Wednesday Weekly 5 under $5 - 2/24/2021

Every week I put together a list of 5 great products from members of The Best of Teacher Entrepreneurs Marketing Cooperative (TBOTEMC) with the requirement that each product must be less than $5.  With a variety of subjects and a wide range of grades, there just might be something that you can use, so continue to read below and see!

In addition, if you're a seller on Teachers Pay Teachers (TpT) who would like to get more information about joining TBOTEMC, contact me via email at ReneeHeiss@gmail.com or simply by leaving a comment on this blog post.

Penguin Pals Winter CVC Words and Pictures BOOM Cards™ - $3.00

By Kamp Kindergarten

K - 1st grades

Internet activities, literacy center

Your little learners will love this engaging penguin themed CVC Words and Pictures winter phonics deck from Kamp Kindergarten. Learners select the correct picture on the penguin tummies for the CVC Word on the sign. All of the answer choices on each card begin with the same sound so learners don't automatically know the correct answer after looking at the first letter. This digital task cards paperless phonics resource is a great way to keep your little ones focused on dreary winter days.

ITALIAN SONG: IL CONGIUNTIVO - $4.00

By Urbino12

9th - 12th grades

Cultural activities, fun stuff

Your Italian students will enjoy leaning about the subjunctive tense with this popular song entitled Il Congiuntivo by Lorenzo Baglioni . Perfect activity to introduce or review when to use the subjunctive tense with high school students in your Italian class.

Core French Référence illustrée de sons individuels - $4.50

by Primarily Learning

K - 2nd grades

Digital, posters

These 6 French Letter and Sound Charts provide a visual reference to connect letters and sounds. Unsure of the French sound or alternate spelling? Just check out the graphic for the phonetic clue. It’s a comprehensive French Phonics resource for both staff & students! {French Immersion, Core French}

 

Spatial Concepts Activity- Safari Animals - $4.00

By Victoria Leon

K- 3rd grades

Lesson plans, activities

Addresses the prepositions or location concepts such as: Behind, Next to, Under, In Front, On top, Between. Perfect for teletherapy! No prep needed. Great for a zoo or animal theme. Animated slides that hide the answers. Sounds for elephant and lion on slides. Works on goals to address basic concepts, following directions, and spatial concepts. Customizable to your needs.

Electric Distribution - An investigative mystery for remote or in-class learning - $3.50

By All-American Teacher Tools

5th - 9th grades

PowerPoint

This .ppt slide presentation shows students the path that electricity takes from the power plant to the lamp plugged in at their house. Each slide explains the step in the system, then asks students to research what might have gone wrong at that step to cause the power outage. When they have completed all the steps, you will hand them a card (or virtual card) that will tell them where their power was interrupted. This encourages them to make a comprehensive list of problems. If the card they received matches or nearly matches one of the problems on their list, they earn a prize from you! 

Other WW5U5 Team Members on TpT to Visit:

Scipi

Tammys Toolbox

Reading Spotlight

Charlene Tess

Mickey's Place

History at Home

As always, I encourage comments below and any ideas or suggestions by emailing me at reneeheiss@gmail.com

Renee Heiss

All-American Teacher Tools

Check out my Store

Wednesday Weekly 5 under $5 = 2/17/2021

 Every week I put together a list of 5 great products from members of The Best of Teacher Entrepreneurs Marketing Cooperative (TBOTEMC) with the requirement that each product must be less than $5.  With a variety of subjects and a wide range of grades, there just might be something that you can use, so continue to read below and see!

In addition, if you're a seller on Teachers Pay Teachers (TpT) who would like to get more information about joining TBOTEMC, contact me via email at ReneeHeiss@gmail.com or simply by leaving a comment on this blog post.

Digital Storybook on Magic E Syllables - $2.50

By Tammy's Toolbox

K - 3rd grades

Internet activities, task cards

Use this fun digital Boom Task Card™ storybook to practice vowel-consonant-e syllables. It is part of a series that introduces kids to the six syllable types. In The Magic Show, students learn how the consonant e magically changes vowel sounds

Story Grid (Distance Learning)- FREE

By Reading Spotlight

All grades

Worksheets, projects, activities

Do your students have trouble generating ideas for writing? This FREE Story Grid could be of immeasurable help. The grid makes it easy to create characters, settings, and plots for stories and plays. Soap opera and sit-com writers use it to produce ideas. Your students, too, can almost effortlessly become prolific, creative, writers with a multitude of story ideas! Ideas Galore! Improves Creativity! Crazy Fun! FREE!

