Technology Thursday!: Common Curriculum

I decided to link up with the Teaching Trio for Technology Thursdays!

I love using technology in the classroom. I grew up using technology in school and it has evolved into an incredible resource that can change learning for the better. Here is my first weekly feature on technology! every Tuesday I am going to try my best to post some sort of technology (website, equipment, app, etc.) that can make out lives as teachers a little easier and stress free. This week I am reviewing a site I discovered last year called Common Curriculum. 

here's the main page

I used to do all of my lesson plans on Microsoft word and print them out, but it drove me crazy when I had to change something in my lesson plan making me go back and change the document and print it out again for my lesson plan binder (I hate wasting paper!). Last summer, in an attempt to become paperless, I found this site. Its FREE for teachers (anything free is awesome) and very user friendly. 

lesson planning page

I teach different subjects and this site makes it easy for me to have lesson plans for all the subjects on one page. I also have each day divided into different headings to have a spot for my objective, the essential question, etc., all which can be customized to what you want! You can edit anywhere since its saved online, you can download PDF versions of you plans, you can organize them to be shown monthly, weekly, daily, whatever is easiest for you! Best part is the inclusion of the standards. Instead of typing out the state standard, you can search for it and it places it within the lesson plan for you. 

where to add your standards

You can also share your "planbook" which is basically your lesson plans with up to 3 other teachers. I share mine with a fellow coworker in the science department. We collaborate on most of our assignments and activities so this site made life wayyyyy easier. 

Of course if you want to share with the entire department or school, then a membership needs to be purchased. For now I share with the teachers that teach the same subjects I do to try and stay on the same page. Absolutely love this resource and definitely recommend it to everyone!

Summer Weekly Link-Up: My Talents

This was a tough one! I can be artistic, which I think can be a great talent, when creativity strikes! Here are few drawings that I made a few years ago to decorate my home:

I like to create things and this was done as a Sunday project with my husband a few years ago to decorate the house. I made them with water colors using only shades of black. :) I am sure I have other talents but this one is a favorite of mine! 

thanks to I Heart Grade 3 for such a fun summer link up! go follow and link up :) 

Monday Made it! - July 27th

My first ever Monday Made it! after reading and seeing what a few bloggers have been doing, I got excited and decided to post a few things I made today or worked on. 

1st thing I worked on is a planner for the blog! I went to Target and got "trapped" inside because of a crazy storm which can be dangerous because Target is wormhole. Anyway, I found this super cute planner in the Dollar Spot section of Target! best place in the store. Picked it up with a few stickers and voila! a planner for the blog :)

My 2nd made it are some decorations for the upcoming school year. Our overall school theme is Jurassic Park so everything is going to focus on Dinosaurs and Discovering that 'A'. I made these using my Silhouette Cameo. My sister and I got one last year to make classroom decorations and we have discovered a new found love for it!. Which leads to 3 and 4 ....

My little sister is having her baby shower this weekend and we are playing a "guess the baby food" game. Of course we wanted to label the different foods in a cute way and decided to use out Silhouette Cameo to make these tags for the baby food jars. Aren't they adorable!?!?

Since those tags came out so awesome, I decided to make similar ones for the back to school gifts I am giving my co-workers (hopefully they don't check this out and find it!). I am giving them little jars with mints in them and the tag says "you were 'mint' to teach". something simple as a welcome back! Tags again were made on the Silhouette Cameo, jars were purchased from the dollar spot at target along with the red bakers twine. Simple. Easy. Affordable. 

My last Monday made it is slowcooker mac and cheese! I have been pretty obsessed lately with creating meals in the slowcooker and so far I have been making some delicious dinners! I found this recipe at 101 Cooking For Two. Very simple and only takes about 2 1/2 hours in total. It came out amazing! I just wish I would of made more for tomorrow! 

Summer Weekly Link-Up: My Favorite Picture

Hello everyone! this is my first link-up party for the summer and this weeks focuses on your favorite picture. This is a tough one since I take A LOT of pictures and its tough just to pick one. So I attempted to narrow it down and I picked this one: 

This is a photo from my engagement shoot about a year and a half ago. My best friend took the photos for me and they came out amazing :) This picture captures how silly my husband and I are. We like to randomly slow dance when we have conversations, run around like kids, and just be crazy together. 

Bonus photo: Our fur babies at a bulldog birthday party enjoying some doggie cupcakes and ice cream.

aside from marrying my best friend, adopting these two were the best thing that has ever happened to me!

whats your favorite picture? join the weekly summer link up at I Heart Grade 3!

Dinosaur filled year!

Good morning! It's great to wake up late in the summer. I hibernate and catch up on all the sleep I lose during the year. 

Every year our school changes its theme to make it exciting for students to come back and start the year fresh. This year we are doing a Jurassic Park theme and our slogan is "Discovering 'A' New World" we try to put the 'A' in our slogans every year because our school district grades each school based on test scores. Of course, we strive to be an A school. 

To keep with the school theme, my classroom will be dinosaur theme! I want dinosaur decorations that middle school students would enjoy so in my spare time last week I made a cardboard pterodactyl ! 

What's your classroom theme this year?

Make Your Masterpiece!

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the TPT Sellers challenge is still on! this week was the "Make your Masterpiece" challenge. We needed to create a new product for our TPT store then swap with another user for some helpful edits. I decided to work on a Power Point notes presentation that I used for my Biology class last year that the students really enjoyed. I made it more student friendly and focused on placing photos and graphics that were from the public domain or easily credited. This is one of the first topics we get into at the beginning of the year and I thought it would be great to fix it up for this coming school year. Check out the product here.

Thanks to Angela from Fun in Fourth, Michelle from Mrs. Broseeau's Binder, and Kristina from Adventures in ISTEM, I received some great pointers for the product! (I swapped more than I had to! but it was worth it.) It really helped to have another set of eyes (or 3 lol) look at the product. They found things that I would have never noticed. Thank you to these lovely ladies for helping out ;) 

Keeping up with the Seller Challenge! thanks to these lovely ladies for hosting!