Cyber Monday TpT Gift Card Giveaway!

I'm excited to give you the gift of time this holiday season with a chance to win a $10 TpT gift card!

Use your gift card to stuff your cart full of goodies that get you through the winter months, so you have more time for family!

Plus, you can maximize your $10 by using it in the upcoming TpT Sitewide Sale on Monday, November 28 through Tuesday, November 29!  Save up to 28% using the code: CYBER2016  

Want more chances to win?  Just visit a few of my blogging buddies to enter for another chance at a $10 TpT Gift Card.  If you visit everyone in our blog hop, you could win up to $260 in TpT Gift Cards.  Sounds good, right?  

So how do you enter?  Read about my Top 5 Winter Activities and then complete the Rafflecopter entry.  Be sure to click on the button at the end of this post to be directed to the next post in the hop.  

Hurry!  The giveaway ends at 11:59 PM (EST) on Monday 11/28.  The winner will be notified via e-mail by noon (EST) on Tuesday, so you will have time to fill up your TpT cart with lots of goodies before the end of the sale!

STEM Challenges are a perfect way to spend those days leading up to winter break or to get the wheels turning on those first days back from break.  Some of my favorite winter STEM activities include:

The Marshmallow Challenge asks students to build the tallest, freestanding structure out of spaghetti sticks, tape, and string within a certain amount of time.  The tower must remain standing once time expires with a marshmallow stuck on the top of the structure.  

This is a great introductory STEM lab that works for all grades.  Read more about the Marshmallow Challenge in this blog post.  

Another STEM Challenge perfect for December is the Jingle All The Way Christmas STEM Challenge.  Students must design a sleigh that is lightweight and sturdy out of common household items that can tolerate the weight of the many presents Santa has to deliver all over the world. 

Students work through the STEM Design Process to create a prototype with limited materials and time, test the prototype, and troubleshoot to enhance the original prototype to yield better results.

Read more about Jingle All The Way in this blog post.

Help Elsa decorate her castle with beautiful homemade snowflakes using pipe cleaners and powdered laundry detergent (Borax).  

Let It Grow! Snowflake Science Activity allows students to have a lot of fun while practicing their scientific inquiry skills.  Lab activities are differentiated and available for Grades 3-5 and 5-8. 

Depending on your grade level, you may want to allow the students to conduct this in several small groups or work together as a class.  Teachers who opt for the whole class activity can always select student volunteers to come up to the front of the class to help with the different steps of the lab.

This resource also includes a detailed lesson plan and corresponding PowerPoint or SMART Board presentation that provides a lot of visuals to help both the teacher and student conduct a relatively smooth science lab!

The 3-5 Grade Handout features choices that scaffold students' thinking when determining a scientific method, making a prediction, and forming a conclusion.

If I Were an Elf Who Lived on a Shelf Narrative Writing Prompt will create lots of discussion in your elementary classroom - especially if you have a classroom elf or many of your students have an elf at home!

Students are provided with a graphic organizer which helps them organize their thoughts into a sequential story with a closing. Once the students have completed their brainstorming, then they can transfer the information to a final story board. 

This would look awesome on a bulletin board or in the hallway!

Do you know those days when you have shorter gaps of time to fill before or after a holiday assembly?   Would You Rather - Christmas Edition - is the perfect class activity to have in your teacher toolkit for those types of situations.  Just open up this game and automatically engage your students!  

This resource has 30 fun, Christmas-themed Would You Rather scenarios. The slides can be projected on a white board, projection screen, or SMART Board through PowerPoint. The teacher (or a student) can read the scenario on the slide. The students will then show what they would prefer to do in the scenario by moving to the side of the room indicated by the arrow on the slide. 

Make sure to ask follow up questions after each Would You Rather scenario to promote the development of a learning community!

If you are a fan of "The Night Before..." stories by Natasha Wing, then these sequencing activities will be a fantastic companion piece to these books.  The Night Before the Night Before Christmas is a hilarious book to add to your collection as your get closer to winter break.

This resource includes two worksheets: one includes illustrated cards that represents the key events that occurred in the story and the second includes numbered boxes to help students paste the cards into the correct order as the events happened in the story.

(Note: This resource is currently being updated to include color and black and white versions plus an interactive whole class answer check activity as mentioned below.  Debut date is 12/1/16!)

