I created a few digital papers and frames for my newest Classroom Pack and I thought I’d share a couple of them with you.  Click on the pictures to download your papers.

Be sure to check out the full coordinating pack of frames and papers in our Store at a special introductory price of $2.00.  (Price goes up to $3.50 on Wednesday)

And here’s the Classroom Pack in a Pink and Bugs theme in our Teachers Pay Teachers Store which is currently on sale

Be sure to grab them today while they’re on sale and use code BTS12 at Teachers Pay Teachers to get an additional 10% off your purchase!

Teacher’s Notebook has some great things going on this weekend.  You can enter here to win a $25 gift certificate to TN due to generous donations.

You can enter several giveaways going on today through tomorrow here, including a chance to win my Birthday Book pack or School Places Graphics (two different giveaways, so be sure to find and enter both).

And to top it off, my entire TN shop will be on sale August 11-13.

Did you know that we now have a TN Clip Art Shop?  That will be on sale too, so be sure to get in on all the goings on at Teachers Notebook.

By the Way… Virtual Teaching Expo is Presenting a Back to School event launching on August 25th.  You can sign up here.  And be sure to visit the virtual exhibitor hall where some of my items will be featured along with many other sellers.

My summer officially ended yesterday as I started back to work.  I started my new job as an instructional coach.  We had the first day of new teacher induction.  It was great for me as I got to sit back and take it all in and the veteran coaches did all of the presentations.  However, it was the end to a summer that seemed to fly by.

I’m very excited for this new position and chapter in my career.  I’ll be working with some pretty great and knowledgeable people.  I feel a little inadequate, but remind myself that I wouldn’t have been hired if they didn’t think I had something to contribute too.

One of the things that I kept thinking was how old I felt in a room full of new teachers.  I wondered if I looked that naive when I first started teaching! ; )  It’s going to be so much fun working with these new teachers and other teachers in my assigned schools.  I’m looking forward to all that I’m going to learn.

We’ll spend 4 days teaching these new teachers about how we do literacy and math in our district before school starts on the 21st.  We’ll also meet throughout the school year for some follow up guidance.  In addition to our instructional coaches that are assigned to two schools, each school has a couple of teachers that are mentors.  They receive a lot of training and are great supports to the new teachers in each school.

I got to wondering about all of you and how new teachers are “inducted” into your school or district.  What programs do you have in place to welcome new teachers and let them know how things are done?

The Lesson Cloud Collaborative Blog is celebrating back to school with a Dollar Days Sale on July 29 and 30.  You can get many items from several bloggers for $1-$2.  Be sure to check out my store here to see all the items I have available for $1-$2 and then go to The Lesson Cloud here to see all the other bloggers who have linked up their products.  Happy Back to School Shopping!! (The sale information won’t be up until July 29, so be sure to check back and get in on the great deals.)  Also, The Lesson Cloud blog will be giving away $75 in gift certificate’s from Really Good Stuff, so be sure to stop by on July 29 and 30 for this huge event!

Having an outline of what I’ll be teaching in the upcoming year is something that I have found to be essential in the success of a school year.  Planning your school year now, will help you be better organized through the year.  The first few years I taught, I didn’t have a plan and just taught week by week and then quickly stuffed in the pieces I had missed before testing.  It is now more critical than ever to have your year planned out and know the “Big Rocks” that you’ll need to teach throughout the year.  I have an amazing team of teachers I work with and an amazing principal.  Our principal gives us at least one day a year to plan our year long curriculum map or scope and sequence.  He pays for substitutes, so we can plan.  It does take at least a day for this project and then we adjust and plan specifics throughout the year during our weekly Professional Learning Communities (PLC) time.  We’re lucky to have an early dismissal day once a week to allow for an hour a week for this concentration on student achievement and progress and curriculum.

I would encourage you to work as closely with your team as possible to create a curriculum map that fits your needs.  If this is not possible, it will be well worth your time to have one in place for yourself.

