Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Q&A

During my absence, I received tons of wonderful emails, comments, and questions! I wanted to take the time to address some of those questions in one post.

Would you be willing to share a copy of your procedures? As a new teacher I am still learning how to be very specific. :) –Mitchell and Lyndee McKay
I’m in the process of putting together a post on this one, and it will include my own classroom procedures. Stay tuned!

What font are you using (here)? I MUST add it to my collection! –sewgirly
It’s called Rolina and it is available FOR FREE from dafont.com! (Since I use it SO frequently, I did donate to the creator.) You can find it here.

Can I have a copy of your template for the Absent Binder/Sanity Saver/Yellow Sheet/etc.?
All of my FREE templates are available to you! There is a link on the right sidebar that says LOOKING FOR FREE TEMPLATES? Click that image and it will take you to my Box.com account where you can get all that stuff! If you are looking for something more colorful or that uses funky fonts, you can check out my Teachers Pay Teachers store. http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Eatwriteteach. I recommend the To-Do lists! I use them EVERY SINGLE DAY.

Thanks so much for sharing your creativity with us! I used your calendar and lesson plan templates all year and absolutely LOVED THEM!! I thought I downloaded the calendar in a Word format so I could make it into a 2014-2015 calendar for this year but nope… :( Do you have a file available in a Word doc so I can rework it?? Thanks! –Lisa
My 2013-2014 calendar pack was only available as a PDF because formatting it just right is tricky and I figured a PDF was just simpler for those who would rather be able to just print. I will be uploading the 2014-2015 calendar pack very soon and I will include an editable Word document as well this time. :)

Stephanie, I wondered if you have new comments about how you taught vocabulary last year. How did it turn out? Did it achieve what you thought? –Tammy Trusty
Oh vocabulary, thou art as loathsome as a toad! I would say I made progress on the vocabulary front, but I have yet to achieve my goal of vocab lessons that are not tedious, boring, and useless. There’s a post coming soon about this!

Do students have to make up bell ringers? –Sub Teacher
No, not exactly. My bell ringer procedure for 2013-2014 consisted of doing the daily vocab card (required work that did have to be made up), and then they did silent reading Mondays through Wednesdays and timed free writes on Thursday and Friday. I basically just had to keep an eye on them to make sure they were reading on reading days (and that reading ultimately culminated in quarterly projects anyway) and I rarely had to “babysit” on writing days because they loved doing free writes. Those free writes weren’t worth points, so absent students didn’t have to make them up.

What part of Indiana are you in? –Starla
I live in the very southern part of Indiana that is basically northern Kentucky. :) I’m just a hop, skip, and a jump from Louisville, Kentucky. It’s the part of Indiana with all of the giant hills. It's always been my home. <3