---I've got way too many books- Novels, Textbooks from College, Textbooks my mother used as English Teacher, Children's books, Story Collections, Reference books, reference books, and reference books....WOAH! No way can one person use them all. Or, can I?
Anyhoo...I decided to sort through all them, organizing into "must keep" and "I'm thinking about it..." and "donate" so that I can stick to my "de-cluttering" plan! One of the steps includes cleaning out children's books and another is for going through all other books! Needless to say, I had lots to do!
I've decided to hang on to lots of my reference books. (Just can't part with them...)
And, I here are some of my "Go To" Books as a Language Arts Teacher: 
1. Vocabulary for Dummies (No, I'm not a "Dummie" but I do like these books---they have every subject under the sun!)--I actually have several others versions: Organizing, Spanish, Finances, and Acrylic Painting --wide array of subject areas I know!

2. The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy-What Every American Needs to Know (2nd Edition, Revised and Updated)
I <3 My Mom for getting this for me several years ago! It's so cool...a National Bestseller! There is an unbelievable amount of information in this book! 

3. The Writer's Brief Handbook (I actually "stole" this from my husband--he had it from law school--but I make better use of it!) 

4. The Writer's Options-Lessons in Style and Arrangement (6th Edition)
---One of my college textbooks, it still has the campus book store sticker ;)











As I was writing this post, I remembered a link up from this time a year ago that Stephanie of Teaching in Room 6 did that really exposed me to some great titles. you might like to look through others' favorites! It dawned on me when I was about to add my 5th book -The Little Brown Handbook!
The edition I have is no longer printed, so I will be hanging on to it for years to come! However, tons of editions are available!


Anyhoo, that's my list of favs as a language arts teacher and wife of an attorney (who always has me proof documents-hahahahaha-gotta love doing that)!

As my students begin the research paper process this quarter, we'll be utilizing these a lot!

So,  what could you never part in terms of a resource book? I am apparently always adding to my collection of books! Love them!!

Poetry Activities of All Sorts! Product Swap 3!

Yay, it's time for a new MAGICAL PRODUCT SWAP!!! Jessica Standford, Mrs. Stanford's Class, is our host for the Product Swaps. I've had such fun doing them!! I've gained a lot just from participating. Learning about so many different resources from all the others in the each swap is very motivating! Definitely visit Jessica's blog to see all the peeps who have linked up to swap #3! 

I'm so excited to be paired with a totally AWESOME teacher and fellow bud, Addie Williams of Addie Education Teacher Talk. Addie has over 15 years of experience in teaching. I have loved getting to know her and collaborating with her --really since I've been involved in blogging, TpT, and more!

Addie said I could pick out whatever I wanted to from her store, so I decided on this Poetry Activity Pack! As one of her bestsellers, it's a comprehensive pack of  fun and engaging poetry resources! Want to know the best part? Each of the activities can be easily differentiated for various ages and abilities! 
There are 8 different activities (7 assignments/projects and a bonus handout/worksheet).
Check out the projects in the pack:

"Pet Peeve Poem - Practice Writing With Similes"

"My Life in 30 Words" (Great for Back to School!)

"From Prose to Poetry"

"Laughing With Limericks"

"Imagery Poem"

"Hero Music"

"Poetry Poster / Mind Map"

Bonus Handout/Worksheet!

The Figurative Language Sheet includes:
Alliteration
Onomatopoeia
Personification
Rhyme
Metaphor
Simile

I'm so excited about this resource, especially right now, because we are really jumping into our poetry unit at school! Awesome!!
The "Laughing at Limericks" assignment included is just perfect for St. Patrick's Day!
The pic below shows pages for the Imagery Poem Project. It engages students by having them first analyze a poem and then create their own. 

Imagery Assignment - 1 of the 7 Activities Included!

Did I mention that it's a total of 38 pages, with 26 classroom ready printables? Addie also included a comprehensive poetry writing rubric to use for the projects. Among the different projects, you'll find detailed assignment sheets, examples and discussion questions, templates, writing paper, and brainstorming sheets. 

The Hero Song/Poetry Writing "Hero CD" project has a marking rubric included with brainstorming sheets, and lyrics for 7 songs. 


Anxious to dig in, I printed every page! No, it wasn't tons of ink, just tons of GOOD STUFF! And, printing it in black and white works fabulous too! (in case you were curious...) My printer at school is black/white, so I went with that. (If you know how impatient I am, I couldn't stand to wait until I got home to a printer that may/may not have colored ink left...ha!) Anyway, I like to project the PDF pages on my whiteboard as I use different activities, so I'm pumped that lots of the pages have colorful clip art. It's not too much, not too little...just right! I love how clear and crisp the whole pack is--she did a great job putting this all together. I've put this resource in its own special binder! ;) It took my whole breakfast table to spread out all the pages. Hopefully, you get an idea of all the great stuff included. 
AND, Addie has put it on Sale for 20% off!!!

Swing by Addie's blog to tell her how awesome her resource is and check out my product that she is featuring, the Expository Text Structures Signal Words Card Pack: Word Wall/Centers Pack! You can purchase it at a discounted rate tonight and tomorrow (1/12-1/13). You might find it pretty useful, especially in this second semester nearing state testing! 
Connect with Addie at other links:
Facebook
Pinterest
TPT Store
TN Shop

Enjoy surfing through the Magical Product Swap!