Owl-ways Be Inspired

School Prep: Back to School

Friday, June 26, 2015

It's my favorite time of the year . . . school supply time! I was at Target this week and found all kinds of teacher goodies. Unfortunately, Back to School shopping can quickly add up. I have found a couple of things that have helped save money.

Do you have a paper cutter? Is the blade getting dull? It is pricey to get it sharpened. You can purchase some sandpaper, cut it, and the paper will sharpen your paper cutter. Dollar Tree sells sand paper. Sand paper will also sharpen your scissors!

One of the best investments I ever made was a gallon of glue. Amazon has the gallon below for $16.02 right now. When the bottles of glue that your students bring at the beginning of the year runs out, refill their bottles with your jug of glue. I recommend using a small funnel. Dollar Tree sells those, too.

Click HERE for glue.

Looking for more Back to School ideas? Check out my Pinterest board that is full of fun stuff.

You are invited to pop over to my blog. I love to share tips and free stuff.

Sources to make my blog post graphics can be found HERE.
Click HERE to read my blog's disclosure statement.

Summer Reading... What's On Your List?

Monday, June 22, 2015

Hey everyone!

I love to read! With surviving my first year of school, my reading was cut way down because at times, I felt it was like sink or swim. You better believe I swam!

What I love about the summer time is that I can read pretty much when I want. I've been scoping out other teachers' blogs and IG accounts to see what they were reading before settling on a few for now. Key words, for now. I have a few more books I have on my wish list that I may be adding before long!

1. The Leader In Me. Why did I pick this? My principal gave every staff member The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective Leaders. At some moments, it was very intense. I wanted the TLIM because it seemed to be a better resource for teachers implementing this in the classroom. The main theme is making students become leaders. My school is a certified IB school and so this ties in perfectly with many of our attitudes and attributes.

2. Learn Like A Pirate. As I'm currently geeking out that not only did the author tweet me back, so did The Leader In Me and Dave Burgess, haha, I'm loving this book as it correlates with The Leader in Me. This book is about having students lead in the classroom. Now you might say that sounds ridiculous, as that's what I was worried about to, but since I'm looping with my kids, I feel that this will be the perfect opportunity to try this out (or at least start integrating this a little).

3. Word Nerds. My kids didn't get as much vocabulary practice as I would have liked. Yes, they got vocabulary from my reading lessons and sometimes in small groups and content areas. I confess, my main focus this year was surviving my first year teaching and focusing mostly on reading and math. I have to toot my own horn and say I did a pretty darn good job and I rocked science and social studies. Poor writing got the short end of the stick. I vow that next year with these kids (same class) that writing will get more of a focus (but of course now I have all new curriculum to learn) and Word Nerds will be perfect for helping me with that. I really got into this book. It's about developing a vocabulary routine and using cloze reading skills, inferring, antonyms and synonyms, instead of having kids just look it up in a dictionary.

I want to know what's on your list? What are you reading that I should add to mine?