You Can Use this Fabulous Tool to Build Word Walls
Post-it definitely had teachers in mind when they developed these repositional lined sticky notes. These sticky word strips are great for word walls, to help highlight a word on anchor charts, or to label items in your classroom. This tool allows teachers to easily create a print rich environment. They are also colored, so they easily allow for coding the stickies by topic. For example all life science words could be green. Since they are repositional, I like to leave them on my white board while we are learning the concept, so I can write a definition or draw a picture with each word. Then move them over to the word wall later when we aren’t currently using them. I can always move the words back if we work on them again. I highly recommend these to anyone wanting to teach vocabulary! Target carries these and I usually can pick up a package for about $5 before school begins.
Where Can You Find Amazing Word Walls?
I just heard some colleagues discussing word walls that come pre-printed with pictures to go with the words. They have math, science, and literacy word walls–all with pictures. I didn’t know how good they were until I clicked the link for myself…and wow! They are fabulous! Just take a look at the pictures. I am attaching a link to the picture so if you are interested in viewing more or purchasing them, just click the picture.
Pi Hoop–Deal or Dud?
After designing a lesson for students to discover pi and trying to collect many sizes of circular containers, I happened across this The Pi Hoop in the ETA/Cuisenaire catalog. Since I order all of the math supplies for my school, I thought, “Wow! At only $4.95 I could order a whole class set”. So I did. When the hoops arrived I was excited since this alleviated having to find multiple containers to teach the discovery pi lesson. On showing them to some teachers at a common planning meeting, I was dismayed to find that the cheap plastic cracked when trying to fold down the ruler part that creates the radius of different circles. If you are gentle with the pi hoops, the concept of the hoop is great because it allows for a discovery lesson–however if an adult was able easily to break the plastic, imagine a class full of kids with the pi hoops in hand. In my opinion, save your money–they may come out with a sturdier version later on. Collect containers for now. An assortment of containers most likely will engage your students more than a plastic hoop anyway.
Improve Your Students’ Engagement During Reading/Writing Workshop
Visiting with a colleague, she passionately shared with me the amazing difference that a book called The Daily Five had made in her literacy instruction. My colleague, who is a veteran teacher, learned about this at a differentiation conference, and she tried using the methods for the first time this school year. Other teachers have come into her room during her reading workshop and see the quality of student engagement. They insist that she share what she is doing to have students so engaged. The Daily Five improves students’ stamina to read voraciously on their own and to independently work on their own while the teacher pulls small groups. The small groups are more targeted to individual needs because the teacher spends less time with each student and doesn’t have to attend to students who are working independently. To read more about “The Daily Five” visit this link: http://www.thedailycafe.com/public/department38.cfm.
Ordering Materials…Get a Price Match Guarantee
Classroom Products Warehouse (CPW) may not be as well known as some educational catalogs that are slipped into your mailbox over the course of the school year. As a matter of fact, you will probably only receive one catalog at the beginning of the school year. CPW invests more time and money into their website instead of sending out multiple catalogs, so they can keep their prices low to save you money. In fact if you find an item in another educational catalog, they will match their competitors’ prices. If you order by phone, CPW also has excellent customer service. Be sure to remember CPW for your next order of classroom products.
http://www.classroomproductswarehouse.com/
Increase Your Students’ Achievement By Following This Tip
Classical music influences learning, memorization and spatial reasoning according to research. The limbic system in the brain which causes long term memory is affected by music. The more emotional responses one has while learning new information, the more easily the information is retrieved from the brain. Since music causes emotional responses, begin playing music in your classroom give students a learning advantage.
A source for classroom music well worth considering has been written by music educator Maribeth Alexander. Maribeth, wrote the piano music on the album entitled Creation. She has used the music with her own students, and other teachers have used her music successfully to calm their students and increase student achievement in the classroom.
Maribeth Alexander’s Creation album may be purchased on itunes or CD baby. 02 Earth Click to hear Maribeth’s album.
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/alexandermaribeth
Are Prang Crayons Worth the Extra Money?
There are several main brands of crayons you will find in stores–Prang, Crayola, and Rose Art. Crayon price does determine quality. Crayon companies save money by adding extra wax and less pigment to their crayons. Rose Art are typically the cheapest and deliver the weakest color. Crayola are a good standby that produces average color. Prang, however, consistently delivers vivid, vibrant color and is worth the extra cash.
Free Printable Math Resource Sheets
Van de Walle is the author of several math lesson books including Teaching Student Centered Mathematics. His lessons extend student thinking, target misconceptions, and provide many hands on lesson activities. Kindly enough, Van de Walle has made the blackline master printables available for free at the link below.
http://wps.ablongman.com/ab_vandewalle_math_5/0%2C7959%2C796754-%2C00.html
http://wps.ablongman.com/ab_vandewalle_math_6/0%2C12312%2C3547876-%2C00.html
You will find ten frame cards, printable polygons, area and perimeter shapes to measure, grid paper, dot paper, protractors, fraction and pattern lesson activities etc.
How Can You Teach Angles with Effective Manipulatives?
AngLegs Plus, a fabulous new math manipulative, I discovered last year when looking for a way to teach angles. These take the place of the teacher made card board pieces with brads. AngLegs Plus are colored plastic pieces that snap together and extend or retract. Where the pieces meet together common angle measures are labeled in small print such as 45, 90, and 120 degrees. Not only can students build angles, but they can also build regular and irregular polygons. What makes these manipulatives so impressive is that students can maneuver the sliding pieces to see the relationship between the length of sides and the angle measures. If you teach angles and polygons and you have the money in your budget, definitely buy AngLegs Plus. You will not be disappointed.
Which Pencils Are the Best Value?
Upon sharpening many types of pencils in the classroom and having the sharpener gnaw them down to the stature of a small golf pencil, I have discovered the pencils with the worst and best value.
First, I will describe pencils not worth investing in. Pencils from a dollar store and holiday pencils etc. are hardly worth buying because the sharpener wears itself down on the plastic coating and cheap wood surrounding the lead. The lead is too soft to show up well on notebook paper, and the wood splinters too easily on these types of pencils.
I have tried Dixon pencils, Oxford pencils, Office Depot pencils and a number of others of which I don’t recall the names, and these do a fair job. However, they don’t produce consistent sharpening results in which one does not have to resharpen due to breakage, splintering, or the lead not being centered.
Pull out your wallet for Ticonderoga and Papermate. Ticonderoga pencils have soft, non smeary erasers, sharpen perfectly without breakage and splintering, and write darkly. Papermate rivals Ticonderoga in that Papermate pencils have dark lead and they are made of quality wood, which eliminates splintering breakage. In contrast, Papermate erasers are hard compared to Ticonderoga and sometimes cause smears. Papermate pencils sell for much less than Ticonderoga and with the savings, you could buy cap erasers. Most often before a school year begins, Papermate pencils are on sale for a substantial savings over Ticonderoga. In my opinion, Papermate pencils are the best value pencils.
