Reflections…

Avery® Inkjet Clean Edge Business Cards #8371, Matte Finish, 2″ x 3 1/2″, White, Pack Of 200 (Item # 422371) – Office Depot

These Avery Business Cards are great. You can print sight words on them, math facts, whatever you want. Avery has templates on their website that you can download to your computer and just use them to set up the cards so that they print correctly. The cards are perforated and come apart very easily after they are printed.

These cards are also the perfect size to fit in the business card protectors that I blogged about a couple of weeks ago.

The title of this post is linked to avery.com where you can find a lot of resources to use with their products – the word “template” in the text is linked to the specific Avery template for business cards

Firefly 20 GB External Hard Drive

Today’s favorite thing is very serious. Having an external drive for back up is critical! Trust me, I have suffered a recent loss! This is something I feel silly about because there is more than enough space for me to have stored every file I have to this drive.

This Firefly is listed at Amazon for $149.99 – (the page is linked to this post). If you shop around, I’m sure you can find a better price, and you certainly don’t have to have this particular storage solution, but make sure that you have something that you can rely on. Don’t be caught without one!

PDF Lab

District computers have this available in the applications folder, but if you don’t have it, here’s how to get it…
Open your Universal Locker > Teacher Info. > Software > OSX > (“P” folder) > PDF Lab.

This is one of those tools that I often take for granted. If I suddenly lost it, I wouldn’t know what to do!

Here’s how it works – you open up the window, and you can drag .pdf files into the window. From there, you can “stitch” separate files together to create one document with multiple pages (this is a big bonus – you can then send them to print center for 2-sided copies). OR – you can open a document with multiple pages and select only the pages you want to have included in the new file you will “create”. That way, you don’t have to print pages you don’t want or need.

Are you looking for a great FREE software download? Tuxpaint is a free drawing program, and my kids love it!

It has a lot of tools and fun effects that kids can use to create fantastic artwork! Tuxpaint even has great sound effects – try it, I’m sure you will enjoy it!

Looking for a good way to teach kids about nouns & verbs? Here’s a technology solution! Get your hands on a digital camera AND a digital video camera. Let the kids experiment with the two different cameras, guiding them to the conclusion that nouns are things you could take a still picture of – using the digital camera. Verbs are things that you would need to use the video camera for – to catch the action! Of course there are always exceptions – some words that wouldn’t quite work in this scenario, but I think you get the “picture”, and I think that kids will not soon forget the difference between a noun and a verb!

Oh, the title of this post is linked to the National Educational Technology Consortium’s website. They have a couple of publications there that talk about wasy to use technology to teach literacy.

Acrylic Box Photo Frames.

All you need is one of these clear plastic box frames and some corn meal and let the learning begin! Put the frame face down on a table and cover the bottom with a thin layer of corn meal (corn meal isn’t as abrasive as sand or salt). Students can practice writing letters, numbers, sight words, anything! Put it down on top of a piece of colorful wrapping paper, OR – one of my favorite things…put it on top of the overhead projector! After the student “writes”, they can check the screen to see how they’ve done!

The title of this post is “linked” to the Hobby Lobby website. Check their specials this week to find out if these frames are on sale, or print off a coupon to use in the store. They come in many sizes!

Apple Video Adapter

I’m surprised I didn’t think of this favorite thing sooner. I guess I could teach without it, but I know I wouldn’t teach as well.

If we’re not careful, our teaching can be unbalanced and directed only toward auditory learners. This is the most natural mode for us to teach to. It has to be a conscious decision to include visual and kinesthetic learners in the lessons we teach. This is one tool that can help us “adapt” (pun most definitely intended) our teaching to include learners with various learning modes.

I use it ALL day, EVERY day!

Linkin’ Logs – My computer died earlier this week. It was quite stressful. I had backed up quite a few things, but had missed some too. Thanks to Mike, our travelling tech genius, some of the things I thought I couldn’t live without were able to be recovered.

Through all of this, the one thing I didn’t even give a second thought to were the bookmarks I keep. All of my bookmarks are safely and neatly organized in my Linkin’ Log account.

Linkin’Logs…priceless!

Favorite things #4 – Free Printables!

There are a couple of sites that I visit over and over again, and my guided reading instruction wouldn’t be the same without them.

Hubbard’s Cupboard is a great place to find printable booklets for children to read and take home. These booklets are carefully written by an educator and categorized by the word family or sight words that they teach. I love having these little books that kids can take home and read.

From Hubbard’s Cupboard, you can get to Carl’s Corner where this creative educator has organized a seemingly endless collection of activites that reinforce word families. I use so many of the materials available here. I don’t know what I would do without this resource. Oh, and one of the best things is that she has put all of the activities for each word family into a “zip file”. So that you can just download the whole file and use what you want (some are word documents and others are in .pdf form).

Favorite things #3 – I’ll put two things together here. My absolute favorite teaching tool is iTunes. But, I have to admit that my iTunes wouldn’t be nearly as valuable without their content, and the person most responsible for providing the content of my iTunes is Jack Hartmann. He has put together so many songs that are invaluable for instruction. There are kids in my class who know some pretty impressive things as kindergartners, all because they learned it from a song!

This is Jack’s latest album – I purchased it just the other day, I’ll let you know what I think when I get it.

Oh, and it’s important to note that Jack got his start at the University of Florida – Go Gators!