Happy Easter and a Sale!

Happy Easter!  We started our spring break at the end of the school day yesterday, and since we're not going anywhere this year I thought I'd spend every waking moment on Pinterest obsessively check for more followers/TPT sales hold a 20% off sale at my TPT Store! All items which are regularly priced at $2.50 or above are on sale until April 1st!  Check out some of the items on sale below:

20% off items Math

20% off items - Language Arts

   

20% off items - Other

Of course there are many other products that are already priced at $2.00 or less also!  Thanks for reading and please consider following our blog and/or facebook page!  Oh, and before I get to carried away with my sale, I wish you all a Happy Easter!

March is Reading Month

So, like many of you, our school spends the month of March engaging in a variety of activities specifically designed to help us remain sane through the long winter month encourage a love of reading in our students.  For the past two years our spring fundraiser has been a Read-A-Thon and since this year's theme is outer space, we were all encouraged to decorate our doors in a spacey way.  Now, people who know me (Becky) know bulletin  board paper and I do not get along, so I always dread this kind of thing.  However, my competitive must be the best at everything good natured spirit took over and thanks to the magic of Pinterest I stumbled across this great space ship craft from Danielle's Place of Crafts and Activities.

Reading Takes Us Out Of This World

Danielle's Place of Crafts and Activities

It's hard to see, but these cute little spaceships include the words "I went to visit..." and students finished the sentence with a favorite book character or setting that they have visited through the power of reading!  If you look closely, you'll notice SkippyJon Jones, The Interrupting Chicken, and Corduroy!  It was an easy craft to do, but did require a little prep before letting the kids loose with it.  My husband who never knew he would have to work so hard when I gave up nursing for teaching is very supportive, cut around the centers of 28 paper plates!  If you're a member of Danielle's Place of Crafts and Activities, she has detailed instructions and a template for the center part available.  I found it easy to let the kids paint the plates and decorate the inner circle on paper, then glue the paper on top of the plate.  Anyhow, it turned out great, especially for a bulletin-board-paper-phobic! 

Academic Vocabulary That Works

Our district has undertaken the daunting exciting process of teaching academic vocabulary words to all students in grades K - 12.  When we were first presented with this idea, many of us early elementary teachers thought, "No way will this work with (insert your early el grade level here)!"  However, even bossy know-it-all the best early elementary teachers can admit we were wrong.  Academic Vocabulary instruction has been going very well in our first grade classrooms and we discovered a way to make it even better!

The Academic Vocabulary Word Wall!

 

We decided to incorporate the (not new) idea of a spelling or high frequency word wall to our vocabulary words.  And because the most important thing is that our classrooms are cute and colorful functional and meaningful we created this poster set.  We took the reason for teaching academic vocabulary plus the inspiring brightness of The3amTeacher's zig zag background set and waa-laa!  Academic Vocabulary - Sparking a Brighter Mind and Spark of the Day.  It's one of the most beautiful useful bulletin boards in our rooms!  Having our words posted along with the journal page examples keeps the words fresh in our minds (ours and the students) making it easier to reflect and review forgotten previously learned terms through review games.

And now for the FREEBIE!

If you'd like to grab your own copy of our poster set, click here!

Thanks for reading and if you like what you've seen, follow us!

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