Also included is an Interactive Whole Class Answer Check Sequencing Activity in both PowerPoint and SMART Notebook formats. Students will press or click on the illustrated card they believe is the next in order. The students will receive instant feedback to either receive another try to select the correct answer or to move on to the next step of the activity.

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Keep the blog hop going by clicking on the button below to visit
Kristen at Eat, Pray, Travel, Teach for your next chance to win!

Back to School TpT Giveaway Winner and #BestYearEver Bonus Sale

Thank you to everyone who participated in the Back to School Blog Hop TpT Giveaway yesterday!  I enjoyed sharing some of my favorite Back to School items with you and reading your detailed feedback from the All About Me Freebie.  You guys rock!


Here is the winner of a $10 TpT Gift Card as selected by Rafflecopter:

Even if you didn't win...you can still score all your favorite Back to School items on your wish list for up to 28% off today during the #BestYearEver Bonus Sale on TpT.  Just make sure to enter the promo code: OneDay at check out.

You can save some more money today by collecting as many feedback credits as possible!  Not sure how? Check out this helpful diagram below!

Love this diagram made by @sracruzspanish that shows one quick way to save some money today during the #TpT #BestYearEver Bonus Sale! #Repost @sracruzspanish with @repostapp ・・・ Did you know that you can earn TpT credits by leaving feedback on your paid purchases? You can use those credits at checkout to save $ off your total! Here's how: 1. Go to My Purchases under the My TpT drop down menu (https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/My-Purchases) 2. Sort your purchases by Needs Feedback 3. Click on Provide Feedback 4. Leave feedback by clicking on the letter grade and telling us what you thought of that resource 5. Once you are done leaving all of your feedback, you can go to your shopping cart to redeem your credits. 20 credits = $1 off your order.

A photo posted by Angela Willyerd (@angelawillyerd) on Aug 22, 2016 at 7:12am PDT

Back to School Blog Hop TpT Giveaway

I can't wait to make this your #BestYearEver by giving away a $10 TpT gift card for you to use during the upcoming TpT Sitewide Sale on Monday, August 22!  You'll have a chance to win up to $250 in TpT Gift Cards with this blog hop.  Sounds good, right?  

So how do you enter?  Read about my Top 3 Back to School Activities, complete the Rafflecopter entry, and then click on the Back to School Blog Hop button at the end of this post to be directed to the next post in the hop.  

Hurry!  The giveaway ends at midnight on 8/22.  The winner will be notified via e-mail by noon (EST) on Monday, so you will have time to fill up your TpT cart with lots of goodies on sale day!

Here are my Top 3 Back to School activities that I've enjoyed using in my classroom:

My first day of school is spent with my team getting to know our new crew for the year.  Interactive ice breakers are a great way to get the conversation started.  My favorite ice breakers include Would You Rather or Have You Ever activities.  Students have to make a decision by moving to one side of the room or the other when presented with different scenarios.  It is always interesting as a teacher to see how the room divides for each scenario.  You can also learn a lot about your students to see which students make an immediate decision or which ones linger in the middle to decide which way to move.  It doesn't take much probing to get conversation going in the classroom as to why the students picked what they did or stories about experiences they have had.  It is a great way to start building a learning community!  Read a blog post about 10 Back to School Ice Breakers Your Students will Love. 

My next few days of school are spent laying out the expectations for the year.  This can be super boring.  But, instead of just reading a syllabus, I like to surprise the students with an activity called the Cookie Lab.  First, the kids are intrigued that they will be doing a science experiment on the second day of school.  Secondly, no one objects to the idea of getting their hands on some cookies during class!  The Cookie Lab relates my expectations for work quality, effort, and work condition to this hands-on activity that makes learning the classroom expectations fun and memorable!  Read a blog post about the Classroom Expectation Cookie Lab.

An All About Me graphic organizer is a wonderful resource to have in your Back to School Teacher Toolkit!  I liked to use these with my homeroom / advisory group.  The graphic organizer is a nice way for students to communicate additional information to the teacher at the beginning of the year without having to get up in front of the class.  It is a perfect activity to use to fill shorter periods of time, like when you are waiting to be called down to the gymnasium for a beginning of the year assembly, during homeroom, or before/after lunch.  As an added bonus, these completed graphic organizers  make awesome Back to School bulletin boards. Grab this All About Me Graphic Organizer for FREE in my TpT Store!

