Make Individualized Bookmarks!

Pinterest does it to me every time!  I see something super cute, inexpensive, and fun - and of course, I want to see if it really is as cute, inexpensive, and fun as the picture looks.  :)  In this case - the answer is yes!

Want to see my latest quickie Pinterest-inspired project?  head over to The Organized Classroom Blog to see for yourself!

See you there!

Need an Activity for AFTER Halloween?

Are your students still talking about Halloween? A little sluggish from candy overload?

Try this fun activity that lets them talk a little more about one of their favorite holidays, yet allows them to practice great critical and creative thinking skills.

It's FREE and aligned with the Common Core Standards for writing. 

Download this freebie here:

THE DAY AFTER HALLOWEEN CREATIVE WRITING ACTIVITY

www.hungergameslessons.com

www.traceeorman.com

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:)

Halloween is Almost Over so ...On to the Next Holiday!

Looking to bring a fun Math Center to your 1st-4th grade classroom this holiday season? Do your students need some fun practice in adding, subtracting, counting money, and making change? If so check out the two new additions to my store:

Thanksgiving Feast Shopping Math Center

Holiday Cookie Shopping Math Center






These centers provide everything you need to create a cute, interactive center that students will have a lot of fun with while they get the needed Math practice.

Bears Thematic Unit For Kindergarten

Looking for a great way to fill the days between Halloween and Thanksgiving?

This 90 page Bear unit is divided into areas of literature, music, art, literacy, math, social studies, science, creative writing, word wall, and guided reading. The activities are clearly written, easy to use, and need limited amounts of preparation. The lessons (games or activities) included are scripted. They are written in a format that can be easily taught by the teacher or readily handed off to a parent volunteer or a classroom aide with complete confidence that objectives of the lesson will be reached. 

Literacy Activities:

Woodland Friends At the Park: Identifying Beginning and Ending Sounds

Corduroy’s Alphabet Game: Identification of Upper & Lowercase letters

ABC Honey Hunt: Identifying Alphabet Letters & Naming Letter Sounds

Bear Match: Matching Letters of the Alphabet

Bear Twins: Compound Word Deletion

Math Activities:

Teddy Bear Picnic: Spatial Intelligence and Estimation Strategies

Bears & Buttons: Counting With a One-to-one Correspondence

Pattern Bears: Extending Patterns

Race Car Riot: Ordering Numbers 1-12

Counting Hives: Number Sense Worksheet

Art Projects

The Three Bears

Poky Bear

Corduroy Portfolio Sample

How To Draw A Bear

Social Studies

Families: Portfolio Page

Writing Prompts/Word Wall

What I Know About Bears

The Three Bears

Bears Word Wall Words

Science

Hibernating Bears: Bear Facts

Songs

Three Brown Bears

Poky Bear

Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear

Corduroy

Guided Reading Books

Where Is My Bear?

All Set for Halloween?

Check out my site for some great Halloween printables including three FREE Addition worksheets WITH A KEY! Students will love the fun Halloween clipart. Head on over to Power Point Maniac's Teaching Resources for more info!

Thanks!

What do you get when you cross the following: anatomy and physiology students, chemistry students, the school library, Halloween, the science club, and the Make-A Wish Foundation?

Just complete science FUN!!

Each year at our school, our students who are enrolled in either Anatomy and Physiology or Chemistry are required to carve a pumpkin with a theme that corresponds to the class that are taking.  As you would expect, some of the students go all out and bring in some really amazing creations, while others just do the bare minimum.  But, it always turns out to be a great day, and all involved have a lot of fun.

Come read my complete article and see pictures of the amazing pumpkins my students carved to raise money for the Make-A Wish Foundation!

My first early bird winner - you could be next!

Congratulations to Martha McManus. Martha chose my resource on Fractions, Percents and Decimals. Follow the link to have a look at what she won. The resource is for Grade 6-8 Math and includes a card game, 2 math centers and a quiz with solutions.

I'm on my way to 100 followers on TpT (86 right now) and I'll be randomly giving away more of my resources as prizes to those who help me get there. Most of my resources are for middle school - Math, LA and Classroom Management etc. and I also have lots of freebies!

