Build A Snowman

I've been looking online for some fun (yet educational) activities to get us through Crazy Week. There's nothing worse than running out of things to do the week before winter break. Down Time = Wild Children. No thank you!

So I came across this little online math game:

It's starts with an empty space where the snowman is. Players are presented with a story problem and they have to determine which operation they would use to solve it. If the correct answer is selected, part of the snowman appears. They keep playing until the snowman is complete. Cute, huh? 

12 Days of Christmas Mystery Markdown!

Only twelve more days until Christmas and four more days of school! This month is just flying by. To get in the holiday spirit, I'm hosting a 12 Days of Christmas Mystery Markdown.

Visit my TpT store every day until Christmas to find a great teaching resource marked down as much as 70%. I'm not going to tell you what the deal of the day is... You have to snoop around to find it! Have fun!

An InLinkz Link-up

Fa-La-La Freebies

I'm linking up with Primary Powers to bring you some awesome holiday freebies! We all know how hard the days leading up to winter break can be. The kids are all n-u-t-t-y, right? Here are a few fun activities to keep them learning despite the Christmas Crazies.

This is a writing activity for targeted towards primary grades. Santa's reindeer are on strike. Students will think of another animal that can take their place pulling Santa's sleigh. A Venn diagram is included to compare and contrast the two animals as well as a graphic organizer for planning a persuasive writing piece. Your students will then write a persuasive letter to Santa using the included letter writing template. Just click the picture to download from my TpT store.

This freebie is a hands-on math center to help students practice sorting odd and even numbers. Just choose a cookie and decide which cookie sheet it belongs on - odd or even? This activity focuses on two-digit numbers.

This activity is just plain fun! Students decorate the Christmas tree based on their answers about themselves. Once complete, the tree pictures make a cute holiday bulletin board or window display.

I hope you enjoy these freebies and have a stress-free, not-too-crazy last few days of school! Be sure to click the linky button at the top to find more holiday goodies for your class.

5 Ways To REALLY Save Money When Shopping Online

'Tis the season for shopping and spending all of our hard-earned cash! Christmas is right around the corner and since most of us in education aren't raking in the big bucks, I thought I'd share some money-saving tips. On the world news tonight, they interviewed a "shopping expert" (Really? Can I have THAT job?) and his advice was really, well, pretty dumb if you ask me. Don't we all know to compare prices for big-ticket items and stick to our list? Sheesh!

Okay, so maybe the tips I'm about to share aren't earth shattering, but hopefully they'll be new to a few people. I pride myself on being a pretty savvy shopping and can usually score some pretty great deals with a little extra effort.

Register Before Shopping! What does that mean? Well on any site that you might decide to buy from, you should register with them first. That might mean signing up for their newsletter or sale notifications or just registering as a shopper instead of a "guest". Different sites call it different things. The reason you want to do this is because a lot of sites will send you coupons. Some of them will send you one immediately just for registering. I've gotten as much as 25% off an entire order just for registering on a site. Nice, huh? One side tip... give them a fake phone number just to make sure you don't get onto some kind of call list. 

Bookmark the site RetailMeNot... right now!  There are a lot of websites with coupon codes but I like this one the best. There are tons of stores listed and I've had really good luck finding current, valid codes. Users can leave comments about specific coupons to let you know if and when it worked or if there were any restrictions. 

Another site you should bookmark and visit often is SlickDeals. This one has coupons and SO much more. The forums are a treasure trove of information. People post deals they find so you can find them too. It makes shopping for the best price a lot easier. The main page on SlickDeals lists trending deals. They are updated constantly so you know when one expires. This is a great site to visit well ahead of your online shopping trip.

