Stocking Up!

I made my yearly trip to Target to take advantage of their super cheap prices on composition books. I was joined by several other teachers and before I knew it, notebooks were the focus topic. Should we use spirals? Composition books? Will spirals last longer? What will be more convenient for making and inserting copies? What will be easier to lug back forth from classroom and home? Which will hold up better to middle school kids? How many notebooks will each student need this year? What's being used in high school? What's being used in elementary? What to do, what to do? 

Well....It'll be composition books for me this year. I just got a couple of boxes donated, so I'm excited! Super grateful for all of the donations that are given to me. Only 10 more days until all of the happy little junior high faces make it to my classroom!

Fourth of July Sale!

SAVE 20%!

I'm having a Fourth of July Sale! Head on over to my store for savings on all of my products!

Fourth of July PowerPoint Templates

What better way to spend the past week's worth of triple digit weather than creating PowerPoint templates for the next school year. I've got both pre-titled and generic templates for sale in my Teachers Pay Teachers store. Check 'em out!

'Bout Time!

Geez! It's been almost a year since my last post...not good. Oh well, I'm going to chalk it up to working full time for the first time in at least 5 years and being a mother to a 3 and 4 year old. The good news is that all my hard work will pay off in the form of some personal time next year (fingers crossed) since I've got a rough outline of a pacing guide put together. No more reinventing the wheel for me!

Things I am excited about:

1. I just finished presenting at a week-long NGSS summer institute put on by the California Science Project. I really enjoyed talking about interactive notebooks and their benefits to science education (actually any form of education, for that matter). I got to work with some of the most amazing people; it'll definitely go down in history as an amazing experience. 
2. While in the the NGSS institute, one of the teachers shared a site that she uses in her class. The site is called Newsela and it is awesome. It is a collection of current, relevant, and interesting articles in any content area for students to read. You can select an article and either print it off in 5 different Lexile reading levels or assign it to students according to their reading level  online using the online class feature. I'm super excited about this and can't wait to use it in my classes next year. I see it being particularly useful when we conduct Socratic Seminars.  
3. My best friend is now our district's literacy coach. I can't wait to work with her in developing strategies to build science literacy as well as encourage dialogue within my science classroom. 

I still have a while until school starts, but it's nice to have some things to look forward to.