What have I been up to???

I have been away for a long time.  Not literally away, but away from the blogging world.  I have been very busy in my education life and in my home life.  My dad came to good old Maryland for a visit (in fact he is next to me right now)!  I have so enjoyed having him and taking a few more days of vacation before heading back to school.  Prior to that, I worked on a number of posters for my classroom.  I started by making posters with cute backgrounds from Run Miss Nelson's Got the Camera.  I made posters with a chevron background, but then I realized that my bulletin board fabric was chevron.  Then I made the same posters with the crazy dot background, but even that looked too busy on the chevron fabric.  So I settled on a lime green and black background with white letters.  I think it will look great!  You can check them out here:  Six Traits of Writing Posters.

Here's a preview:

What do you think??  

I will also be posting my chevron and dot posters for sale on TpT, but I don't have them quite ready.  If you're interested, like my store and get updated when they are added!

Monday Made It- Planning, Common Core, and Freebie

As promised, here is my Monday Made It with 4th Grade Frolics.  

1.   The "Write" Stuff resource sheet.  You can find this on TeachersPayTeachers as a freebie by clicking the link.  Here is a quick preview.  This is linking back to my post about fun fonts.  I love the look of these two fonts.  You can read more about the fonts I chose in this post.  If you like the fonts, you can click on the link in my sidebar for free scrapbook fonts by Kevin and Amanda.  I still need to finish the resource sheet for my seventh graders, but when it is finished I will also post that as a freebie on TpT.  If you want an editable version of this resource sheet just request it and I'll send it by email.  This is very specific for my class and the papers that we are writing throughout the year.  Also, the 6 trait resource sheet that is referenced is not yet made.  : ) 

2.  I made my plan book today.  I still need to figure out how to cover it because I'm using an old binder.  I think I'm going to try and find some colorful (or chevron!) duct tape to make it fun.  I really liked the plan book that Lauren made (check it out at her blog-Life in Middle School), but in order for it to really fit my needs I had to make a few changes.  I used hers as a template and made my own.  I used GoogleDocs, which was a little tricky, but it was what was available.  Here is a preview and it can also be found at this link.   I decided to include an objective for each area that I want to cover.  Even if I am only doing a small activity for Wordly Wise or for grammar, it will help me to ensure that I am balancing all the areas that I need to teach.

When I started to copy my plan book I realized that there is not a ton of room in these boxes.  I teach seventh and eighth grade so I decided to copy the pages twice for each week.  I think I will like this better than the traditional plan books that include the class periods of the day.  This spread is seventh grade for one week, and when you turn the page it looks exactly the same, but it will be for eighth grade.  I love how having new resources brings excitement to things like planning!

Monday Made It- VistaPrint

My very first...

I am excited to report that I have used my Vista Print groupon.  I found this deal on Ms. Potter's blog, and I jumped at the opportunity for this great deal.  Through perusing blogs and Pintrest, I had tons of ideas for my classroom.  Two blogs in particular gave me inspiration, Ms. Potter's blog (see above) and Mrs. Finley's blog.  I pinned my favorite ideas from their blogs: check out my pins!

Update:  For some reason, some of the images in my post are gone!  I have updated the information below based on which images are still showing up.   I have used all of my custom Mrs. Smith sticky notes (not pictured).  They were probably my favorite item that I ordered.  I also still use a magnet that I made for my agenda which I made from a car door magnet.

Here are some other things that I made:


Ideas from Middle School Minions:
made from a postcard

  On the back of this card there is a place for the names of the missing assignments and additional notes.

Ideas from MSKCPOTTER:
made from a loyalty card

One of my biggest complaints during the school year is students forgetting items that are required for class.  I didn't want to say that they could never get their supplies from their lockers, because it negatively affects their studies.  I think this is going to be a good solution.  I will give the students five freebies.  As long as they have their punch-card, they can go and get their required supplies with no consequence.  Once the card fills or if they lose their card they will owe a detention for forgetting supplies.  I am really excited to try this!

UPDATE:  I have been using this system for three years and it works really well.  I allow students to share a punch with a friend if their friend has run out or forgotten their punch card.  It helps the students become accountable for bringing their supplies to class.  This was a WIN!