Shop with gift cards that you buy at a discount! There are quite a few websites that sell gift cards for less than face value. How this works is someone has a gift card they don't want. Maybe it was a gift or maybe it came from returning something without a receipt. So they go online and sell it to one of these sites for much less than it's worth. Then the site, turns around and sells the card to someone who does want it. You can really save a lot of money buying gift cards this way. For example, I just bought a $247 Macy's gift card for $219.  It came in my email a few minutes later and I used it on the Macy's website (combined with a coupon code and cash back, which I'll explain more later) to buy my parents' Christmas present .

The gift card sites I like the most are CardCash, CardPool, and Raise. There are others, but those are the ones I can recommend from experience.

One word...Ebates! If you aren't signed up yet, you need to hop to it! This is a free site that pays you cash back for shopping online. You just go to the site, find the store you want, and click their link. They earn advertising dollars which keeps them in business and you get a percentage of your purchases back in cash. They pay either through Paypal or by check. Right now, Ebates owes me $164 which I'll get in the next quarterly payout. I just bought a refurbished Macbook Pro from Apple last night (woo hoo!!!) and am getting $30 back. Not a lot, but still...it's $30, right? 

So when I first started using Ebates, I would forget to go to the site and click through. Then I'd be kicking myself for missing out on my cash. They have a solution for this now... a brower add-on. After you sign up, you can install the add-on. Then, whenever you visit a website that is affiliated with ebates, a bar will pop up for you to activate your cash back. Automated money saving...yes! 

You'll hear more about Ebates in a minute, but for now... go sign up!

My last tip is for when you aren't in a hurry to buy. If you've done all of the above and still aren't happy with the price, you can put the item in your shopping cart, start to check out (long enough to enter your email address but before paying) and then leave it. Don't worry... it's not like walking away from a cart full of groceries like a crazy person. No one will know, except the website. Why in the world would you do this? Because some sites will try to get you back, to pull the trigger on your purchase, by sending you a coupon. Now don't rely on this tip for saving a lot because the majority of websites don't do this. But if you're really on the fence about a purchase, this is something you could try while thinking it through.

So those are my best tips for shopping and saving online. I left out price comparison because I think most people do that already and that's where you should start. Remember...Google is your friend. If you want to know if these tips really work, let me share my shopping experience from Thursday...

I was stuffed full of turkey and stuck to my couch, so I decided to buy a Christmas present for a family member whose name I won't mention (in case they stalk my blog to find out what they're getting.) I knew what I wanted to buy, so I went to Google and typed it in to get a list of current prices. I found several sites that had this top-secret item on sale for $249. So here's what I did...

1. I went to RetailMeNot to find codes and found one for 15% off and free shipping at Macy's (one of the stores on my list of possibilities).
2. I went to CardCash and got the above mentioned $247 gift card for only $219.
3. I went through Ebates which was giving 8% cash back at Macy's.
4. I put the item in my cart and entered my coupon code which lowered the price to $211. My gift card covered the whole amount with a little left over for future shopping.
5. Now I just wait for my $29 cash back from Ebates! 
6. All in all, I saved about $57 on this one item, plus I still have $37 on my gift card. Awesome!

Do you have any other money saving tips? Leave me a comment. I'd love to hear them!

Cyber Monday Sale: What's On Your Wishlist?

Can you believe Thanksgiving is over already? This is my favorite time of year. I wish it could last forever! The leftovers are almost gone and I spent the day painting the dining room. Next on my to-do list is some shopping... NOT out in the craziness of the mall but right here on my couch. I already snagged a few awesome deals but I'm holding out for Cyber Monday. I'll be combining the online sales with coupon codes from retailmenot and ebates. What's better than getting cash back on your shopping?

Besides buying Christmas presents, I'll be doing some serious shopping on TpT. It's time for their annual after-Thanksgiving sale!

Everything will be on sale and I've got a wishlist a mile long. I'll show you one of my must-get resources in a minute. But first, I'm linking up with Ideas By Jivey. She's got an awesome giveaway going for some TpT gift certificates to help you with your shopping. You'll want to hop on over and enter to win!

