Makeover Madness #tptsellerchallenge Week 1

Have you heard about the #tptsellerchallengebeing hosted by Ashley from Teach, Create, Motivate and some of her blogging buddies? It lasts for four weeks and I decided to join them. Here's a little more about the challenge.

WEEK 1 Here we go...

The first product I chose to makeover is the VERY FIRST product that I uploaded and offered on Teachers Pay Teachers: Newbery Award Book Report Craftivity..

This was basically all that was to the original product... dull, strictly to the point, no cover, and the directions were at the end! What was I thinking?

Here it is now, all spiffed up! The added cover is attractive (don'tcha just love the Tween clip art by Educlips?), the directions are right up front, and I added some additional pages for extra writing and illustrations. So MUCH BETTER! In celebration of its makeover, my Newbery Book Report Craftivity will be available for only $1.00 for the remainder of Makeover Madness (it ends on June 21st).

The second product that I decided to makeover is my bestest seller: Poetry Task Cards Bonus Pack.

Originally created in Word, the margins, fonts, and sizing were slightly off! Egads!

More colorful and cleaned up, here is how the product now appears! I even updated the bonus files. LOVE IT! You can check out my Poetry Task Cards and Bonus Files in my TpT Store and snag them for 50% off through the Makeover Madness, June 21st.

I am SOOOOO very happy that I accepted this #tptsellerchallenge! I can't wait to check out all the other participants' product makeovers (you'll find quite a collection at Teach, Create, Motivate), find new sellers to follow, and maybe purchase some teaching things for the upcoming school year along the way!

Five for Friday... and it's still Friday!

I can NOT remember the last time I made it to Doodle Bug's linky Five for Friday. I have good intentions, but what's that old adage?

The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak!

Yep, that's it! That's me on Fridays. Perhaps it's the thought of the impending Easter break that has me pumped up: I am full of pep this Friday and ready to blog. Of course, it could've been that hour nap I just awoke from.

For the first time in I don't remember how many years, our students participated in the annual English Festival held at the local branch of Kent State University. Open to all 7/8th graders in the county who choose to participate, the day is full of fun learning activities that celebrate reading, writing, and all things language arts. Students must read six pre-selected novels in order to join the day's activities. Some teachers require all their students to attend the day; however, I chose to make the festival completely voluntary. I am so glad that I did! My five seventh graders read all the books and were so excited to join in whole-heartedly. I am sad to say that there were many students who hadn't read a single book. Needless to say, the day was not a success for them. The above photo is of the session about writing, reading and the internet connection that I presented to the students.

Many of  you are familiar with one of my favorite bloggers (and all around sweetheart) Deb Hanson of Crafting Connections. Deb is the queen of craftivities for students. My fifth graders recently were studying visualizing as a strategy for improving reading comprehension. It was as if Deb knew exactly what I needed, for she added a new product to her store: To Read Is to Visualize Craftivity. The craftivity turned out so nice and really hammered the concept home with a terrific hands-on product. THANKS, Deb, for another great lesson!

I was thoroughly shocked that my sixers had never experienced one of the simple joys of my childhood: tin can phones. We had been studying wave theory in science and learning about many kinds of waves. Using slinkies, yarn, videos, interactive notebook folders, etc. we learned the concepts of sound, light, electromagnetic waves... you know!  I'm not sure how the tin can phones came up in the class discussion, but they did. With that a mini-S.T.E.M. activity was born. Students brought in clean tin cans and I provided the hammer, nail, and yarn. I explained the simple premise and turned the kiddos loose. From a private line (two cans, one on each end of a length of yarn) to a multi-canned party line, which you see above my sixers learned how sound traveled in a practical, fun way! Who needs modern technology and all those gadgets anyway?

Look closely! Can you see it?

Yep, crocuses and daffodils!

Spring at last!

I've been working on a lot of new sets of task cards, chiefly for my fifth graders. They seem to have a difficult time with retaining skills. They do really well learning the material and doing immediate practice and assessment. Return two weeks later and it's like starting over. Every Friday now, right after Flashlight Friday/silent reading time, we Scoot or Scatter our way through reinforcement and practice of previously learned skills. I think I've made seven or eight new sets of cards in the past few weeks. Here's one that I just added to my TpT Store for practicing progressive verb tense. My kids LOVED the task cards and performed well with them. I think part of the reason was that I used their names in the card sentences. You can read more about  the cards HERE.

Be sure to hope on over to Doodle Bugs for Teaching to read more Five for Friday's!

Throwback Thursday, Snowy Fun!

Welcome to...

