What did the Rat Say?

Wow, it's been way too long since I blogged. I'm glad to be back and I'm glad to come back with a free activity! :)

My class worked on a little dialogue practice the other day. We use Essentials for Writing in my literacy class, which is a HIGHLY prescriptive book for middle/high school students who are more than two years behind in their writing skills. So most of the time, I'm reading from a script, and it's very teacher-directed. My students need that, I get it, but sometimes, I need something a little more inspiring to get them to want to write more. Most of my students are very creative and pretty good writers. They just have trouble staying on topic, and grammar/mechanics are very tricky. 

I recently bought a book at our school's Scholastic book fair called Good News Bad News by Jeff Mack. I don't know about you, but I will typically purchase a book that I think I can use for a particular skill, and this one lent itself beautifully to cause and effect practice. However, I picked it up the other day and read it cover to cover. In my head, I was adding dialogue to the rabbit and rat on each page. What happens in the story is the rabbit suggests a picnic to the rat, but bad things keep happening, preventing them from having their picnic. The rat points out all of the "bad news" and the rabbit tries to look at the positive side of things, which is what is pictured on the "good news" pages. I've always used wordless books to work on dialogue skills. But, this book works great as well. You could also use it to add that cause and effect practice before or after dialogue skills. 

You can check out the book here:

 (www.Amazon.com)

You can also click on the picture to take you to the Amazon page. 

Since it IS close to Thanksgiving, I wanted to GIVE away my little dialogue activity that goes with this book. Check it out here, or click on the pictures below to take you to my TPT page where you can download for FREE! :)

Here are some more sample pages:

Here is the first page of the worksheet. I put pictures of a rabbit and a rat on each line so it would be easy to see who is speaking (even though I included who was speaking in each sentence). 

You could have students complete this entire worksheet independently. However, to have a line for each page in the book (for each character's "dialogue"), I had to put 23 sentences in, so that might be a little overwhelming for one sitting. I ended up letting my students work with a partner. You could easily cut apart the strips and give each student one or two to punctuate, or you could cut apart a few strips and give a set to groups of three or four. As always, do what works best for your students. 

You do NOT have to read the book with your class for them to use this activity. Students can simply read the sentences and punctuate them correctly. 

Please leave feedback if you end up using this activity. I would love to know how it worked for your class. 

Enjoy the freebie! And enjoy your weekend. Stay warm - it's a balmy 28 degrees here in Louisville, Kentucky right now!!! Brrr!!!

A Sale and a Freebie!

We all knew it was coming...and thank goodness! It's here! The annual TPT Back to School Sale!!! Stock up now on all of your favorites. Check out my store to get my products 20% off and be sure to use the TPT code BTS14 to save an extra 10%!!! Click on the picture to take you to my store!

Here's a little freebie for you and an idea...

Do you use abcya.com in your classroom? Do your students practice typing? I am a technology teacher at the school where I teach, and my intermediate and middle school students spend at least 25% of their time in my class each week practicing typing. One game I use is SkyChase. Click here to go directly to the game. If you go to the game, you can still access abcya.com games – there’s a lot on that website, and it is very student-friendly.

Anyway, SkyChase (or Keyboarding Chase – it’s called both on the website), according to abcya.com, “is an educational multi-player racing game that allows students from anywhere in the world to race one another while practicing typing and keyboard skills!”

Sometimes, I allow my students to play just for fun. Other times, I want some formative assessment as to how my students are doing with a quick typing “assessment”. I give them typing tests at the beginning of each term, but if I need a quick score to update where they are in the semester, this is a good one to give me as estimate.

The key to “winning” the race is to type the words that pop up the fastest. The faster you type, the more your airplane moves ahead of the group. The words that pop up above the keyboard are not too hard – the one in the picture is “far”. They do get a little harder as you progress. Even if you don’t win, you still get a accuracy and rate score. That is what I have the kids record. Where do they record this, you ask? On my SkyChase Recording Sheet! What I do is tape it up on my whiteboard and once my students finish their game, they write their names on the sheet along with the accuracy and rate. I take down the sheet, hole punch it, and put it in my grades binder so I can check their WPM (words per minute) score and average them out by the end of the semester. This also shows me the students who need to spend some extra time practicing typing rather than playing other “sponge” games when they’re through with other tasks.

(I couldn't get the picture to turn upright. I'm so sorry!)

Click on the picture below to download my SkyChase recording sheet! If you have any questions, email me at teacherashley@gmail.com  or message me in the comments below. J

Now, go stock up on TPT! :)

Do you love LEGO?