So if you're looking for some ideas on how to spend one of those gift certificates. let me share a couple of the most wish listed items from my store. You can enter to win these too at the end of this post!

The number one most wishlisted item in my store (by nearly 500 people!) is my pack of Classroom Reward Coupons. It includes 25 different coupons in bright, colorful designs that kids love to earn. They are very motivating rewards that won't cost you, the teacher, anything! It's really amazing how hard students will work to sit at the teacher's desk or wear their slippers in class. Check them out...

Some teachers who have bought these have requested them in a larger format (like four different coupons per page) so they can create a catalog of rewards instead of passing the cards out. Cool idea!

The second most wishlisted item in my store is my Big Bundle of Task Cards. These are perfect for second and third grade. The pack includes nine individual sets with more than 200 task cards altogether. They include main idea, author's purpose, context clues, parts of speech, subject-verb agreement, prefixes and suffixes, variant vowels, plural spelling patterns, and grammar review.

If you don't use task cards very much, check out my post about Teaching With Task Cards for ideas and suggestions on how to use them in your classroom.

Now, what am I going to buy during the TpT sale? I have my eye on a lot of things but there's one that I absolutely MUST get...

This is a huge pack of close reading passages with comprehension questions. The lexiles are mostly in the mid 600s to mid 700s - perfect for my higher level reading groups. They need a lot more practice just answering text dependent questions and I think this pack is just what I need!

Now, on to my giveaway! If you would like to win my Classroom Reward Coupons and Big Bundle of Task Cards, you can enter the Rafflecopter below. Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Close Reading? Nah, Not Today!

As most of you know, I am a math teacher at heart. I just love teaching my students how to tackle a problem, fit all the pieces together, and make sense of numbers. When the math light goes on, it's a wonderful thing!

But alas, I must still teach reading. Not that I don't LOVE to read. A good book is actually one of my favorite things. What I do NOT love, however, is close reading. What?!! Did I just say that? Will the School Board Gods strike me down for uttering such blasphemy? Cover your eyes, don't look!

The main reason I dislike close reading is because my students dislike it. Our reading lessons used to be fun, full of personal connections and enjoying the author's words. Close reading often feels like pulling teeth. I fully understand the need to dive deep into the text but can't it be a little bit fun...sometimes? I'm really not sure where they got the idea that close reading means 3 separate reads of the same long, tedious text. Who really reads like that? Here's a great article on the effective use of close reading:

International Reading Association

The big problem I'm seeing is that we spend so much time dissecting text and looking at minute details (like why the author's choice of this one word could change the course of history) that the children are forgetting the big ideas... main idea, theme, moral, and personally connecting to what you've read. Summarizing and retelling? Forget it.

So this week I've broken the shackles of close reading! That's right... I'm not doing it. I feel like a crazy rebel, a lunatic who escaped the loony bin. Instead, we are SUMMARIZING!

This is a skill my students really struggle with. They want to give every single detail or include minor points instead of the most important ones. I tried using index cards and post-its, telling them they could only write what would fit on the card. They just wrote really small. So today I gave them a graphic organizer with guiding questions along with a passage about the Puritans. I had them read it to themselves...once. Then we worked on answering the questions using phrases and words rather than complete sentences (as in taking notes). Finally, they used those notes to write a summary in paragraph form. Here is what we used...

You can download a copy for yourself HERE.

Guess what... Their summaries were beautiful. They got the main point of the text. They understood why the Puritans needed to leave England. Who cares that the text wasn't the most complex? Next time, I'll make it a little harder. Today reading wasn't something to moan and groan about. Today they felt successful. 

Stop, Swap, & Roll: Meet Techie Turtle Teacher

I'm so excited to be joining up with Melissa at Jungle Learners for her Stop, Swap, and Roll product review and giveaway! I got to try out an awesome new product and YOU get a chance to win it for your own classroom. So, let's get to it...

I was lucky enough to be paired up with Techie Turtle Teacher. She is an up and coming TpT author with some fantastic resources for the elementary crowd. 

