Back to School: Fantastic Free Common Core Resource

If you are getting ready to teach this year, you are probably thinking about Common Core!  Here are some great resources to help you prepare for the year!  A group of sellers contributed, and some excellent leaders at TpT compiled these fabulous back to school common core ebooks.

There are books for each secondary core subject, k-2 math and ela, and k-3 math and ela. They include common core tips, free resources, and some paid common core resources. 

Check it out!

Here is the Science Book.  When you click on the science book, you will also see the other books!

Science Back to School Common Core Ebook

New Resource to Share and a Puzzle for You

My blog has been quiet lately. I apologize. I have been enjoying the summer, as I hope you have been too. I have been working on doing some small home improvements, playing with my kids, and just relaxing!  Such an important goal of the summer!! In between all the time of not doing work, however, I went to a professional development and was introduced to an amazing website that I wanted to share with you!

The Ithaca College Look Sharp project focuses on media literacy. They provide case studies and lesson plans in many different subject areas related to media literacy. These are definitely common core related, and critical to becoming informed and educated citizens!  

Here are few pictures from the PD that I attended. More details soon. If you have an idea what these activities were about, please leave a link in the comments.  

Simple and Successful Early Finisher Vocabulary Strategy

As I have gotten more involved with more elementary teachers, both through forums and blogs and through being in a K-8 building, instead of a high school, I have come across the idea of "early finisher" activities.  This is not a common phenomenon in high school classroom.  However, I do have a few tricks up my sleeve that might be helpful to keep in mind as you are thinking about setting up a classroom for fall.  Here is what I do for early finishers:

1. Start homework
2. Make up work
3. Vocabulary Review - They can work on words from the current unit, or past units.  They can work with a partner and quiz each other, or they can work on the vocabulary cards by themselves.  

I am trying to a new system to organize them this year.  I am using on of the hanging shoe organizers (at Aldi for $2.99 last week).  In each pocket of the shoe organizer is a set of vocabulary words for that unit, definitions, and an answer key (words and definitions correctly matched up).  Students can spread out the words and definitions, and try to match them up.  They can then use the key to check their answers.  As things picks up during the year, they can time themselves and I have a record board.  For additional extra credit, they can write them out, draw pictures, etc. 

If you teach in a secondary setting, what is your best use of time for early finishers?