Teachers Have Class! Issue #5/February 2010 February Teaching Resources and Ideas
Welcome to the fifth newsletter of Teachers Have Class from Unique Teaching Resources!
It's hard for me to believe that it is 2010, this school year is really flying by quickly for me! It feels odd for me to not be teaching this year. I'm still having dreams of being in my classroom and having a teaching nightmare where all the walls in my classroom are cement, I have no windows, the room looks like a prison, and I can't find anywhere to display any of my students' work. Although I miss my students, I have really enjoyed the past 5 months of working on the resources to post on my website.
When I receive an e-mail from a teacher about a specific resource that they are looking for, I try my best to get that resource ready. If I can't, I let that teacher know when I think that I will be able to post that resource on my website.
I am not able to meet all of the requests that I receive in e-mails immediately, but if I can't, I write each request down on my priority list to address as soon as possible. I love receiving e-mails from teachers from around the world and hearing about what is happening in your individual classrooms.
The only thing that I enjoy more than receiving e-mails from teachers is receiving e-mails that contain photographs of your classrooms using one of the resources that you found on Unique Teaching Resources! Here is a photograph that I received just two days ago from Penny, a 4th grade teacher in Nevada. This is a picture outside her classroom of her students' Mountain Story Map Book Reports.
If you have a classroom picture that you would like to share with me, please use my Contact Me page. Simply fill out the form on that page and tell me that you have a photograph that you would be willing to share with me. I will write you back with an e-mail address where you can send it to. If I use your photograph anywhere on my website, I will write you back and ask you to pick any resource on my website that you would like me to send you a free copy of, as my way of saying thank you for your help.
As a teacher, it really helps me to see a finished bulletin board display of a resource that has been used by a real teacher. On my website, I try to provide as many graphical images as I can to give teachers an idea of what each resource is like. As my website grows, I hope to have pictures from classrooms from around the globe on my website.
This has been a busy month for me as I am preparing to go and hike Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania with two girlfriends the beginning of February. Besides working on the resources on my website, I have been trying to train for about two hours each day. I live in Bahrain, in the Middle East, and this is not easy to do because Bahrain is basically a flat desert island! This is a picture of the three of us walking near some sand dunes in Bahrain. I am in the middle, so you can see that I am much shorter than my two girlfriends, and I hope that I can keep up with their longer legs!
My friends and I have been trying to raise pledges locally from our hike to donate to a local British woman here in Bahrain. Her son (his photograph is on the t-shirts that we are wearing) has been kidnapped by her husband's family (her husband passed away recently). This woman is fighting a very difficult court battle to get her son back. Our upcoming hike and fund raising has been highlighted in our local newspaper twice in the last two weeks. If you are interested in reading about this, below are the links to these two newspaper articles.
After our hike to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro, which will take six days, we are taking a 4 day safari. I have made arrangements to go and visit a local elementary school in Tanzania during this time.
In December 2009, my website made approximately $500 and I have used all of this money to go and buy school supplies to donate to the local school that we will be visiting. I have bought colored construction paper, lined writing notebooks, color pencils, color markers, crayons, pencils, erasers, pencil sharpeners, rulers, glue, tape, and scissors. I am also bringing 3 soccer balls and a basketball to give to the children to use at recess time. So, if you purchased an item from Unique Teaching Resources in December, know that your purchase is going towards buying classroom supplies for a needy school in Tanzania.
I may not make it to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro due to the effects that altitude sickness may have on people, but I will give it my best shot. At 43 years of age, I am fairly fit, but I am not in tip top shape. Even though I am really looking forward to attempting this hike, and then going on a safari, I am the most excited about visiting a local school and donating classroom supplies to that school.
I am writing about this in my newsletter for two reasons. First, to let you know that any money that I earned in December from my purchases is going towards school supplies in Tanzania, so I want to thank you for your purchases. Second, I will be out of e-mail contact from February 3-16. If you write me during that time, I will not be able to respond to your letter, which I apologize for.
Now, let's get on to the month of February and some resources to help give you some ideas for Valentine's Day. Since this is not a very large holiday, I have only devoted one page on my website to teaching resources for February and Valentine's Day.
Special Reminder:
Reminder: The links to the free teaching resources that you find in this edition of Teachers Have Class will only be made available for the first 5 days after this newsletter was sent.
After 5 days time, I will take these free teaching resource links off and they will not be available for free. You will find them for purchase on my website instead. My newsletters will be available later to all of the visitors of my website so that teachers are able to read old editions of Teachers Have Class! I want to provide these free downloads only to the teachers who have subscribed to my newletter, so that is why those links will be taken off. The free resources that I provide for my valued subscribers are my way of thanking them for their support and interest.
So, be sure to download your free monthly resources promptly!