Simply check out my TpT Store, click the red star where is says "Follow Me" and then enter here to win. As a follower, you'll get notifications when I post new products, am having a sale or contest etc. 

If you're already a follower, perhaps leave me some feedback on one of my products and then fill out the entry form.

Here are links to just a few of the resources in my TpT store:

Indpendent Reading Plan Projects Gr 6-9

Bring Current Events into Your Classroom

My Dream Vehicle: A Math Project on Percents, Decimals etc

Thanks to everyone who's already entered - good luck to you all. I'll be drawing another early bird winner soon, so enter now and then stay tuned to The Lesson Cloud for updates. (The winners will also be emailed their choice of resource immediately.)
Thanks again,

Krystal Mills

Candy Science

Starting Tuesday you will be able to buy candy for 1/2 off at most places.  Why not have a little fun in your classroom too?  I got these experiments from The Science-Literacy Connection  :

Delta Education’s Commitment to Engaging Elementary Students.  This is a blog that connects the products of Delta Education to activities we can all do in the classroom.

 

  This one uses the book  Handbook of Interesting Ingredients as a springboard. This is a book published by Seeds of Science.

 

Hop over to my blog to see these investigations....

 

M&M chromatography

Floating M's and S's

 Acid Test using Wonka Candy


I am doing the Acid Test in my classroom tomorrow!


 www.sciencegal-sciencegal.blogspot.com

FREE MISC. LESSON - “15 Minute Timer”

Stacy Pearson created a 15 Minute Timer which changes a PowerPoint slide every minute so that students will know when they have 15 minutes or 10 minutes to complete an assignment. You may use the timer for any subject and any grade. Go to “The Best of Teachers Pay Teachers” for this and other free lessons.

http://thebestofteacherspayteachers.blogspot.com/2011/10/free-misc-lesson-15-minute-timer.html

New Fall Freebies Page

November Freebies, free all the time from Wise Owl Factory including:  Free work pages for Scholastic's THE EARTH UNDER SKY BEAR'S FEET work page and PDF,   DREAMCATCHER picture book work page and PDF, and turkey and Thanksgiving related freebies on the new FALL FREEBIES PAGE

Mash It Up

I'm not talking about the monster mash although there are some great monster themed lessons to be found on TpT, both free and paid.  What I am talking about is a mash up of technology like You Tube, Wordle, open source clip art, and Prezi.  You can read more about it and see an example if you visit my blog post titled: Combining Tech Tools.

Last Minute Halloween FREEBIE!

Are you looking for a quick, simple, last-minute activity for Halloween? Try giving your students a "Potions Test" to see if they have magical ability! For this activity, students conduct a simple experiment to observe the reaction between vinegar and baking soda. The fun part is that students are unaware of the actual ingredients used! Instead, they are instructed to create a potion using either "dihydrogen monoxide" or "acetic acid" (water or vinegar) and "sodium bicarbonate" (baking soda). Some students' potions will bubble and fizz (indicating they are a wizard) while others will not!

All instructions and printable materials needed to complete this activity are available for FREE at my TpT store: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Spooky-Science-FREEBIE-Are-You-a-Wizard-Potions-Test-Experiment Enjoy!

I LOVE this!

To encourage healthy lifestyles, three towns in California have "walking school buses"! The kids wait at the bus stop until others arrive carrying the big bus cut-out! LOL

Read about it here:

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/dam/assets/111028014231-blue-zones-bus-wide-story-body.jpg

Ok....link doesn't go to the article anymore....but it goes to the picture that used to be at the X!

In a nutshell: Some adults walk along with the students. Some kids carry the bus, others get orange flags to wave. Most students walk about 1/2 mile to school.

Margaret Nominates

Five Outstanding Freebies

October 29, 2011

Writing Resources Week

Five great writing resources that look ahead to the November and December holidays.  Download now and get ahead of the mad rush!

FREE MATH LESSON - “Feasting on Subtraction Facts”

Yvonne Dixon created a Thanksgiving themed subtraction center for kindergarten - 2nd grade students. Go to “The Best of Teachers Pay Teachers” for this and other free lessons.

http://thebestofteacherspayteachers.blogspot.com/2011/10/free-math-lesson-feasting-on.html

11-11-11: Teaching Resources for Intermediate Grades

11-11-11

This fascinating date only comes around once every hundred years. So to celebrate this amazing event, we have come up with some activities and ideas that you can use in your intermediate grade classroom.

