Jul 9, 2012


Last Year I had big plans to do a graph a week with my kiddos, unfortunately it NEVER happened. Although I had collected some graphing files, I never had ones I truly loved and they certainly were not all together in one place. So, this year I decided I was going to make it happen!

I spent most of the last week, hours and hours a day, creating a 150+ page pack that I have entitled:
A Graph a Week
A Graph a Week includes 46 different Graphing Activities... MORE than enough for the Entire School Year! (Here is just a sampling of the graphs you will find in the pack.)

Each Graph includes:
  • Survey Question Header and Data Response Cards to use in a pocket chart or on a bulletin board
  • A Response Sheet with space for TALLYING and GRAPHING RESULTS and lines for recording DATA ANALYSIS
I am really excited about the finished packet and can't wait to implement A GRAPH a WEEK in my classroom this year with my first graders. It is available now in my TPT store


While I was creating the graph I also designed some new Simple Shape clip art called SIMPLY SHAPES which is also available  in my TPT store. I used these graphics for one of the graphs in the pack and have included it below as a FREEBIE for you.


Enjoy, and Happy Graphing! 

Jul 3, 2012

Along time ago - 25 years ago to be exact, I began my teaching career. During the summer before my first year, I  purchased loads of supplies and spent weeks and weeks decorating my classroom. One of my favorite items and most useful was my Flip Phonics Word Family cards.
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Unfortunately, after ten years of teaching I left the classroom to develop curriculum and train teachers how to integrate computers into their classroom and donated all my materials to my former school. Once I returned to the elementary classroom, I wished that I hadn't dumped all those wonderful supplies - especially those flip phonics cards.

I searched the Internet and looked through all my teacher supply catalogs, but never found those cards that I loved and used so much. So, this week I created my own set. Which I am posting here as a FREEBIE. I will be adding additional cards in the future and posting a more complete set on TPT soon.

Check out how cool these cards are! Just print them back to back on cardstock and you are ready to go - no laminating required! The children can even quiz each other with them...how cool is that!

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Jul 2, 2012

Unit 1 Open Court Materials Update

Today I completed updates to the Unit 1 Materials for Open Court and reposted all of the downloadable files. All the pdf files are now together in one organized zipped folder. If you are a first grade teacher using SRA's OCR Program you can download the entire set of Unit 1 Support Materials HERE.


Files for each week of the program include:

Unit Focus Question Posters
Weekly Overview
Spelling List
Challenge Spelling List
Spelling Pretest
Spelling Words for Pocket Chart
Vocabulary words and Definitions for Pocket Chart
Focus Wall Strips for Pocket Chart 





Jul 1, 2012

Follower Request

Yesterday, I had a request from a TPT follower to create a set of frog-themed classroom rules with specific wording that her grade level team uses. So, thanks to Annie ... you can grab a FREEBIE set too. (The set below includes a tweak or two from her set.)

Grab yours here. Enjoy!