Summer has finally arrived and it's time to celebrate with a giveaway and a sale!
Fancy winning some extra spending money to help you purchase everything you need for your 2017-18 classroom? A team of amazing teachers (not all of them are listed in the graphic) and I have grouped together to give THREE awesome teachers a TPT giftcard: TWO $100 cards and ONE $50 card! You can win a TpT giftcard by entering the Rafflecopter below. Each link is one entry, so the more you complete, the more you increase your chance of winning one or more of the giftcards. Good luck and don't wait too long. The giveaway closes July 1, 2017 at 12:00 midnight.
But wait! The giveaway is not all of the summer fun to be had!
On top of the giveaway, we are also hosting a hashtag sale!
Search TpT using #HelloSummer to locate tremendous teaching items being offered by the same team of teachers above at a 50% discount from now through Sunday, June 25, 2017.
Here are the two items that I have chosen to discount in my store for our #HelloSummer sale. Just click on the link below the graphic to read more about each product:
With a value of ten dollars, this bundle is normally priced at seven dollars. During our #HelloSummer sale you can pick up these six items for just $3.50. That's actually MORE than a fifty-percent savings!
And remember that these are just TWO of the MANY items that will be discounted for the next few days of summer.
Say #HelloSummer with a fun giveaway and savings, a perfect TpT combination!
An Irish family stays together with the help of Fiona’s talent for making one-of-a-kind lace in this heartwarming immigration story from the New York Times bestselling creator of The Keeping Quilt.
Many years ago, times were hard in all of Ireland, so when passage to America becomes available, Fiona and her family travel to Chicago. They find work in domestic service to pay back their passage, and at night Fiona turns tangles of thread into a fine, glorious lace. Then when the family is separated, it is the lace that Fiona’s parents follow to find her and her sister and bring the family back together. And it is the lace that will always provide Fiona with memories of Ireland and of her mother’s words: “In your heart your true home resides, and it will always be with you as long as you remember those you love.”
This generational story from the family of Patricia Polacco’s Irish father brims with the same warmth and heart as the classic The Keeping Quilt and The Blessing Cup, which Kirkus Reviews called “deeply affecting” in a starred review, and embraces the comfort of family commitment and togetherness that Patricia Polacco’s books are known for.
So many ways to incorporate this book into a classroom curriculum!
With immigrant issues in the news, this book can serve as a timely discussion starter for the topic. Teaching poetry? Limericks? The immigrant family hails from this Irish town. Teaching genre? Narratives? The story is the perfect example! Teaching figurative language? The text contains imagery, alliteration, and onomatopoeia. Teaching commas in a series? There are multiple examples to be found. Teaching apostrophes? Contractions? The book is full of common and not so common examples. Teaching history? There is reference to the Great Chicago Fire. Teaching plot development, particularly conflict? This is the book for you.
Pay no attention to the recommended reading level of ages 4 to 8. This book is suitable for all ages, especially as a read aloud! I will be using it with sixth graders as a mentor text for all of the ELA topics that I've mentioned and as a companion piece for Lauren Tarshish's book "I Survived the Chicago Fire 1871" when the school year resumes in late August.
Be sure to stop by Kathleen's blog Kidpeople Classroom for more Teacher Book Talk posts and to add one of your own when you've finished reading my other Show and Tell items.
I recently attended an EdTechTeam Technology Summit. WOW! It was well worth my time. I thought I was very knowledgeable regarding Google and all its apps. Not so since I learned a WHOLE lot more! I will be sharing some of what I've learned throughout the coming school year as I incorporate my learning into my lessons and classes.
One thing that I will be teaching as part of my Science/ELA classes is coding. I wasn't sure how I wanted to approach this new subject for my students (and me) but I attended an awesome session wherein the presenter shared how she introduces coding... with legos!
I've already ordered the base plates and single unit blocks, enough for a class of thirty! I can't wait to start coding with my middle schoolers!
Besides bringing back new knowledge from the EdTechTeam Summit, I also brought this back. I actually won a door prize!
Don't judge my appearance on this day... no make-up, no contacts, hair pulled back in a clip. I was supposed to wake up at 4:45am for a 5:50 carpool ride. Ha, I woke up at 5:35am. YIKES, I was lucky to have been dressed properly.
And as always, I must include a fur baby picture. This month is a pic of DaisyMae, my senior girl. I live in a century home. Needless to say there is always a lot of work to be done, repairing this and repairing that. One thing that I've wished for is central air conditioning. Unfortunately, that is low on the totem pole of things to be done. Instead of central air, I have a floor model that does a really nice job of cooling off the majority of the first floor. It sits next to my rocker. Everytime that DaisyMae jumps into my lap she has to inspect the a/c unit.
What a silly girl!
Please be sure to stop by Stephanie's blog Forever in 5th Grade to read more Show and Tell Tuesday posts from teacher bloggers around the cyber world. Perhaps you'll join in the fun with a post of your own!
The Amazon blurb has this to say about the book...
Melody is not like most people. She cannot walk or talk, but she has a photographic memory; she can remember every detail of everything she has ever experienced. She is smarter than most of the adults who try to diagnose her and smarter than her classmates in her integrated classroom—the very same classmates who dismiss her as mentally challenged, because she cannot tell them otherwise. But Melody refuses to be defined by cerebral palsy. And she’s determined to let everyone know it…somehow.
Told through the eyes of Melody, the protagonist, the book is filled with beautiful language, poignant themes, and life-like characters. The book opens with these words which captivated me immediately:
Whether a teacher chooses to read this book aloud or have her/his students read it independently or for class, there are myriad themes and skills with which to work. Among the themes: bullying, physical challenges, inclusion, perseverance, determination, talents, acceptance. Teachers can present skills of character development and analysis, point of view, realistic fiction, figurative language (perfect mentor text for this area), and plot development, to name a few. If you teach in a 4th-7th grade classroom, this book is well-worth your time to investigate, and perhaps share with your students. Grab a copy and read it today! Speaking of today, be sure to hop on over to Kathleen's blog, Kidpeople Classroom, to see what other books are being shared today on this Teacher Book Talk Tuesday.