Math

Prime Numbers: The number 11 is a prime number. You could have an introductory lesson on prime numbers and why the number 11 is prime.

Multiplication: Multiplying by 11s is up to 11 x 9. Have your students practice the facts of 11.

Addition/Subtraction: Have students create story problems that have 11 as part of the problem or answer. 

Have the students problem solve when the next 11-11-11 will occur? How many years from now?

Probability: Have some dice on hand. Have students get in teams and see what the probability of rolling 11 will be in 20 tries.

Social Studies

11/11/11 is Veteran's Day.
 
You could invite 11 Veterans in to talk to your students.
 
You could do an 11 minute lesson on Veterans' Day.
 
You could tell 11 facts about why Veteran's Day is important to celebrate, and what veterans have done for our country.

Writing

-List any words that have 11 letters.

-Write a sentence with exactly 11 words.
 
-Write a poem that has 11 lines, 11 syllables...
 
-Write a quick story about 11-11-11 in 11 minutes. 
 
-Write a story about what life will be like the next time 11-11-11 comes around.

Reading

-Students read a book silently for 11 minutes.
 
-Do a read aloud to the class for 11 minutes.
 
-Meet with your guided reading groups for only 11 minutes today.
 
-Find 11 books and have groups of students classify them into different genres.
 
-Read a "whodunit" or "problem to solve" book and give the students 11 minutes to solve the mystery.

Sports

-There are 11 players on a football team. Have a discussion as to why that is and see if anyone can name the positions on offense and defense.

We hope you can use some of the activities in your classroom for  11-11-11. Please feel free to add your own ideas to our list too!

  Visit our store for great intermediate activities here.

101 Writing Prompts for Winter!

You have been asked to write a proposal banning the manufacture and wearing of ugly Christmas sweaters. Convince the powers that be that ugly Christmas sweaters should be outlawed. Be sure to provide examples and details to support your argument.

Think about the time you learned that there was no Santa Claus. When was that moment, how old were you, and how did it make you feel. Be sure to paint an image in the reader’s mind to take them on that journey of discovery with you.

Families do not always get along at the holidays. Describe how family discord can be a problem at these times, and detail how to best handle these situations.

Explain and respond to the following quote by Bill Watterson: I like these cold, gray winter days. Days like these let you savor a bad mood.

These are just a few of the writing prompts in 101 Writing Prompts for Winter - now available ($7) on TPT!  Perfect for grades 7-10.

Also, if you missed the 101 Writing Prompts for Fall, check those out as well!

Enjoy!

Kristen Bowers (aka Secondary Solutions)
kbowers@4secondarysolutions.com
TPT Store: www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Secondary-Solutions
Secondary Solutions Blog: www.secondarysolutionsblog.com
Facebook page: www.facebook.com/secondarysolutions
Twitter: @sec_solutions
Pinterest: @sec_solutions

Update...I'm up to 80 followers - help me reach 100 and win!

Check out my contest for your chance to win a resource of your choice. I've reached 80 followers and so it's time to give something away to celebrate. Enter now! My first early bird winner will be drawn this weekend. Maybe it'll be you:)

Get the details: Here.

Thanks and good luck to all who've entered so far!

Krystal

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Krystal-Mills/

Are you a Blog-Stalker?

I am so excited to announce a great new resource for all you blog addicts out there:  Teaching Blog Central!  It is a network of nine websites that has specific grade level blog rolls to save you time from searching through a million blogs and will allow you time to implement all those wonderful ideas you find from those amazing blogs - all neatly sorted into grade levels just for you!

And don't worry - The Lesson Cloud is listed on grades K-12, so you will never miss out on a post here either!  I would love to see what you think!  Please help spread the word by pinning Teaching Blog Central or adding the button code to your site if you are a fellow blogger.  I have heard so many great things about it so far, I just want to make sure everyone knows all about it!

If you want to know a little more about why I started TCB, feel free to hop over to The Organized Classroom Blog for my latest blog post.

See you there!