Teacher Appreciation Gifts For YOU!

Wow, it's May already and my favorite week of the school year.... Teacher Appreciation Week! Teaching is a lot more than just hanging out with kids all day. You are one of the most important people in your students' lives and you work hard to make a difference! So THANK YOU for all that you do.

To show my appreciation for my fellow teachers, I've got some awesome surprises for you!

And last but not least... don't miss out on the Teachers Pay Teachers special TEACHER APPRECIATION SALE!!! Click the image to visit my store for 28% off of everything (even my big, already discounted bundles!)...

Have a wonderful week!!

Makeover Madness: TpT Seller Challenge Week 1

Now that school is out, I have quickly and easily slipped into sit-on-my-butt mode. I need motivation and luckily I discovered the TpT Seller Challenge. At least that will get me working on SOMETHING.

The challenge for this week is called Makeover Madness. I was supposed to pick one of my products that needed a makeover and well, make it over. I actually had quite a few to choose from, (Boy, did some of those early creations look bad!), so this was the perfect challenge for me. I decided to re-do my Hoppin' Good Behavior Clip Chart. It was a cute idea, I think, but the combination of fonts, colors, and backgrounds I used was terrible and the cover was hideous. Here's how it looked before...

Ugly, right? It wasn't just the cover. The whole thing was bad, except for the frogs. They were cute at least. So I kept the frogs, added a fly, changed the backgrounds and fonts, and added a weekly behavior report. Here's the makeover...

You Oughta Know About Winning The Pencil War

When I was a kid, I loved school supplies. I mean really LOVED them. Crisp white sheets of paper, bright markers, a brand new pink eraser, binders, notebooks, index cards. What could be better? It's secretly why I became a teacher. (You too? We should start a club!)

I still love school supplies. Well, most of them. I seem to have developed a love/hate relationship with the King of all school supplies. That's right... the Number 2 Pencil. My classroom is perpetually littered with them. It's not just yellow number 2s that I hate... blue ones, plain wood ones, and especially the ones with pictures all over them that peel off and clog up your pencil sharpener. I hate that my students regularly stick in a nub and sharpen it until it's jammed inside of the machine. Most of all, I hate that they spread their pencil love all over my classroom floor on a daily basis...

So what's a teacher to do? There's actually a solution. Something I used a few years ago when I had the worst class on Earth (the ones who purposefully stuffed things down the toilet to make it overflow on a daily basis). I don't know why I forgot about this. Maybe because I've had such lovely students since then. But the pencils are starting to make me crazy, so it might be time to pull out the big guns...

So what is this little miracle? A wonderful teacher named Mrs. Hazelton created a FREE resource called "Winning The Pencil War" to help us all stay on top of the pencil problem. Here's the gist...

• Give each kid their own pencil pouch with 8 sharpened pencils.
• They keep track of their pencils all week.
• Collect the pouches on Friday.
• Reward the ones who kept all 8 pencils in good condition.

There's a bit more to it than that, but not much. It's very simple to implement and she includes complete instructions and the little coupons you'll be using. If you're smart, you'll assign a student to collect the pouches on Friday and pass them out again Monday morning. I found that having two baskets made it even easier. Students who knew they didn't keep all 8 pencils put their pouches into one basket. The ones who thought they did a good job put theirs in the other basket. Checking them was a breeze! As an extra motivation, I occasionally left a little treat in the good bags.

Once I started using this system, my pencil woes were over. It really worked! Like I said, my classes since then have been quite lovely and I haven't had much of a pencil war going on. But with spring fever setting in and my room looking like the pictures above on a pretty regular basis, this might be the perfect time to pull out my pencil pouches once more.

(Here's a little tip: If pencil bags aren't in your budget right now, quart size freezer bags work quite well.)

So now that you know about this little sanity-saver, what about your pencil sharpener? Does it sound like a dentist's drill gone awry? Do your pencils come out looking like they were gnawed by a beaver? Then you will want to know about the The Quietest Classroom Sharpener. It's super fast and sharpens better than any electric sharpener I've ever seen. It even takes care of those cheap-o pencils from China with the lead that just falls out all the time. Take a look...

Looks pretty good, huh? You can buy one from Classroom Friendly Supplies or you can win your own super awesome sharpener right here:

Good luck! Now head on over to the blog hop to see what else "you oughta know about"!

An InLinkz Link-up

Stop, Swap, & Roll

I'm linking up again for Jungle Learners' Stop, Swap, & Roll product swap! I love participating in this linky because I get to meet some fellow teacher-bloggers and try out a new and exciting classroom resource. What could be more awesome?

So this time around, my swap partner is Crystal from Primary On The Prowl. Her store specializes in products for the K-2 crowd and she has a nice variety of affordable math and ELA resources. This year I'm teaching third grade and we are doing a LOT of writing. Check out the anchor charts my teaching partner made today...

I think the kids are a little bit tired of the formal writing process. (It's hard work!) So, I've been wanting to give them some fun writing during centers. After browsing through Crystal's store, I immediately knew I wanted to try her Writing Prompt Cards. 

I'm always needing new topics that get the kids excited about writing. This pack has a nice variety including narrative and opinion prompts. Many of them have really interesting story starters to help your writers get going (because getting started is usually the hardest part!). Each cards are also illustrated.

I chose several cards to put out during literacy centers. I picked narrative prompts with a mystery feel to them. My third graders are totally into mysteries lately, so I knew they would love to write their own! I was really pleased with how they dove right into their stories. Several of them even asked to work on them at other times of the day. Here they are hard at work...

A 3-page story? Wow! And it was good, too!

Notice the dictionary next to my young writers? They went and got it themselves. I'm so proud! 

Overall, their stories turned out really great! A few of the kids wanted to write another story using a different card when they finished the first one. I don't think that has ever happened! So, thank you for letting me try out your cards, Crystal! I know we'll get a lot of use out of them.

If you want to get this set of writing prompts yourself, you can find them HERE. The pack includes 78 different prompts: enough to keep even your most prolific writers busy. You can also enter to win them in the Rafflecopter below.

Don't forget to hop on over to Crystal's blog; Primary On The Prowl. You will also want to vist Jungle Learners to see some more product reviews and giveaways. You can find mine at Teaching Ideas for Those Who Love Teaching. Go check it out!

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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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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...

Don't Miss This Giveaway!

Good Luck Everyone!

I've teamed up with the best of the best TpT sellers for what I'm sure will be an amazing giveaway! 10 winners will each win one of the prize packages listed below. Each package contains a $10 shopping spree to 10 different stores- that a $100 shopping spree and a total of $1000 in products in all!

You can enter right from my page. Best of luck!  

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1000 Followers and an Awesome Giveaway!

I remember once when I was a kid, a local store had a big giveaway. If you happened to be the customer of a certain number (millionth maybe? I don't remember.), balloons would fall from the ceiling, confetti would fly, and you'd win some fantabulous prize like a shopping spree or a new car. I dreamed of becoming that lucky customer. But alas, I had no money to spend nor the ability to drive myself to the store and therefore, no chance of winning the coveted prize. (My mother didn't share my grand prize aspirations.)

Now I have a store of my own, and while a million customers is a loooooong way off, I have reached the mini-milestone of 1000 followers! So to celebrate, I'm hosting an awesome giveaway with the help of some other TpT teacher-authors. 

The best part is that anyone can win! Take a look at all the awesome prize packs which include some really fantastic products plus $20 to spend in my store...

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Good luck!! I can't wait to send out these big bundles of prizes to the lucky winners!