Humor in the Classroom

I teach 8th grade (Information Technology and Engineering) and while I admire those teachers who can act goofy with their kids, that's just not me.  However, I do still like to share my own sense of humor with the kids, just in my own more reserved way!

One of the things I like to do is post amusing posters in my room that still have a purpose.  I found this quote that I really liked on the Internet, and "made it my own" with a Grumpy Cat meme generator.  The pretty background digital paper is courtesy of The Cottage Market,

My the second week of school, my students know I love Grumpy Cat's attitude (I want to be her when I grow up!) and have a couple other signs using her in my room too and she often shows up with some of her attitude in my PowerPoint presentations or just at an odd moment on my SMARTBoard.  

How do you share yourself with your students?

TpT Seller Terms of Use

This summers TpT Challenge #tptsellerchallenge has gotten me totally energized about adding products and updating things in my store, adding this blog, a Facebook page and LOTS more.  I'm loving all the suggestions and information other teachers are sharing with each other too.  One of the things that was shared was creating a Terms of Use page to include with lessons on Teachers Pay Teachers.  Since I don't do clip art, backgrounds, fonts or any of the creative stuff, I hadn't even thought of that!  So, one of my tasks this week was to create my Terms of Use.

Now I'm working on a better looking credit page (the one that credits all those creative folks who do the digital papers, borders, clip art, and stuff that make our lessons look so awesome.  #tpt

I've also been reading other blogs and getting ideas and just loved one that Teacher Mom shared on her blog about getting in "Go Mode".  There are some really awesome resources in her post that are helpful to all teachers!  Check it out.

So, now I'm back to working on new lessons, revised lessons, and other great stuff for my classroom for next year.  I teach 8th grade Engineering and Information Technology so my lessons are always changing to keep up with the latest things.  I love creating lessons, so that works great for me!

Dare to Dream - Week #2 TpT Challenge

This week's Teachers Pay Teachers challenge is to blog about our dreams for our TpT store.  I'm just starting out, so my initial dreams are to increase my products and traffic to the store.  

But, that's not all!  Even though I started my store for additional income, I also enjoy sharing things I've had success with in my classroom with other teachers and learning from them too.  These challenges have let us learn more about each other and share tips and resources to make not only our TpT stores better, but also our classrooms, lessons and teaching!  #tptsellerchallenge #daretodream

Follow Me on BlogLovin'

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

BlogLovin' is a great tool to organize the blogs you follow and let you read relevant material quickly.  They even have an IPhone app to let you read conveniently on your phone!

Friday Freebie

For those teachers using a projector or SMARTBoard type device in their classroom, it is easy to display your classroom agenda for students.  Today's freebie is a customizable PowerPoint that lets you easily type in your changes each day and then prominently display the agenda, along with reminders and your objective.  This always gets a positive comment from my administrators when they do a walk through or an evaluation too (extra bonus!!)  I like not having to write it on the white board each day!  Download it here.

Summer Lesson Planning!

Like so many teachers, summer is more than just a time to relax (although that's a good thing too!).  This year, it was time to add some new things to my teaching.  While my team-mate and I have been working on revising our pacing guides, we're also freshening up our lessons and adding some new ones.  You're probably doing that this summer too!

We're using MS Excel to create our pacing guide and color coding what we revised and what still needs to be done.  That's keeping us on track!  

I actually got motivated to start revising the "look and feel" of some of my lessons with a challenge that was posed by the Teachers Pay Teachers group, so in addition to adding new lessons, I'm getting more creative with the presentation of some of the old ones!

Our first week's challenge was to change an old lesson and I chose to make a small change to the cover of one (below).  More importantly, I've found lots of new resources for new products like digital papers and fonts to make creating lessons more fun for me and the kids!  ‪#‎tptsellerchallenge‬