Author: smartchickteacher

Next week is Teacher Appreciation Week, and Sunday, May 6th is sure to be your lucky day! It marks the launch of the Teacher Appreciation Jackpot, a “blog hop” event involving over 130 bloggers!

We want to say how much we appreciate you in a BIG way, so each of us has agreed to give away one of our TeachersPayTeachers products for free as our contribution to the blog hop. Each product will be valued between $3 and $8, so the total jackpot is estimated to be worth over $500! We’ll post the actual amount on Satuday, May 5th.

Because so many bloggers are participating, this event will be divided into three grade level groups. Each of these events is being coordinated by one blogger as follows:

PK-Grade 2—April McNair at her blog A Modern Teacher
Grades 3-6—at Laura Candler’s Corkboard Connections  http://corkboardconnections.blogspot.com/2012/05/teacher-appreciation-jackpot.html
Grades 7-12—hosted by Adrianne Meldrum on The Tutor House

Details are still being worked out, so be sure to check back each day this week as the events unfold.

We really appreciate all that you do!

TeachersPayTeachers is showing appreciation for educators this week by offering 10% off all products from today through Tuesday. In addition, I’m offering 20% more off everything in my own TeachersPayTeachers store! After you download your freebies, I hope you’ll come back and shop later to save on great teaching resources!

Look below to find links to over three dozen terrific Grade 3-6 blogs where you can download your free gifts! We appreciate your commitment to your students and your dedication as an educator! Thanks so much for all you do!

The item I have for FREE can be found here!    It is a great packet of activities to do using gummy bears!  Enjoy!  Don’t forget to visit the other participants to see what goodies they have to offer today!

We have been reviewing life cycles in class using mealworms. These are a quick and easy way to study the complete metamorphosis of the darkling beetle. We got the mealworms at the pet store. I created a HUGE mealworm packet to use during this unit! Click here to see the packet on www.teacherspayteachers.com.

What animals do you like to use in your classroom?

I found the perfect picture book to link to our current novel, Masters of Disaster, by Gary Paulsen! It is called, The Book of Bad Ideas, and it is hysterical! We wrote our own book of bad ideas using a set of blank books I got from Discount School Supply. They turned out really funny. Check out the pics!

My 4 year old, in the spirit of bad ideas, decided to draw in my book of bad ideas… go figure!  Check out the links to the book, blank journals ($15 for 24 of them), and the novel unit.  It is a great book, especially for those reluctant readers!

What is your favorite picture book to use during a novel unit?

Click here for a FREE PACKET to go with this picture book!

This is an amazing book! It will be released on Amazon on April 3rd, but you can get it through the Scholastic website right now! Amazing pictures and endless possibilities of how to use it in the classroom. We made our own bug books (got mini-books from discount school supply) using water color pictures we made of each bug on one side of the page and information about the bug on the other side of the page!

We created stuffed fish by folding a sheet of white bulletin board paper in half and tracing the fish on it. Students then cut them out leaving a half inch space all the way around it. The two halves were stapled almost all the way around and then stuffed with paper. Once the fish was stuffed, the rest of it was stapled and then we displayed them! They turned out so cute! People cannot help but to stop take a look and read about each type of fish!

A few years ago I came up with this idea with the help of the art teacher at my school. Each classroom decides on a theme and then the students create poetry about the theme. Poems are typed (or handwritten), and then placed onto these towers. The towers are three sheets of cardboard (60 in x 20 in). We spray paint them and then fold and tape or staple them together. Notch them and then just slide them onto one another. These make an adorable display for April (it is poetry month, I think). To go hand in hand with the project, we compile all of the student poems into a school-wide anthology and give a copy of the anthology to each child! They LOVE it! They read those anthologies cover to cover!

Hop on over to the Poetry Linky Party at Mrs. O’s Rockin’ Resources for more ideas!  Click here!

The students always love this writing project! Their assigned task is to create a combination creature by joining two very different creatures together. They must then write an informational report about the creature, taking into account what the front and back halves of the creature’s body would be doing. It takes quite a bit of creative and critical thinking to do this project! Here is the link to a FREE prewriting sheet for the project!

My kids LOVE glyphs! We made these owl glyphs and they had a blast! We also created Question Posters, click here for the FREE Template! They had a great time researching owls and we ended the unit with an owl pellet dissection. You can find the Owl Pellet Dissection Lab here.

Using clear nail polish, a variety of found items, and plastic microscope slides, your students can make a bunch of microscope slides very cheaply! The kids love making them and they love looking at them through the microscopes even more!

Try it!

The students created Transformation Cubes in order to take notes on the four types of transformations in math (dilation, rotation, reflection, and translation). Each side of the foldable has the definition and an example. The cube folds easy for flat storage in their math journals! This foldable could be used countless ways! All you need to do is to take two sheets of cardstock, fold them leaving a one inch or so flap hanging out. Then glue the extra part to the side of the other sheet of paper until you have make the cube! Add a little tape to the inside to hold it securely!