Again, I feel like a giddy little school girl. I published my second TPT product today: my LEGO Movie Fast Fact Reading Comprehension Task Cards! I absolutely love TPT and I thought for sure that I would be able to find some things that interest my students, like the "LEGO Movie" and "Frozen", and I did find a few things, but not everything I wanted. So I decided to make them myself and share them with anyone who wants to use them with their students. 
If you have ideas of movies or books you would like for me to create task card sets for, please let me know. Email me at teacherashley@gmail.com or message me in the comment section below. By the way, if you would like to purchase the LEGO Movie task cards, you can get them here.

While my mind is on LEGO, I thought I would share a blog that I've been following lately, and she has some GREAT LEGO stuff to share. She is Allison Waken from All for the Boys. You can get to her blog here. She recently posted about LEGO art and LEGO parties with TONS of pictures and ideas. Is it too early to plan my 18 month old son's LEGO birthday party (in January)?

So does anyone have any unique uses for LEGOs in their classrooms? Do you use them as rewards? Do you have any cool lessons using LEGOs?

Organizing Digital Files

Ok, this blog entry is going to be more of a discussion post than informational. I want to know how you all organize your digital files. I mean, I don't know how many of you download files from TPT on a DAILY basis like me, but I have a difficult time filing things in an organized way where I can easily find them later. Instinctively, I try to organize things into as few folders as possible, but when I try to find things later, I end up looking through a thousand files in one folder and I end up giving up looking for a file because it takes too long! I mean, you can only spend so long looking for one file!

This is a visual representation of what my digital files look like:

I was inspired by a pin from Cara at Kindergarten Boom Boom about how she organized her file folders and color-coded them! However, I don't have a Mac, so I don't have the ability to color-code. I WISH I did - that would be amazing. I would color-code my whole life if I could! :)

Therefore, I just want to hear from all of you (any of you??? Is anyone out there reading this?) about how you organize your files. Do you organize them by TPT seller? How do you organize fonts? By seasons? Type? What about fonts? Commercial use vs. personal use? By TPT seller?

Leave your thoughts in the comments below! Happy Tuesday!

FROZEN Movie Fast Facts Reading Comprehension Cards

Well, I finally did it. I posted a new product on TPT (www.teacherspayteachers.com)!!! I am so excited! It's a task card set about the movie, "Frozen". I actually looked for something related to the movie on TPT earlier this summer (I promise I'm taking time to enjoy my summer and not spending all of my time getting ready for fall ;), and there was nothing out there! I had wanted to sell some things on TPT for a while, but everything I wanted to put on there was already there and I didn't feel the need for redundancy. So, it was the perfect time to start selling!

Hopefully, if you're reading this, you'll go check out my product posting here. While you're there, please click the star by my name to "follow me" so you'll get updates on any new products I post. 
Here's a teaser....coming soon! (Lego Movie task cards)

Picture courtesy of Lego.com (http://club.lego.com/en-us/)

Bloglovin!

Wow, I'm late to the game! I'm hoping that by posting this, I will be part of the Bloglovin' community! I've been following so many awesome teachers on Bloglovin', but I've neglected this poor little blog of mine in the process! You can click here to follow me on Bloglovin'!
I don't know how all of you amazing women do all you do - create products for TPT, update your blogs weekly, if not daily, and follow all of the other blogs out there!!! It's truly astounding!
I will be back later in the week to share an epiphany I had about plastic envelopes - you know, the ones from the Dollar Tree. They're actually plastic binder pouches, but I'm in organization mode, and I found a great use for them!!! Stay tuned!

Organizing with a "Fantastic Library"

Do you have a classroom library that is difficult to keep organized? Do you find it difficult to keep up with all of the books you have? That has been my problem lately, not to mention that I can't fit all of my books in my classroom. Most are in my basement, and it was a mess!!!...until....

I found a new app  - it's called "Fantastic Library."

It's awesome. I have about 3,000 books in my basement and they were EVERYWHERE. I started organizing them based on categories and genres. Then I had to organize somewhat based on the size of each stack that I had. I didn't want to use GIGANTIC clear storage containers. So some of my containers have a somewhat random "mishmash" of books. Therefore, I decided to create a database of all my books. THEN, I found this app, and it's even better! Once you download it, you just start scanning the barcodes of each book with the app. It takes a "picture" and leaves it on your bookshelf in the app.

How convenient!
I'll still need to make a list of which bin each book is in, but it's nice to have a picture list of my books. From what I found out of all my books, I have quite a few with the same title, but very different books, especially non-fiction.
The app will also help you keep up with the books you loan to others.
It even does this with with games, music, and movies! (But this post is more about educational uses for the app!)

There's even a quick "scroll view" - similar to album views in iTunes.

I can't remember who told me about the app or where I read about it. Whomever suggested it, thank you! I hope others who read this will be pleased with how it helps you organize your own libraries! :)

P.S. It's a FREE app!