What is Throwback Thursday? How does it work, you might ask? Simply look through your PURR-fect Previous Posts, perhaps a particular favorite of yours, and re-post it! Then add the TBT badge to your post and include your link below! Purr-fectly easy and simple! Your post doesn't have to be from LOOOONNNGGG ago; it can be from last month or even earlier this week. And if you don't have a post to share, perhaps an old photo or two from WAY BACK will do! Even a favorite pin is PURR-fect! Just join in the Throwback fun!

This Throwback Thursday post first appeared on The Teacher's Desk 6 in two segments, one on January 18, 2014, and the other on January 31, 2014. The long cold, snowy winter (can you say 8 snow days in January alone?) was influencing our classroom activities.


Like many of you I've been using some fun snow themed books in my Language Arts classes to teach skills and develop lessons. One of the books that I used with my fifth graders recently was "The Snow Globe Family" by Jane O'Connor, a cute story about two families who live a parallel life, one outside the snow globe and one inside.

As part of the lesson I had my fifth graders complete these four foldables for their notebook. I introduced the term "synopsis" as they continued working with "theme" which I introduced in December. After coloring the flaps and gluing them in order in their notebooks, they responded to the topic on the flap by PQA'ing... putting the question in their answers, writing in complete sentences, and citing something from the text to support their answer. Perhaps you might like to use these for your interactive notebooks as you read some snow stories. Just click HERE or on the pic for your copy.

My fifth graders and I completed our snow globe projects/stories that we started last week. There were interruptions to our schedule because of several SNOW DAYS. I just LOVE how these turned out. Their snow globes are adorable, and their first person narratives are wonderful! They worked so hard on their writing, and they followed directions so well. I am VERY proud of them!!!

 

This is SNOW joke! Now it's your turn for a Throwback!

An InLinkz Link-up

Monday Meet Up and Anchors Away

Happy Monday to one and all! Summer break has finally begun here in my neck of the woods. That means there's time to blog, do all the things I want to do, and just plain relax. The contributors over at The Teaching Tribune have created  a fun set of interactive posts to help us fill our lazy days of summer. Each day of the week has a specific theme. Mondays are reserved for meeting new bloggers or becoming better acquainted with familiar friends.

For this week's Meet Up I partnered with one of favorite bloggers, Deb from Crafting Connections. I met Deb late last summer when I discovered her blog by accident. A word in her post title caught my attention: CRAFTIVITY. Boy am I glad I stopped to read! Meeting Deb energized my teaching, helped my student teacher plan terrific lessons, and brought a new friend into my life.

Deb is a super, sweet bloggy friend, a dedicated mom and wife, and a super TpT Seller. I hope someday to be able to meet her in person! If you aren't following Deb's TpT Store go there now and check out all her terrific products. Then come back and enjoy Anchors Away, the linky that Deb hosts each week featuring great anchor charts to use in your classroom.

For Anchors Away this week, I am sharing my Anchor Chart Pinterest Board. I've been collecting anchor chart pins for nearly two years now and have quite a variety. Some I have recreated for use in my classroom while others I've used as a springboard for my own ideas. Some I've even displayed as a digital image on the Smartboard. I hope that you find something on my board that you can use. Anchors Away!


Follow Angela's board Anchor Charts on Pinterest.

Five for Friday 5.9.14

I can't believe another week has passed! Where does the time go? And speaking of time passing... There are less than 20 days of school left in this school year. PHEW! So much to do yet. Let's start with linking up with Doodlebugs for her weekly linky to showcase this past week.

FIRST... Monday was Cinco de Mayo. To celebrate my fivers worked on a holiday themed craftivity designed by Deb Hanson of Crafting Connections. Deb has a knack for creating fun for ho-hum skill practice. My students study Spanish so this context clues activity was right on target for them. Using Spanish words that appear to resemble English words, students must determine via context if the two words are the same in meaning (cognates) or not (false cognates). After completing the skill portion, students then assemble a poster on which to display their learning. We had loads of fun completing this lesson as you can see by the photos.

SECOND... My sixers completed a craftivity this week also designed by Deb. This one was all about plot. Begun by our student teacher during her last days with us, I had the pleasure of finishing the project.

THIRD... It was Teacher Appreciation Week at school! I received beautiful Gerber Daisies from one of my students, some lovely cards, and some gift certificates to my favorite places (Amazon among them) as signs of appreciation. One of the cards was made by a second grader who sent me a thank you for taking the second and sixth grade classes on a field trip together. We went to the Cleveland Natural History Museum. Part of the trip involved a sky show in the planetarium which obviously impressed this little learner. On the front of the card is the bus, but it's the inside that is... JUST PRECIOUS! He remembered what the sky projector looked like in detail!!!

