Monday Made It and a FREEBIE

I'm once again linking up with Tara at 4th Grade Frolics for her Monday Made It linky!

This week I've been busy working on things that cute-ify my classroom but are also useful. First up is something that many of you have also made... glitterized clothespins. Simple and quick to make, all that's required is clothespins, glitter, and ModPodge (loooove this stuff). Just spread the ModPodge with a brush on the pin where you want the glitter to be. Sprinkle the glitter over the ModPodge and let dry. One more coat of ModPodge over the glitter will set it and keep it from shedding. I chose to just glitterize half of the pin. On the other half I wrote the names of all my 5th and 6th grade Language Arts students so that the pins could be used as part of my Writing Process Clip Chart (last week's Monday Made It).

Something else I made this week was a set of table signs. I had seen these on several blogs and on Pinterest earlier in the summer. Having found out that the sign frames came from IKEA I was thoroughly disappointed. The nearest IKEA to me is nearly a three hour drive, and because the frames only cost 99 cents they are not available for purchase online. I decided I REALLY wanted these signs. They are just TOOOOO cute! Ebay was my next stop. I  was able to get nine white signs for twenty dollars... not as cheap as at IKEA but what I paid in excess was definitely less than what I would've spent on gas.

On the front of my signs are cute, colorful monsters from MyCuteGraphics welcoming students to the table. I found the fluffy ribbons in my room colors at The Dollar Tree... two to a card... and popped them on top of the sign. On the back of the signs are anonymous quotes that I found on Pinterest. These quotes will serve as talking points for group discussions with my fifth and sixth graders and a writing lesson for my eighth graders.

I also worked on MANY new items for my classroom, all of them in my cute polka dot/monster theme and all of them available in my TpT Store. I finished my Six Traits posters, Sentence types posters, and CAFE signs. Next up are genre posters and grouping cards. If you'd like a copy of my CAFE signs they are a FREEBIE available HERE or by clicking on the graphic.

Happy Teaching,
Angela
The Teacher's Desk 6

It's Wednesday; Let's Get Pinteresting and Blog Hoppin'

My bloggy friends know by now that I am crazy for Pinterest and love linking up with Michelle over at The Vintage Apple each week for her Pinterest linky. I'm not sure why I love Pinterest so much. I think it might have something to do with my love of researching and an extremely short attention span. I can search my little heart away, click it and pin it, and be off to another website or idea in a flash. The problem now is that I've managed to accumulate so many pins (and they are ALL good ones) that I have a hard time remembering what I pinned or where the pin I want is located. I'll solve that problem sometime in the future!

One problem that I have been working on this week is sorting the files I've stored on my computer. I am a LOVER of all things The Education Center, especially Mailbox Magazine (I've been a subscriber for more than 25 years) and its email newsletters. The newsletters have accumulated in a specially created file in my mail program since late 2010... mind you, some of them arrive on a weekly basis... that's a LOT of newsletters! I spent most of this past Monday sorting through these newsletters. Many were outdated, the links no longer available, but those that were... well, some were saved, some were thrown out, some were downloaded, and some were even pinnable.

Here we go... a week for The Education Center pins!












Not only am I pinning away, I'm also blog hopping. Tori over at Tori's Teacher Tips has create a Bloglovin' Blog Hop linky for all of us who are moving over to Bloglovin'. Through the blog hop we can find the blogs we've been following and a whole bunch more! Let's all get hoppin'.

Happy Pinning,
Happy Blog Hopping,
Happy Teaching,
Angela
The Teacher's Desk 6

Pencil Topper... FREEBIE for Poetry Month

Are you familiar with pencil toppers? I use them with my sixers all the time. They are fun, handy little learning aids that the kids attach to the tops of their pencils. They can refer to the toppers as they might refer to an anchor chart hung in the room. I've most recently done toppers for parts of speech, classification of living organisms, "hamburger" paragraph, traits of good writing, and layers of the atmosphere.

I found the pencil topper template at Vicki Blackwell's Teacher Templates site years ago while searching for something else (flip flap chart templates). I downloaded the topper file, opened it in Microsoft PowerPoint, and began designing toppers for all my subjects, adding graphics and text as I needed. I was hooked!

This week while on Spring Break, I've been working on all kinds of teaching projects, among them a mini-unit for Poetry Month. I'll use a pencil topper to kick it off. On one side is the dictionary definition for the word POETRY and on the other a word cloud of various poetic forms. Maybe some of you would like to give these poetry pencil toppers a try. You can download the file HERE or by clicking on the link below the graphic.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6Q14Z2f7SoALUpSVVRIMWdyTUE/edit?usp=sharing

Print off the toppers on colored paper, cut them apart, and distribute to your students. Have each student write his/her name in the space provided, then glue the topper around their pencil. Your kiddos will need a bit of patience since they will need to hold the topper together while it dries. Once it's dry they've got a reference tool right in hand.

http://peanutgallery19.blogspot.com/2013/04/my-first-linky-party-celebrating-poetry.html

Happy Teaching,
Angela
The Teacher's Desk 6
teachersdesk@yahoo.com