I particularly like all of her math products (because math IS the best subject to teach). For our product swap, I chose Techie's 3-Digit Word Problem Task Cards. I picked the October version, but there are other seasonal themed sets in her store.

These task cards are perfect for second and third graders. The questions are easy to read but require some real mathematical thinking. All types of addition and subtraction problems are included, but I was especially happy to see plenty of comparative problems. Those are the ones my students need the most practice with.

Here is the description from Techie Turtle's store...

Students love task cards! This product is designed for second and third graders who are pros at solving word problems but need larger numbers.

These problems are themed around things that happen in October - Halloween, football, World Series, fire safety.

Product includes
-October word problem answer sheet
-12 3-digit addition/subtraction word problem task cards
-12 3-digit addition/subtraction word problems full page (same problems as task cards)
-answer key for word problems

Perfect to put around the room and have your students walk around to solve problems.

Your students can also play Scoot using these cards.

When you buy this resource, you get 12 individual task cards, a student recording sheet, an answer key, and then a full-page version of each card. I found this to be a very thoughtful addition to the pack because it made it so easy to review with the kids. I was able to project each card with the document camera and go over how to solve.

You can use task cards in a number of ways, Scoot being one of my favorites. But teaching a double class makes Scoot a noisy challenge, so I chose to use these cards as a math center instead. I set them out with a stack of recording sheets and had the kids bring their whiteboards to work on. Here they are in action:

These two girls worked together, taking turns with the pencil, and sharing their strategies. It was so nice to see them working so hard! My whole class really enjoyed these task cards. The story problems were interesting and relevant to them. I can see myself using these year after year!

I hope you've enjoyed this review and will take a few minutes to visit  Techie Turtle Teacher's Blog where you can see her review of one of my resources!

Don't forget to enter the giveaway below to win your own set of awesome task cards and then hop on over to Jungle Learners for more Stop, Swap, and Roll reviews and prizes!

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You Oughta Know About Virtual Field Trips!

A couple of years ago, my district did away with out-of-county field trips because of gas prices. Then they cut back on field trips even further because they had to align directly with the standards. So this year I've been looking at virtual field trips. No, there isn't a bumpy bus ride or parents coming along as chaperone; but it can still be a lot of fun.

Some ideas to make your virtual field trip more exciting:

• Let students bring a brown bag lunch and eat outside
• Take lots of pictures just like you would on a real field trip
• Have students keep a journal where they write ideas, feelings, and things they learned during your virtual trips.
• Link up with another class from the location of your virtual trip. Exchange letters or post cards beforehand. Get your class exciting about "visiting" their town.

So where can you go on your virtual field trip? Visit a rain forest or the desert. Check out an amazing zoo or museum. See beaches or mountains or even a volcano. How about watching an orchestra perform or strolling the streets in a historic town? There are so many sites you can visit online. Just project the video or virtual tour so everyone can see. 

My favorite virtual field trip is this amazing interactive tour of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. 

On this tour, you can wander through every exhibit on all three floors. You can also go outside and view the gardens. As you work your way through the museum, you can zoom in to read all of the placards and signs. There are little camera icons called hotspots that you can click on to see something in greater detail. The best part of the tour is the 360 degree viewing capability. By dragging the screen with your mouse, you can view the entire room - even the floor or ceiling. Another great feature is the ability to visit past exhibits that are no longer on display.

I suggest starting the tour together as a whole group and then letting students have an opportunity to explore the museum themselves on ipads or computers. You could even send them on a scavenger hunt to find certain things or bits of information. Each wing and room of the museum is marked which makes it easy for students to record where something is located.

Here are some other interesting virtual tours and field trips:

• The First Thanksgiving 
• Journey North: A Study of Migration
• Immigrant & Tenement History
• Tour of Monticello
• Supreme Court Tour
• Virtual 4-H Farm

So what are you waiting for? Get going on your next field trip!