Boom Cards: Action Verbs Sentence Completion - $4.00

by Mickey's Place

K - 2nd grades

Activities, games

Boom Cards: Action Verbs Sentence Completion is a wonderful way for Kindergarten and First-grade students to practice grammar skills while completing sentences. Each of the 40 slides has an action verb GIF which illustrates the activity for the sentence completion. Great for distance learning.

 

How to Dress for an Interview Boom Cards for High School and SPED - $2.00

By History at Home

9th - 12th grades

Internet activities, task cards

This Boom Deck is designed for high school students to learn how to dress for an interview! These 11 no-prep task cards work great for any high school student and are perfect for use in SPED classes and for teaching functional life skills. This boom deck covers what to wear and not wear for men and women. It also includes a video - How to dress for an interview for teens.

Women Inventors Bingo Game and Research Guidelines - $4.99

By All-American Teacher Tools

Literacy Center, games

4th - 10th grades

This project, perfect for Women's History Month, includes two activities: 1. A comprehensive Bingo game, and 2. Guidelines for a research paper on the student's chosen inventor. Detailed questions guide the research so your students can have an organized presentation. Start with the Bingo, ask students to research a specific inventor, then play the Bingo game again!

Other WW5U5 Team Members on TpT to Visit:

Scipi

Charlene Tess

Kamp Kindergarten

Urbino12

Primarily Learning

Victoria Leon

As always, I encourage comments below and any ideas or suggestions by emailing me at reneeheiss@gmail.com

Renee Heiss

All-American Teacher Tools

Check out my Store

 

 

 

 

5 tips to change the atmosphere in your classroom

Your classroom may have become a static entity because you are so involved with hybrid learning, keeping your classroom disinfected, and oh yeah, formulating interesting and educational lessons.  However, changing things up a bit, even slightly will help engage your students and stimulate their creativity.  Here are some ideas:

1. Change the bulletin boards, seating arrangement, or virtual background as often as possible. Weekly might be a bit of overkill.  But every two weeks of change will go miles to helping kids feel like their education is evolving.  Yes, this is a bit of work, but just one change – a new poster, a new bulletin board background, or even a bouquet of flowers on your desk, will be appreciated by your students, even if they don’t tell you as much.
2. In the real classroom, there are some funky odors!  I’m currently retired, but my classroom was directly across from the gym. Ugh!!  The gym odors wafted into my room!  Then I started adding a bowl of orange rinds on the table just inside the door.  What a difference that made!  My students came in and remarked how fresh the room smelled.  Aha!  They do notice some things other than what’s on their screens!  So, in addition to raising my immunity because I brought an orange for lunch every day, the orange odor both calmed and stimulated my students.
3. Plan for active lessons.  Instead of keeping your students in their seats for a full period, or more than 20 minutes at a time, plan for lessons that make them get up to stretch, or when the COVID crisis is over (Will that ever happen? I hope so!), have them move around the room for various activities.  See my resource, The Kinetic Classroom, for ideas.
4. Add background music occasionally.  I found that when students have background music (think spa channel or “elevator” music), they tend to focus on the task at hand, such as math problems during a test or writing a rough draft. 
5. Finally, if you are having trouble engaging your virtual students during a zoom meeting, have them change their names from Fred and Keesha to their favorite book, TV, or movie character.  At the very least, you'll get a smile from them when you call their name!

Change is good!  Look around your classroom.  Is it the same as it was in September?  Ouch!!  Do yourself and your students a favor and change things up a bit.  Do more than change the seating arrangement.  Change other areas of your room as well.  And maybe you can't implement changes immediately, so make a list of things you want to change, and then as you get the time and energy, go ahead and revitalize your room every once in a while!

Wednesday Weekly 5 under $5 - 2/10/2021

Every week I put together a list of 5 great products from members of The Best of Teacher Entrepreneurs Marketing Cooperative (TBOTEMC) with the requirement that each product must be less than $5.  With a variety of subjects and a wide range of grades, there just might be something that you can use, so continue to read below and see!

In addition, if you're a seller on Teachers Pay Teachers (TpT) who would like to get more information about joining TBOTEMC, contact me via email at ReneeHeiss@gmail.com or simply by leaving a comment on this blog post.

Women's History: Stories with Missing Vowels (Distance Learning) - $1.49

By Reading Spotlight

3rd - 6th grades

Worksheets

Fun! Effective! Timely! Easy to Use! Improve both comprehension and spelling while learning about Women's History. These eight short biographies of high-achieving women resemble cell phone texts. The students are provided the complete wording with blanks for most of the vowels that they then must supply, using both spelling and reading comprehension skills. Great for homework! Seat work! Learning Centers! Distance Learning!

Sentence Patterns Worksheets for Spring and Easter | Distance Learning - $3.50

By Charlene Tess

9th - 12th grades

Activities

This interactive digital resource for Google Drive will teach your students to rewrite sentences without changing their meaning. This is good practice for students to achieve sentence variety. At the same time, they will be reminded of things that are associated with spring and Easter..

