Five for Friday and a FREEBIE

I can't believe that ANOTHER week of summer break is over and gone... sigh! Let's see what was on the docket. I'm linking up for another Five for Friday hosted by Doodle Bugs Teaching.



ONE: I successfully set up my Bloglovin' account and moved all my Google Reader blogs on over. It was surprisingly easy! The best part is I found oodles and oodles of new blogs to follow and have made several new bloggy friends. Are you following The Teacher's Desk 6 via Bloglovin'? If not, please find the widget in the right sidebar and click away!

TWO: Speaking of new bloggy friends... Here's a little shout out to Nicole over at The Craft of Teaching. She wrote the most interesting blog post about an online teacher plan book, one that is user friendly and inexpensive, one that I'd like to try (next year because I bought one of those rather expensive planners that everyone had been blogging about). I wrote a little comment and VOILA! I won a $5 Starbuck's gift card. LOVE IT! Thanks again, Nicole!

THREE: I think I finally finished decluttering the house, at least the first floor and part of the basement. I can NOT believe the amount of STUFF one person and one small cat can accumulate in one year. Poor garbage men have had tons of bags to schlep for the past two weeks... next week I get to paint... yea! NOT!

FOUR: Many of my bloggy friends know that I received a gently used, beautiful piano late last May, something I had always wanted. It was a gift from a former student's family... Bless you, Leonard/Pitt family!

Because I'm a musician I decided I could teach myself how to play. I've progressed nicely over the year and can play fairly well (with some stuttering). My fourteen year old nephew spent the night Tuesday so that he could help me schlep out all the garbage from decluttering in time for collection Wednesday morning. While he was iPodding away, sipping pop and munching chips, I decided to practice piano a bit. I pulled out one of my favorite books, containing pop tunes, classic rock, and some show tunes. In the middle of one piece, my nephew YELLED, "Auntie, you're playing 'Stairway to Heaven'... AWESOME!" I felt I had arrived!

FIVE: I have been busily working on my TpT products and managed to complete three Science PowerPoints: one about cellular structure, one about cells and heredity, and one about classification of living organisms. These are materials that I use in my sixth grade Science class but needed to modify and update for sale on Teachers Pay Teachers. I'm sharing one of them here so you can see what I've been up to. You'll notice that even though the following is a Science product, it still is about writing... You can take the Language Arts teacher out of her subject area, but you can't take her subject area out of her teaching. My sixers know that I will put reading, writing, spelling in everything that we do! Science included... which is a great thing because the CCSS for ELA calls for integrating the Language Arts in all content areas. You can read more about this product HERE or by clicking on the first pic. And if you click HERE or on the second pic you can download a FREEBIE that is intended to accompany the presentation but can stand alone as a Science study/writing organizer.

FREEBIE

Happy Teaching,

Angela

The Teacher's Desk 6