Sunday, May 27, 2012

A welcome and a freebie!

It seems strange to be starting up a teaching blog right as I'm ending the school year, but there's never a bad time to say "thank you." And that's basically what this blog is. A big, fat "thank you" to all the teacher bloggers and Pinterest fanatics out there. You see, I'm wrapping up my thirteenth year of teaching, and for too many reasons to go into, it's been a rough one. I had to reassess why I was a teacher in the first place: the kids, of course, and my passion for spreading the love of learning. To keep that passion alive, I started spending a lot of time on Pinterest. A lot of time. You know what I'm talking about. Admit it. You spend too much time there too, right? (Please say yes, so I can tell my husband I'm not the only one.)

Anyway, it turns out that there are a lot of teachers on Pinterest, and in the blogging world, who are really creative and awesome and, most importantly, share their creative, awesome stuff! They've saved me a ton of time and made my teaching even better. And while I was getting super excited about all of this and maybe driving my husband a little bit nuts, a thought popped into my brain…Hey, I've made a lot of my own stuff. I could share it and maybe save someone else some time too! Because, as we all know, time is a hot commodity among teachers. So here I am.

And here is my first gift to you:



This freebie could be two separate bookmarks or one double-sided bookmark depending on what you want to use it for. One page is the IPICK acronym from The Daily Five, and the other page (shown above) is a list of "Handy" Reading Strategies to help kids decode difficult words. I give my students bookmarks throughout the year that focus on the different skills we are working on in reading. This bookmark is what I use at the beginning of the year, since we start out with lessons on choosing good fit books. Most of my students come into my room familiar with the strategies on the Handy Strategies side since our entire school does Daily Five and CAFE. If they didn't, I would probably choose to introduce the Handy Strategies bookmark after I had taught them the strategies. Let me know if you find this bookmark useful!

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