S Blends Activities & Worksheets align with Jolly Phonics | Distance Learning - $4.95

by Primarily Learning

K - 2nd grades

Worksheets

Beginning blends need lots of practice. These printable S- Beginning Blends activities & worksheets will provide opportunities to learn, review, and get the extra practice they need! Included are: Peg-it Cards, Touch & Read Cards, Matching, Printing, Sorting & Sentence work... with support for Systematic Phonics!

 

I Am Malala Speech Analysis and Women's History Study for Grades 9-12 - $4.00

By History at Home

9th - 12th grades

Mini-lessons

An in-depth study of "I Am Malala" includes background history about Malala's life as an introduction to the speech she gave before the Youth Takeover of the United Nations. Great for Women's History Month or a communications class. Links are included for research plus a variety of activities. Available in PPT & PDF!

Snowy Words - A Winter Crossword Puzzle - $2.30

By Scipi

Printables

This resource includes two winter crossword puzzles; each with 25 words that all begin with “snow.” One crossword includes a word bank which makes it easier to solve while the more challenging one does not. Even though the same vocabulary is used for each crossword, each grid is laid out differently. Answers keys for both puzzles are included.

Other WW5U5 Team Members on TpT to Visit:

Kamp Kindergarten

Mickey's Place

Victoria Leon

Tammy's Toolbox

Urbino12

As always, I encourage comments below and any ideas or suggestions by emailing me at reneeheiss@gmail.com

Renee Heiss

All-American Teacher Tools

Check out my Store

 

 

 

 

The Mighty "IF"

 

The word IF is small but powerful.  Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem about it (which, IF you haven’t read it since high school, read it again – it is meaningful even today!).  IF can be a conjunction with several meanings or a noun with only two meanings in Webster’s dictionary.  But to teachers who want to enlarge their students’ world of possibilities for creative writing, I offer you the “Educational IFs” for your students to ponder.  Combine these with my prompts (links below) and you will have a fun time reading a wide variety of stories, essays, and articles from your little learners.  

Ask your students to use one of these IFs in their assignment

• The “Curious IF” – What IF…?  (Example: What IF the snow was green instead of white? How would that change the world?)
• The “Conditional IF” – IF….. then…..  (Example: IF my dog gets into the garbage, then __________- fill in the blank with the many things that could go wrong.)
• The “Dictator IF” – No IFs, ands, or buts! (Example: When my mom told me to clean my room, she told me there would be no IFs, ands or buts.  How would you respond to that?)
• The “Regrettable IF” – IF only…. (Example: IF only I had tied my shoe before I got on my bicycle.  What happened next?)
• The “Sassy IF” – As IF! (Example: When my sister told me she was going to make a million dollars selling lemonade, I said, “As IF!)
• The "Simile IF" - As IF (without the exclamation point) (Example: My notebook fell to the floor, as IF it had a life of its own.)
• The “Sorting IF” – IF any…. (Example: IF any flowers bloom in my garden, I will be pleasantly surprised.)

So, offer your students the possibilities below for their writing assignments, while using one of the IF statements above and watch their creativity soar, as IF their words took wings!

For Middle and High School:

FUN Writing Prompts - Nonfiction - This collection of prompts is in the form of clickable images on PowerPoint interactive slides. Your students will enjoy exploring all the possibilities. (Also available on Google slides HERE)

FUN Writing Prompts - Fiction - This collection of prompts is also in the form of clickable images on PowerPoint interactive slides. Your students will enjoy exploring all the possibilities. (Also available on Google slides HERE)

Valentine's Day Story Starters - No lace or Disney characters in these prompts!

For Elementary and Middle School:

Weekly Visual and Verbal Story Starters -  A set of 40 story starters that will keep your young authors busy all year long with a variety of topics to explore and develop. Each picture also contains a question for your students to answer.

For Elementary School:

180 Picture and Sight Word Prompts - Grade 3 - This collection of 180 picture prompts are arranged on an Avery 30-label template, so you can stick them to your students' journals, or simply print them on plain paper and glue into the journal. They are based on a Dolch sight word list.

180 Picture and Sight Word Prompts - Grade 2 - This collection of 180 picture prompts are arranged on an Avery 30-label template, so you can stick them to your students' journals, or simply print them on plain paper and glue into the journal. They are based on a Dolch sight word li

180 Picture and Sight Word Prompts - Grade 1 - This collection of 180 picture prompts are arranged on an Avery 30-label template, so you can stick them to your students' journals, or simply print them on plain paper and glue into the journal. They are based on a Dolch sight word li