Free Context Clues Page and a Sale

Happy Teacher's Appreciation Day!

I love this time of year.  The sun is out and it's warming up, the kids know what's up when they walk into the room, and summer is starting to feel like it's getting close (even though I'm going until June 29).  And to top it all off, it's Teacher Appreciation Week!  I'm one of the lucky ones who has parents who spoil us.  Even though we are a Title One school, they really do go all out to give us recognition and fatten us up a little.  May is a great month.

Except of course for state testing, hah.

Our school is still doing MCAS and not PARCC, but it doesn't get any easier.  So I've created a freebie for you to help your students with context clues.  Every year I have a handful of kids who get stuck on a word and don't know how to figure it out.  Often they think it means the same as another word in the sentence (not recognizing that it would be redundant to have the same word twice).  So I whipped up a page that's good practice and easy enough to understand that I can use it for a homework assignment.  To show my appreciation to YOU, I'm offering it free for a limited time.

There is also a sale going on at Teacher's Pay Teachers today, May 5 and 6.  You can save 28% in my store by entering the code THANKYOU at checkout.  Here are some products I have available to get you through to the end of the year:

I wrote all about the Tuck Everlasting resources I developed in an earlier post. When I found the MDESE's model unit for Tuck Everlasting to be cumbersome and, well, tedious, I needed to flesh out their framework to get the kids interested.  I needed to turn the whole class discussions into prompts for reflecting and writing on an individualized level.  They needed time to delve into the vocabulary as well as the figurative language.  I needed them to see their own thinking about the characters change as they progressed through the chapters.  I started small, and have a few free pages available in this post as well, and worked my way up to the full Tuck Everlasting Activities packet.

What can I say, anytime I can incorporate art into my day I'm a happy camper.  Geometry is the PERFECT excuse to draw in math class, haha.  I developed my Tessellations lessons for an after school club that combined math and art, but in years when our school couldn't fund it, I used many of the lessons during our geometry unit in fourth grade.  I have this math/art lesson too:

The kids had so much fun with this "Scoot" style Geometry activity.  I wrote more about how they used sheet protectors and guidelines to position their protractors and drawing triangles correctly every time in an earlier post. 

Finally, if you are one of the lucky ones finishing your year this month, I have task cards to help you involve the kids in the clean-up/pack-up/organization process.  I really feel like in addition to saving me time, it helps them feel a sense of closure to help pack the room.  And having activities that get them up and moving interspersed with quiet reflection time/memory books is important for most learners:

I hope you find some great resources during the sale!  Besides resources geared specifically for this time of year, do you already have other planned purchases in your wish list?  Share your favorite finds in the comments below.