The first thing that teachers do each month is change their calendar. Below is my February Valentine's Calendar Set and the link to download it. The February title is a 2 page banner that should fit in most standardized monthly pocket charts that many teachers use. I have designed large February days of the week that you may find useful. The calendar number dates also fit in pocket charts, and I have included a blank square and a birthday square to use. There are 11 pages in this free PDF February Calendar Set.
Next, teachers need thematic worksheets for each month, especially for creative writing. Below is my Valentine's Day Someone Special Stationary Set and the link to download it. The title banner is 5 pages long, which you can assemble and use on your bulletin board display. There are color and black and white copies of the stationary for you to choose from. There are 7 pages in this free PDF Valentine's Day Stationary Set.
For this writing assignment students should choose someone who is special to them to write about. I found that if I used the word "special" instead of "love," that my students were more comfortable with choosing a wider variety of people to write about for this topic.
For a shorter creative writing assignment for February, students can write a Valentine's Day poem. For this set, I have created two different templates, one for a general poetry writing activity, and a second template to write an acrostic poem. There are 9 pages in this free PDF Valentine's Day Poetry Set.
This Valentine's Day Poetry Set includes:
5 page poetry bulletin board banner
General poem writing template (color and black and white templates provided)
Acrostic poem writing template (color and black and white templates provided)
Since Valentine's Day is not a very large holiday, I wanted to add another resource to my newsletter that was not related to this theme. I believe that the majority of teachers are looking for books to read aloud to their students and some ideas for teaching resources related to that particular book.
The Enormous Crocodile written by Roald Dahl, is one of my students' favorite books that I read aloud to them. Children also enjoy Quinten Blake's wonderful illustrations, which are published in color in many versions of this book.
This is a short book to read to your students, and I usually break reading it up into three different days. Although The Enormous Crocodile may appear at first to be for younger primary students, I have used this book numerous times with my fifth grade students with great success.
If you are doing a Roald Dahl author study in your classroom, this is a great book choice to use to read aloud to your whole class as a part of your Roald Dahl unit.
Students love creating wanted posters for characters from the books that they have read. The Enormous Crocodile is an ideal character for a wanted poster because of the nasty tricks that he attempts in order to eat some of the children in the town.
For this writing assignment, students have to describe the crocodile's appearance, what he is wanted for, where he was last seen, and the reward amount. Then, they have to write a detailed narrative describing the action that happened, and what made the Enormous Crocodile commit this crime.
For students who are often reluctant about writing, I have found that my students gobble up this writing task with great enthusiasm and creativity!
This Enormous Crocodile lesson plans set contains two templates that assemble into a Wanted Poster. The wanted poster measures 13 inches in height and 10 inches in width.
This set of Enormous Crocodile lesson plans includes:
5 Page Bulletin Board Banner (see above)
Assembling Directions
First Draft Worksheets
Final Draft Worksheets (color and black white templates)
Grading Rubric
Below is a sample of the Assembling Directions.
Below is a sample of the two first draft worksheets.
Below is a sample of the grading rubric that you will find in this Enormous Crocodile lesson plans set.
Below is a sample of the final draft Enormous Crocodile templates that you will find in this Enormous Crocodile lesson plans set.
Assembling these wanted posters is easy: students cut the dotted line off the bottom section, glue this piece onto the top section, and then trim along the thick black border of the wanted poster. Students draw a picture of the Enormous Crocodile inside the empty box.
Below is a sample of the final draft Enormous Crocodile color templates. It is a good idea as you are introducing this creative writing assignment to your students, to have a visual example of a finished wanted poster for your students to see. I have provided color templates of the wanted poster to save you time in having to color these templates yourself for your example that you show to your students.
Click on the link below if you are interested in downloading this free Enormous Crocodile Wanted Poster set of resources. (There are two sets of these resources in this set, one with US spelling, and a second with UK spelling.)
If you are interested in other teaching resources and ideas to use for The Enormous Crocodile please click on the link below. This link will take you to a page devoted to resources for this novel by Roald Dahl.
Below is a picture of my students with their The Enormous Crocodile Group Project. You will find resources for this collaborative group project on my Enormous Crocodile web page. In addition to this project, you will find other creative writing projects based on this Roald Dahl novel.
Recent Updates On Unique Teaching Resources
During the past month, I completed resources for my web page on The Enormous Crocodile (see the above link). I have posted my February/Valentine's Day web page, and I will be adding a few more resources to that page in the next few days.
In addition to that, I added four more book reports to my Book Report Sets web page. On this page, the following book reports sets are now available:
I added more resources to my sticker charts web pages, including a reading chart set in the shape of 11 different tropical fish that promotes reading a variety of different genres of literature.
Thank you for your interest in subscribing to my newletter. Remember to download your free resources within 5 days of the date that it was sent.
Please be sure to check out the other pages on my website for a large variety of other teaching resources that will engage your students in learning and save you valuable time.
Sincerely, Heidi McDonald
Creator and Site Manager Unique Teaching Resources
Welcome to the fifth newsletter of Teachers Have Class from Unique Teaching Resources!