An InLinkz Link-up

My #1 Problem Solving Strategy for Division Problems

Are you using tape diagrams in your classroom? If not, read on for my #1 problem solving strategy...

I have always encouraged my students to model, model, model when solving story problems. Modeling is a way for students to make sense of a problem and catch mistakes before they happen. Sometimes, what seems like a good answer just doesn't work out once it's drawn as a model. 

Until recently, I really didn't care what kind of model my kids used. Drawings, tally marks, symbols: anything was fair game. But as we've worked our way through multiplication and into division, I've found myself returning over and over again to the tape diagram. It's a nearly fail-proof way to work through a story problem and my students have become problem solving masters - the best I've ever had the pleasure to teach, in fact!

So, what exactly is a tape diagram? It looks like this...

To use a tape diagram, students must first ask, "Do I know the whole amount?" If supplied by the problem, fill it in. If not, put a question mark at the bottom of the diagram. Then look for other information and fill that in. The question mark always represents whatever piece of information is missing.

Students will quickly begin to see a pattern... the bottom number is always the product of the top two numbers. Therein lies the beauty of this model. 1) It can just as easily be used for multiplication problems and 2) it is self-correcting. If the top two numbers, when multiplied, do not equal the bottom, you've done something wrong.

When teaching with this model, a good idea is to have students write all four possible equations. So in the above example, we would also write ? x 4 = 32 and 32 ÷ ? = 4. This is important because it reinforces the concept of inverse operations and fact families. It also gives students a tool to use when the encounter problems with a missing factor or divisor.

Once students are able to interpret story problems and solve using tape diagrams, I teach them to analyze a tape diagram and write their own story problems to go with it. This requires high-order thinking and really develops their mathematical minds.

To use tape diagrams with your students, I suggest following this instructional sequence...

• Teacher supplies the story problem, draws the tape diagram, and models how to solve.
• Teacher supplies the story problem, draws the tape diagram, and students help solve.
• Teacher supplies the story problem, students help draw the diagram, and students solve on their own.
• Teacher supplies the story problem, students draw and solve alone.
• Teacher draws a tape diagram and students create a story problem to go with it.

Along the way, you will want to move from including one equation that represents the problem to showing all four possible equations. This process, from introduction to proficiency, may take several weeks depending on the skills of your students. But it will pay off in the long run when your students become experts at deciphering and solving story problems.

If you're interested in teaching this strategy to your students, you may want to check out this resource:

Is it fall yet?

What a busy week I've had! Meetings, testing, more meetings, more testing... you all know how it goes. I've neglected my blog but let me at least dig up this old post from my old blog. It's perfect for this time of year:

Fall is in the air...just not here in Florida. It's still around 90 degrees every day. But the humidity is down very slightly, so I'm going to pretend that fall has arrived! It's the best time of year and there are so many fun things you can do at school to celebrate the season. One thing I love to do with my class is make applesauce. It is super easy! You can make it in your crock pot and your classroom will smell delicious all day long. Here's all you need...

Peel, core, and slice about 12 apples (whatever will fit in your crock pot). Add 1/4 cup water. Turn the crock pot to low, cover, and let cook all day. Check periodically to make sure the apples aren't sticking. They will make their own water, so I've never had an issue with this. An hour before you plan to serve the applesauce, check to see how soft they are. If still firm, turn the crock pot up to high.

When the apples are soft and you're ready to eat, turn off the heat, pour off a little of the water if the apples made too much, and stir in 1/4 cup sugar. If you used tart apples, you might want to add a little more. Sprinkle in a little cinnamon, too. I never measure this. I just add it to my personal taste. I've noticed that with second graders, less cinnamon is better than more. To make the applesauce extra special, you can also add a few drops of vanilla extract. Yum!!

Looking for more fun fall activities for the classroom? Check out these...

