Five for Friday 7/18 - Free Quote posters

I'll be honest, trying to remember what has happened this week is not so easy!  I haven't been sleeping well, and have been in a bit of a funk lately.  I'm not typically a moody person, and this particular mood is almost a new one for me.  Hope it passes quickly!  There are good things to share, and I'm going to get into linking up again with Doodle Bugs - Five for Friday again.

I want to start with an item that relates to McGraw Hill Wonders series for ELA.  Our school just adopted the new 2014 edition, and since I'm only teaching ELA next year, it's been a part of my everyday, and the reason I originally started this blog.  I'm up to 13 followers now (from 1 last Friday!).  I no longer feel that this is a "journal" for myself, so I better get back to writing something that's hopefully worth reading.  I'm working on going through the sea of resources and taking notes on the good, the bad, and the ugly.  I intend to share when done, but here's an item from each category for now.

The Good:

 

 I'm still not sure where to find this when navigating, but search "ehandbook".  This is much better aligned to CCSS, is interactive, and has models and practice pages.  I had found the online site last year, which has been down for a while, and my colleague Kelley then tried searching for it in the resources!  TIME SAVING TIP:  Click on the star for any resource you like.  It will turn yellow, like in my picture above, and then it's saved under the "My Favorites" tab at the top.

The Bad

Anything (almost) related to grammar.  I cannot say enough how disappointed I am that this series was being sold as CCSS aligned.  Finding a small way to squeeze everything in, without providing solid practice, or integration into assessments is not good enough for the price tag!  Everything about their grammar is old-school style, covers many things that are not in CC, and hardly addresses the newer standards that everyone is so desperately searching for materials for (Ex: relative pronouns, modal auxiliaries, etc.).  Very disappointing.

The.... Interesting (Ugly is too mean of a word)

Search "performances" and I'll let you be the judge.  I will withhold my comments on these performances other than to ask, what is supposed to be the objective with these???

Joining this blogging world has been fun for me, and perhaps expensive.  I've spend $75 at Michaels this week to do some crafting.  More to come on Monday Made It.  My one crafting project inspired me to do more with quotes on the computer.  I love quotes, and I've already integrated quotes into my Weekly spelling, vocab, etc. sheets.  (See my earlier blog post for more info on these.)  I chose not only good, 4th-grade level quotes that are aligned to the weekly essential question, but I tried to find quotes from notable people.  Then I realized, that my intentions of talking more about these individuals might not come to fruition.  So I made these, and I have the first 5 done for Unit 1.  I'm trying something new, uploading them to Google Drive to share.  Hopefully it works!

 

Sharing my growth on new adventures:

I really started going on TpT in January.  I have now have 34 items, 19 followers, and a 4.0 rating with 123 reviews.  My goal is to get to 50 followers by the end of summer.  I think this will be tough!  I am trying to be creative, and offered my quotation task card set FREE to any new store followers.  If anyone is interested, just add a comment below after following, and I'll email them to you.  Just make sure you aren't a "no-reply" blogger.

I moved my items to Teacher's Notebook at the end of June.  I have 34 followers!  This is mostly due to the Giveaway I started on Monday, when I only had 2 followers!  Giveaway ends today, and since I reached my goal of 20 followers, I will put one of my better items up for free for the weekend.

Blogging started with my first post on June 23.  I now have done 12 posts, have gained 13 followers, and have had almost 600 views!  I'm happy!

iPad menus????  Last night we took my ex-step-mom out for her belated birthday.   Yes, "ex" step-mom, and my mom went too.  Yes, that would be my dad's other "ex".  Love my family!  Anyways, the restaurant had iPads at each seat with the menu on it.  Each item you could pull up a picture and more information about it.  I was impressed, my husband not so much.  Anyone else ever experience this?  Didn't take a picture, but found this online:

Ciao Restaurant in Sylvania, Ohio

 

Well, I'm feeling better.  Thanks for listening everyone.  I've really enjoyed the connections I've begun to make with my fellow, online, blogging educators.  Next up for me is to find help in getting my blog a little prettier like some of yours.  Any suggestions?  

I'm off to the lake to help my dad get ready for my grandpa's 90th birthday party tomorrow.  The guest count is around 55, so I'd better get motivated.  Happy weekend everyone!!