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Keep the blog hop going by clicking on the button below to visit
A Special Kind of Class for your next chance to win!

Christmas STEM Challenge: Jingle All The Way

You just might have a few days in December where you've finished up a unit but don't want to start a new one.  This is the perfect time to do a STEM Challenge!  Harness all the students' energy into an innovative and productive project.  The kids will have so much fun that they will forget they are practicing math, science, and engineering skills in the process!

This Christmas STEM Challenge called Jingle All The Way asks students to design a new sleigh for Santa out of common household items within a limited amount of time.  The new sleigh must meet Santa's certain specifications and will be tested by adding pennies, which will represent presents.  Students will go through the design process to create Santa's new sleigh that meets his specifications and test the sleigh using pennies to represent the weight of the presents Santa needs to hold in his sleigh.  Students will make improvements to the sleigh after the first trial to yield a stronger sleigh for the second trial.

Your classroom will be buzzing with positive activity throughout this challenge.  Students get excited to sketch and share their ideas with each other to make the strongest sleigh.  The element of limited time also causes the students to have a sense of urgency that keeps this activity at a high energy level!

The middle school kids in grades 5-8 are expected to identify the need, research the problem, design a solution by writing detailed procedures and sketching prototypes, build and test a prototype, and troubleshoot.  The younger students in grades 3-5 are asked to follow the same steps - but in a simpler way.  These kiddos will Ask, Imagine, Create, and Improve.

The most awesome part of facilitating a STEM Challenge, for me, is to witness the extraordinary creativity that your students will exhibit during this type of an activity.  As adults, we have lost a lot of our imagination - so when we see a handful of random household objects listed as materials, we think: What do you do with these???  We think there has to be one certain way to make whatever it is we are being challenged to design. But, the kids will be able to come up with design ideas beyond what we could have ever imagined!  There might be a couple kids that need a few minutes to grease the wheels of innovation, but once they get going there will be no stopping their enthusiasm!

Starting STEM in elementary is a fantastic way for kids to fall in love with science.  The kids learn how to cultivate their thinking by following the STEM Design Process during a time when they already think outside of the box!  These steps will help them create even more advanced prototypes and troubleshoot at a higher analytical level as they get older - hopefully leading them to successful career paths!

Love this activity but don't have the time to design it yourself?  A student handout, corresponding presentation, and detailed lesson plan is available in my TeachersPayTeachers store for grades 3-5 and grades 5-8 in either PowerPoint or SMART Board formats!

Thanksgiving STEM Challenge: The Great Turkey Race

What do you do during those few days right before Thanksgiving Break?  Get your kids to collaborate, think critically, and have a ton of fun with a STEM Challenge, of course!

How does it work?  This Thanksgiving STEM Challenge encourages students to help prevent the turkeys from becoming Thanksgiving dinner by building a fast-moving turkey stunt double out of common household items within a limited amount of time.  The students work through the STEM Design Process - building a prototype, testing these turkeys by "racing" them, and then making improvements to make the turkeys faster.

Your classroom will be buzzing with positive activity throughout this challenge.  Students get excited to sketch and share their ideas with each other to make the fastest turkey.  The element of limited time also causes the students to have a sense of urgency that keeps this activity at a high energy level!

The middle school kids in grades 5-8 are expected to identify the need, research the problem, design a solution by writing detailed procedures and sketching prototypes, build and test a prototype, and troubleshoot.  The younger students in grades 3-5 are asked to follow the same steps - but in a simpler way.  These kiddos will Ask, Imagine, Create, and Improve.

Turkey Prototypes from Mrs. Jennifer Best's FACS Classes
at Mercer Middle School (Grades 4-7).

So, what should the turkeys look like?
The most awesome part of facilitating a STEM Challenge, for me, is to witness the extraordinary creativity that your students will exhibit during this type of an activity.  As adults, we have lost a lot of our imagination - so when we see a handful of random household objects listed as materials, we think: What do you do with these???  We think there has to be one certain way to make whatever it is we are being challenged to design. But, the kids will be able to come up with design ideas beyond what we could have ever imagined!  There might be a couple kids that need a few minutes to grease the wheels of innovation, but once they get going there will be no stopping their enthusiasm!