Spoons in the Classroom

When I was a kid, one of my favorite games was Spoons. It was something I often played with my youth group friends on long bus rides to Bible Bowl tournaments. It was the perfect game because you can play with any number of people, all you need is deck of cards and some spoons (or any reasonable substitute), and the rules are simplistic.

I had pretty much forgotten about the game until recently, when I was trying to think of some activities for indoor recess days. Getting out the board games can be messy and I hit my limit for 4 Corners about mid last year. So, this week I decided to teach my class the joy of Spoons. Here's how to play...

The object of the game is to get 4 of a kind and not be the player left without a spoon. You will need spoons (1 less than the number of players) and a set of cards. 

To begin, place the spoons in the center of the table and deal 4 cards to each player. The rest of the deck is stacked face-down beside the dealer. Play starts with the dealer drawing a card from the deck and passing one from his hand face-down to the player on his left. That player takes the card, decides whether he wants to keep it or not, and passes a card from his hand to the next person.

Each player does the same as quickly as possible. The last player before getting back around to the dealer, starts a discard pile with the card he is getting rid of.  It is then the dealers turn again to draw a card from the deck and start passing. Players should have 4 cards in their hands at all times.

Play continues until one person ends up with 4 matching cards in his hand. At that time, he takes a spoon from the table. He may either try to sneak it away or grab it quickly. Either way, when the other players notice, they too will grab a spoon. The player left without a spoon is out. The game continues until one person is left who is then the winner. If the deck runs out of cards during the game, players should shuffle the discard pile and then continue.

Here is a video showing a group playing the game: 

Fun, right? My class absolutely loved it and now they keep asking to play. The problem is that we don't actually have time to play all day. I mean, we DO have to learn sometime. Well luckily for them, I realized I could turn Spoons into an awesome review game for all kinds of skills. How about collecting four synonyms or four related math facts? What about four words with the same phonics pattern? The possibilities seem endless!

Now I feel inspired to start adapting other games for the classroom. After all, shouldn't learning be fun?

You Oughta Know About EngageNY

Once upon a dream there existed a website where teachers could go for complete, detailed lesson plans that included standards, question sets, outlines for whole group instruction, independent practice, and it was all free. Impossible, right?

In my last post, I briefly mentioned EngageNY as a great math resource but it really deserves a post of its own. If your state is anything like mine, they provide you with next to nothing besides a list of standards to teach. The curriculum we have doesn't match the standards half the time and we are left to piece together something that makes sense. Here's where Engage NY comes in to save your life!

This website in an incredible resource! Let's say you're out sick one day and need to pull together sub plans at the last minute. You want your sub to actually teach, right? Well EngageNY has detailed, explicit plans for every topic. Just find the one you need, print it off, and your sub can follow it word-for-word! The math lessons are so thorough, I've started using them for my own plans.

Each math lesson includes fluency practice, an application problem, concept development (whole group lesson), problem set (independent practice), a student debrief, and an exit ticket. If you aren't totally confident in a topic, you can just follow the scripted dialogue that's provided. Here is what a math lesson plan looks like...

Student work pages are also included for every lesson. They can be used for independent practice or assessment. They look like this...

The EngageNY website is fairly easy to navigate. First, find your grade level and subject area...

Then, you choose the module and lesson you want. The site is laid out like this...

Another nice feature is the video section. You can see some lessons in action, like this third grade ELA lesson...

So that's a brief overview of the EngageNY, a website you definitely oughta know about! 

An InLinkz Link-up

Skip Counting, Arrays, Multiplication...Oh My!

Wow, the beginning of the school year is just flying by! I can't believe it's almost time for the first progress reports to go home already. Crazy! We're chugging along in math and finally hitting out stride with multiplication. Just like in second grade, I prefer to do most of our math on the rug where I model everything on my easel and have the kids work in their math journals as they follow along.

I like to use the gradual release model for every single lesson. It keeps me on track and the kids like the structure.They are never confused about what to do. I find it makes my planning easier too! Here is a poster I made that reminds everyone of their role as we work through our problems. If I need to remind someone, I just point out which step we're on.

