Author: smartchickteacher

Thanks so much to Mr. Hughes and his fabulous blog for hosting this wealth of freebies! Hop on over there and see which great freebies you can use in your classroom! My FREE Invention Trading Cards are listed!

Enjoy your Sunday!t

LOVE this idea! I started making borders many years ago, especially when I could not find any cute borders to go with the content subjects we were working on.

The kids each get one sentence strip, we use the back side of the strip. Then fold the sentence strip in half, in half again, and in half again (until there are 8 folded sections total on the sentence strip). We draw a line on each fold and then write a vocabulary word associated with the topic on the bottom and draw and color a picture for the word above the line. The bulletin board display looks great when the borders are handmade!

Hope this is an idea you can use!

We dissected cow eyes in science class and the kids were so amazed and interested!  I ordered them from BioCorp for a great price and then I found an easy to follow packet of information on-line for FREE!  Gotta love that!  This site even has a video of the dissection that you can watch!

The most amazing part had to be seeing that the pupil actually is a hole!  The lens was also pretty amazing!

This was a great ending activity to our color/light unit of study!

My class is ready to ROCK those tests! We have a rock star theme going this year and the kids are soooo excited!  Last year, this was a freebie on TPT, but unfortunately it is no longer available…

I painted the lettering on white bulletin board paper and then surrounded the words with these great posters the students filled out!  Amazingly simple and effective!  In addition to the display, we ordered a bunch of goodies from amazon, like inflatable microphones, sunglasses, disco ball necklaces and inflatable guitars (click on each item for the Amazon link)!  Each day the kids come and do their best, they will receive one item!  At the end of the week, my teammate and I promised the kids we would dress like rock stars!  Hahaha!  Should be fun!  Here is the link to a FREE pack of Rockin’ Test Materials!

We are so going to ROCK those tests!  🙂

My name is Jennifer Findley and I have been teaching in Chattanooga TN for the best 4 years. I have spent all four years in intermediate grades in an inner city school. I love it! I went into education to make a difference in the lives of students, particularly those living in poverty. I remember the first time I read Ruby Payne’s A Framework for Understanding Poverty. From that moment on, I knew I needed to do something that would help our youth overcome the endless cycle of poverty. It is heartbreaking at times, and extremely hard to say goodbye when the year is up. However, I truly hope that I am giving the gift of an education and a life time love of learning to my students each year.

Teaching inner city children is tough because they come to me lacking many of the necessary skills that most children their age have. One thing that I have always done to combat this is create sentence stems to help my students communicate verbally or using written language. I have compiled a list of my favorite sentences stems for reading comprehension into one pdf which can be in my TPT store for free. Click on the image or here to download your copy today!

Another strategy that I use is to make sure my items are carefully aligned to the standards. I don’t want my students to be surprised on a state test at the end of year! I want them to be as successful possible in whatever they do, even on those dreaded tests! With that in mind, I have created Test Prep Helpers that are directly aligned to the 5th grade Common Core standards. I have several individual test prep helpers and one awesome bundle that covers 19 of the standards that are trickiest for my students. Check it out by clicking here or on the image!

Last, but not least, come visit me at my blog and my TPT store! I would love to see you there!