Friday, November 25, 2011

HUGE TPT sale!


I try not to post a lot of "selling" type blogs but don't want you to miss on this one! TeachersPayTeachers has sales like this only a few times a year so make the most of that Black Friday Madness leftover energy and head over!

Many stores have their items on sale for 10%, 15% with a lot having 20% off!

If that's not enough to get your educational mouth watering....

Type in the code CMS28 at checkout and you get an additional 10% off!

Check out my store here for you Reading/LA/Social Studies-minded individuals or search for anything that you will be doing in the classroom. Now is the time!

Good luck! Two things I can guarantee: You will find an amazing deal and it will be safer than Black Friday Store Fronts!

Starting Monday November 28th!

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Scoop.It - Cool online magazine

There are several sites now coming out that help you to create newspaper or magazine type sites for specific information. I had tried paper.li with little success but was recently introduced to scoop.it. It was actually easy to maneuver and figure out. I got it up and running very quickly and was impressed with the types of finds it pulled up for my chosen keywords. I will be updated (curating) this magazine often so please take a look and let me know what you think!

Click on the picture below!


Thursday, November 10, 2011

Quick Shout Out to Thanksgiving Savings

Have you checked out the TPT item of the month on this blog and still want more?? (Who doesn't right?) Click the picture below to see a large growing list of amazing Thanksgiving products!

Friday, November 4, 2011

Awesome Biography I wanted to share!


I ran across a book that I wanted to share with you guys!

The Glo-Brothers by Chris Barton


It is a biography about the two brothers who invented fluorescent day-glo colors. The book has awesome and engaging pictures, short enough to read in class and leave time throughout the week for some really awesome activities.

I had them complete a biography analysis sheet as we read (Part of this packet here)
All this week they have been working on a large group poster project. they split their groups into 3 teams:

Team A did an awesome newspaper activity (click here to see the url) showing a summary and cool facts from the story. They also drew and labeled the diagram from a url given in the book (click here to see it) about how light, fluorescent light, and day-glo works.

Team B did a timeline, conflicts and solutions, and major turning-point events from the story. (The analysis sheet was a big help here)

Team C did a Venn-diagram between the two brothers and created a rhyming poem.

Extra small poster that told it was a biography and how we know (i.e. 3rd person, told about another person's life, etc...)

Two days ago I had them choose from a variety of really cool black and white pictures that I printed off the computer. Didn't tell them what we were using them for but said to choose the most visually appealing to them. Today, they will be adding fluorescent paint to their photographs in the style of Andy Warhol and others who took advantage of the fluorescent paint in their works. I have a short PPT that I will show them first displaying some of Andy Warhol's fluorescent works. It should be fun!

The following pictures are from my students work. These are displayed in my hallway outside my classroom. Enjoy!


Such a great book and I hope you give it a try in your classroom!

Please leave a comment if you have any other great ideas for classroom uses!