FOURTH... My sixers FINALLY finished an art project that we have been working on FOREVER. You can see why it took them so long. They turned out so GOOD! Our projects all year are modeled after famous artists' work. This project is based on the style of Jan Vermeer, particularly in his piece "The Girl with the Pearl Earring." Here is the original.

The objective was to capture the style (highlighting, shadows, perspective, etc.) but place the subject in a modern setting. Here are some of my kiddos' pieces. 

FIVE... WOOT! WOOT! Had such fun attending a Facebook Jamberry party! Didn't even have to leave my house! What's Jamberry? Just the easiest, funnest way to have beautiful nails! No paint, no polish, no mess, and all done at home! 

Lovin' it! So many of my friends have been Jammin' for a while and now I can join them. Stay tuned for more about Jamberry! I'll be throwing a Jamberry party for all my blogging buddies and followers in late June or early July. The plans are in the works!!!

Speaking of plans... Plan on stopping over at Doodlebugs' blog to see more Five for Friday posts! You never know what's in the works.

Tried It Tuesday... Crafting Connections Collaborative Project

I've been waiting for a long time to be able to share this special post; however, due to that polar vortex and persistent bad weather that caused us to miss eleven twelve days of school (we are off again today) I had to wait and wait and wait... FINALLY it's time and what a perfect time! I am able to link up with Holly from Fourth Grade Flipper for...

This week (actually it took three weeks) I'm sharing a special collaborative craftivity project that I tried with Deb from Crafting Connections. Although this wasn't the first craftivity that I have completed with my students, it is the first collaborative craftivity project and the means by which I was introduced to these fun and engaging classroom projects. I blogged about my introduction to craftivities and to Deb in THIS POST a few weeks ago, and I blogged about using craftivities HERE and HERE, so I won't go into all the details.

Last summer Deb invited bloggers to join her in a collaborative project that she calls "Classroom Tested/Teacher and Student Approved"  wherein volunteers would test-drive her craftivities. Deb would send the volunteers one of her craftivity products to use in his/her classroom. After trying it, the volunteers would blog about the experience. I jumped at the chance and agreed to test drive her genre craftivity.

I had planned to do this during December, just before the launch of Literature Circles after Christmas break. However, my plans did not work out. There were too many interruptions, chief among them the Christmas program and the beginning of the bad weather. We actually missed a couple of days due to bad weather prior to Christmas.

I then decided to use the genre craftivity as an introductory lesson for my student teacher who started with us right after break. We did all the prep work and then.... the polar vortex. This craftivity lesson seemed to be doomed! But persistence paid off and we were able to finally complete the project early last week. Even with all the interruptions and delays, my fifth graders never lost interest! They learned the characteristics of the major genre and had a great time creating an attractive craft item.  Deb even includes a summative assessment piece to help track student learning accountability.

The following video captures my students' and student teacher's excitement, during both the learning activity and the craft.

Even though the craftivity was finally completed, the genre lesson was not. The students still needed a bit more practice with the material they had learned due to all the interruptions before they could successfully complete the summative assessment so I made a ZAP! game to help them review some of the fictional genre. ZAP! is the favorite classroom game of all of my students and a go-to review activity for me.

Here you see Ms. Murphy leading the fifth graders through the ZAP! game.

There was still one more practice activity before the students were going to complete the genre assessment. Deb also created an I Have, Who Has activity for genre.

I asked Ms. Murphy to do this activity with the fifth graders. This was a brand new concept for them so it was slow going at first. The kiddos actually asked to do it a second and third time, exchanging cards each time, so that they could practice a bit more.

After completing the craftivity, the ZAP! game, and the I Have, Who Has? the fifth graders were well-prepared and understood the various genre.  I am happy and proud to say that they performed extremely well on their assessment!!!

I am also happy to say that I am extremely addicted to craftivities, especially Deb's. 

Would you like to give one of Deb's craftivities a try? I guarantee you'll become addicted, too!

As part of her "Classroom Tested/ Student and Teacher Approved" series, Deb holds a giveaway for the specific craftivity featured. You can visit Crafting Connections to enter and read more about this fun craftivity. However, she is allowing me to offer the giveaway for her genre craftivity RIGHT HERE on my blog as well, AND she invited me to include my Fiction Genre ZAP! (or your choice of any other single ZAP! game) as well. WOOT! WOOT! THANKS, Deb! Good luck, everyone!


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Happy Teaching,
Angela
The Teacher's Desk 6