Starting STEM in elementary is a fantastic way for kids to fall in love with science.  The kids learn how to cultivate their thinking by following the STEM Design Process during a time when they already think outside of the box!  These steps will help them create even more advanced prototypes and troubleshoot at a higher analytical level as they get older - hopefully leading them to successful career paths!

How do I get all those toilet paper rolls?  If you aren't a toilet paper roll hoarder, like myself (I mean you never know when you might need one for a STEM Challenge or a craft opportunity - right?!), you might be in a pinch to have enough toilet paper rolls depending on the size of your class(es).

You can ask for donations from your staff members or solicit donations from your students. (Click here for a freebie donation letter template!)  Paper craft rolls can also be purchased at Hobby Lobby (click here), so make sure you use their 40% off a regular priced item if you need to buy these supplies.  You can also find these at your local Michaels Craft Store (click here) - show them your Teacher ID for a discount.

Love this activity but don't have the time to design it yourself?  A student handout, corresponding presentation, and detailed lesson plan is available in my TeachersPayTeachers store for grades 3-5 and grades 5-8 in either PowerPoint or SMART Board formats!

10 Back to School Ice Breakers Your Students Will Love

Ice Breakers.  The bane of a teacher's existence during the first week of school.  You have a bazillion things to cross of your list to get ready, you meet with your team, and you discuss which ice breakers you want to incorporate during the first week.  What did we do last year?  Do you remember?  Those are frequent questions tossed around in this first meeting of teachers who still are transitioning from summer to school mode.

Try these 10 Back to School Ice Breakers that your students will love!  These activities cover different areas of thought, so students do not feel like they are repeating the same information with each ice breaker.  Students have fun, they get to know each other, you get to know them, AND you save time to cross other things off your list.  It's a win-win for everyone!

Two Truths and a Lie is one of my favorite back to school activities!  It's always so fun, even as a teacher, to try to guess which statement is the lie. You can really find out some interesting tidbits about your students with this one.  You can also use this activity with clickers to have students vote on which statement they believe was the lie.

Would You Rather... can be conducted by having students get up and move to different sides of the room based on what they would rather do in each scenario.  This allows students to really visualize how many would pick one choice over the other.  The best part of this activity is the classroom discussion that will be generated.

My No Good, Very Bad Day is a spin on the classic Skittles Ice Breaker.  The student shares one of the worst experiences he/she has had based on the color of the Skittle.  Students can share in small groups rather than in front of the entire class to make even the quietest student more comfortable.

This Fear Factor Ice Breaker is a 4-Corner Activity.  Students are presented with different phobias in the form of the "Are you afraid of.." question.  Students then vote on how afraid (or not afraid) they are of the various things by moving to the different corners of the room.

The Marshmallow Challenge is a fantastic team builder that is great for any subject area or age group even though this is a STEM activity.  This activity does require some prep ahead of time, but it is so worth it!  Read more about this activity on this blog post.

Super Sleuths can be differentiated based on the grade level.  Students write down three personal characteristic clues that their peers could use to identify them.  Younger students can write down more obvious clues (color of shirt) while older students can be more detailed (freckle on my left cheek).  Shuffle the cards and allow students to be detectives to determine who matches the clues!

What Would You Do is another take on the classic Skittles Ice Breaker.  This time, students are asked to share what they would do in different situations - say, for example, if they were president.  This is a more introspective ice breaker that really encourages students to think!

Have You Ever?  is an interactive game where students are presented with a range of questions - from common experiences to create bonds among students to uncommon to allow students to stand out and create discussion.  Students move to one side of the room or the other based on if they have or have never experienced the proposed scenario.

Find Someone Who... allows students to mingle with each other around the room to find people who fit each experience.  It's always fun to see who can gather the most signatures on their sheet or completes the entire sheet the fastest.

My Favorite Things is an ice breaker that uses M&Ms.  Students pick out three differently colored M&Ms that they will eventually find out corresponds to a favorite thing prompt.  Students can share aloud in small groups or as a whole class.

Looking for more Back to School Ideas?  Take a look at this board.