If you aren't using gradual release for instruction, I highly recommend that you try it at least a few times. I promise you'll love the results! It's the way I've always taught math but only discovered that it has a name last year.

So, besides doing math on the rug every day, I also do math centers while I meet with groups. Right now we are working on arrays and relating them to repeated addition and multiplication. As an opening activity, I gave each table group a large pile of colored counters and said we were going to have a race to see who could count them the fastest. There was only one rule: First they had to put the counters into equal groups. It was so much fun watching them race to count those counters! Not surprisingly, it was the table that made groups of 10 who won the race.

My centers for multiplication this week and last were super easy to plan thanks to my blogger friend Arisbeth Rossi. She runs Sailing Into Second (awesome blog, check it out!) and generously sent me her Multiplication and Division Unit to check out. It's packed full of useful stuff!! 

Two of the activities we did most recently are the multiplication bubble map and an even/odd product sort...

I really love the bubble map because it gets the kids thinking about what they already know. It builds their confidence as you dive into multiplication. I had my students take their completed graphic organizers home to explain to their parents. If they brought it back signed, they got a little treat. 

The even/odd product sort was a great way to revisit second grade skill while working on multiplication. My kids really needed a review and this fit the bill perfectly! Since we are just starting on multiplication, I had them work with partners to solve each problem and then sort them.

Another piece of Arisbeth's unit that I really like is the multiplication and division booklets. There's a nice little checklist on the front to check off each set of facts as the student learns them. My students are keeping theirs in their math folder to work on whenever they have time. They bring it to math group if they want me to check a page off.

There is so much more in the unit that I haven't even gotten to yet... task cards, Spin and Solve games (which I'm using in centers next week), posters, more graphic organizers, and word problem strips. I loooove the strips because they are exactly what I use for homework. Every day my students glue a new problem into their homework journals. The strips in Arisbeth's pack will work perfectly! 

If you want to check out the rest of this awesome unit, visit her store by clicking on the cover picture below...

Another resource that you absolutely must see is the Engage NY website. You can download complete lessons for the entire year of math. It's incredible! Luckily, the scope and sequence closely matches what we do here in Florida. When I was out sick one day this week, I was able to print out a detailed lesson plan for my sub that she could follow word-for-word. This site has every grade level, pre-k through 12, for both math and language arts. Wow! Florida has nothing like this for their teachers.

An InLinkz Link-up

Another Classroom Freebie

What a sad little blogger I am! Apparently I can't deal with school and blogging at the same time. I have managed to start three different posts this week. Where are they, you ask? Well...in my drafts folder all lonely and heartbroken that they haven't made it to the big time yet.

I really will get the finished SOON. In the meantime, here's another little freebie to help your school year get off to a good start...

I give out this homework pass whenever a student gets 100% on a math or reading test. They LOVE getting a "cupcake card" and I love rewarding them for hard work. If you'd like to use them with your class, just click on the picture above to be taken to my TpT store where you can download it for free.

Back to School Freebie

Tomorrow starts the third week of school for us. My plan was to loop up with my class and have tons of free time since they already know what to do and we could skip all of the getting-to-know-you stuff. Well, all of that has happened except for the tons of free time part. What is up with the first month of school? Seriously...should it be this exhausting? Look, I'm so tired I couldn't even think of a good title for this post. So, let's just get to it...

Here is a back-to-school freebie for all of my fellow exhausted teachers. Enjoy!

If you haven't started back to school yet, I wish you a great first week! Don't forget to hop on over to Classroom Freebie for more...classroom freebies!

Thursday Threebie!

It's time for another Thursday Threebie! Last month's winners were Jennifer Steadman Brown, Kathy Illingworth, and Ellen Fisher. Just like last time, I'm giving away 3 products worth $3 each to 3 different people. Head on over to my facebook page to enter...