Star Writer Award!

What a surprise to receive yet another award! 

I've always been an avid writer but never in my wildest dreams 

did I ever expect to receive such a prestigious award!

Again, this top award was sent through cyberspace 

and landed mysteriously on my blog!

 I'm not allowed to divulge the identity of this well known blog reviewer!

Maybe you'd like to take a guess?

Education Blog Award 2012

I'm very humbled and honored to have received this award 

from one of the most prestigious blog reviewers on the Web.
She spends endless hours, days, months to
help teachers' dreams come true! 

This award is not passed from one blogger to another
but rather is awarded secretly to education bloggers. 

TeachersPayTeachers Back to School Sale!

TeachersPayTeachers is having an incredible Back to School Sale on August 12th and August 13th.

Use PROMO CODE BTS12 to get an additional 10% off!  Fantastic lessons, novel packets, ready to print worksheets, Common Core items and more! The savings will help teachers have a stress free start for a new school year. Click on the sale sign to see more! 

Remember! This sale starts tomorrow, Sunday August 12th! 

Happy Back to School to All!

Teachers are adding to their wish lists on TeachersPayTeachers now. Browse my store and add to your list. The sale begins Sunday! Everything in my store will be on sale!

Just a few examples are...

This is one of my newest packets of ready to print worksheets for common and proper nouns. Great practice for the Common Core Standards!

Check out my Common Core Reading themes worksheet and student friendly rubric that can be used with any story or novel! 

Students have so much fun coloring the states they don't realize they're learning

states' shapes, locations and other important information. Have them work in small group

and watch the fun begin!! 

These cards are a perfect way to assess your students' knowledge of vowels/consonant sounds, prefixes/suffixes, base/root words, verb tenses, syllables, singular/plural nouns and more! 

Use as pre-- and post assessments to determine their strengths and weaknesses.

There are 24 task cards, teacher answer sheet, teacher sheet to record their answers, mastery certificates in black and white and Common Core labels for students' folder in color and black and white. 

Once you determine who needs extra practice in a certain area, you can work with small groups. 

I also offer novel packets with ready to print worksheets that save teachers from having to create them!

Stop by my store and browse my 200+ products of teacher saving worksheets lessons in reading, spelling, English, science, social studies, holidays and more! 

Scroll down to see more of my product listings that were featured in the Lesson Cloud sale! 

Ruth

Subjects and Predicates

I remember my fifth grade teacher required us to state our answers in complete sentences. I'm not referring to writing our answers in complete sentences. She would make us turn a question around and answer her orally in a full sentence. I learned a valuable lesson from her and throughout my teacher career have always insisted my students do the same. 

These days everything is quick and easy. Need a cake for a party? Buy a boxed cake mix. Need to change the channel on the television? Grab the remote instead of getting up to change it. So why not answer questions with a quick "yes" or "no"? 

Is everything quick and easy in our classrooms? Do we require kids to give us oral answers in complete sentences or do we accept one word answers so we can move on to the next topic? Are we too stressed out because we're required to meet goals in all subjects by the end of the year and it  just doesn't seem like we'll be able to cover all the material we're supposed to? Have our expectations changed?

Oral response is just as important as written response. In my opinion, speaking in complete sentences should be required in schools. 

For that reason I created a subject and predicate packet of ready to print student worksheets with my instructions. Hopefully, teachers will stress the importance of written and oral responses as they present these to their students and require they give their oral responses using complete subjects and predicates! :)