I am sharing our team’s curriculum map with you.  Please know that we worked hard for at least a day together to work this out and it is what works for our team and the curriculum supports that we have.  It is still a work in progress and we will continue to update and add to it throughout the school year.  One thing I would add to it are the CC standards we would be correlating with each week.  We did have the core next to us as we planned and checked off each standard as we added content that correlated with the standards.  This will give you a starting point and perhaps an idea of how you can make it work for you.  We used Power Point to create this document.  This makes it easy to use one slide for each week.  The formatting also does not mess up subsequent pages when you make a change as it does in word.  I have also included a blank Power Point document to get you started if that is helpful to you.  To do your own in Power Point, simply insert a table with the number of columns and rows that you need.  Click the links below to get your copies of the documents

First Grade Curriculum Map shared by Dilly Dabbles

Curriculum Map Template by Dilly Dabbles

Here are some other links that I’m aware of that may be helpful.  Your own state may have similar links and helps.  You may also be in a district that does this process for you.  So, you may already have a year long map done and ready for you to go to the next step of developing unit and daily lesson plans.

Granite School District Math Curriculum Maps

Jordan School District Math Curriculum Maps (click on Teacher at the top of the page and choose your grade)

Most references to a Language Arts Curriculum Map were aligned to this book.  In fact, I’ll be part of a blog book study on this book beginning in mid-august.  I’d highly suggest this book to help support you in teaching the Language Arts Common Core.  In contains 6 units for each grade K-5, so it is very versatile and useful.  Be sure to click on the picture to get your copy for your own reference and to follow along with the book study in August.

Be sure to take a look at my Common Core Standards packs.  Display the standards so your students are aware of the objectives and you can easily reference them throughout your lesson(s).  They are available in a more universal dots and stripes theme and a zebra theme in grades K-4 (grade 5 coming soon).  They are my most popular product!

How do you plan for your school year?  I’d love to hear about it in the comments or link up your post about it below.

Did you know that Teachers Pay Teachers has a reward program?? It’s true. When you purchase a product, you have the option to rate the item and give feedback. When you do this, you earn points. You earn a point for every dollar you spend (and give feedback for) and then you can redeem them for purchases. Here’s the explanation directly from TpT:

“Earn TpT Credits for purchases on TpT. You get one TpT Credit for every $ you spend on TpT. Thing is, you only get the Credits after you Provide Feedback–both a fair rating and a fair comment–on the items that you purchase. We will round up for you, too! If you provide fair feedback on a $4.75 item, you will earn 5 credits. Every 100 Credits is worth $5 that you can apply towards future TpT purchases, but there is no need to wait until you have 100 to redeem them. 50 credits is worth $2.50, for example.
The program is retroactive to feedback provided on purchases since August 1, 2011.
How to Redeem TpT Credits
You can keep track of how many credits you have accrued here or on the top of the site after login. When you check out, you will be given the option of applying your TpT Credits to your purchase, thereby discounting your purchase price accordingly.”

Jessica from Mrs. Stanford’s Class made a video that explains the program. With her permission, I’m sharing it with all of you as well. You’ll find it at the end of this post.   Be sure to visit my TpT store and take a look at all of the new items I have added.  My newest collection includes alphabet and number image sets.   The one pictured is the zebra set.  Also available are an Apple set and a Peace set.  More are on their way.  I’d love to receive comments below about your favorite items in my store or suggestions of items or themes you’d like added.

There are some key people in your school building that you should build a good relationship with quickly.  I have found the key people to be the school secretary, custodian and lunch supervisor.  Each of these people are instrumental in how the school runs.  Building a good relationship with these people will help you out.

The secretary really runs the school and she’s the gatekeeper to the principal.  If you want your orders to get made and nice things said about you in the office talk, be sure you’re sweet to the secretary.  Have conversations with her and find out about her.  When you pass through the office, ask her how her children are or her dog or about her recent weekend trip.  She’ll think you’re just wonderful and in return, she’ll be willing to speak kindly of you and go the extra mile for you.

If you want things done quickly around your classroom, become friends with the custodian.  Be sure to give a genuine thank you to him when a job gets done.  Seek him out and let him know what a great job the night crew did cleaning up after your messy art day.  Apologize when you do have an extra messy day.  Have your students do an end of day classroom clean-up to make the custodian’s job a bit easier.  I’ve also been known to ask the custodian not to clean up if the children leave it a mess when they leave.  They come to school the next morning to a messy room and realize how important our custodian is and their role in helping to keep things clean.

Finally, be kind to the lunch supervisor.  School lunch may have been touted as something to be avoided at all costs, but it’s my experience that school lunch has improved quite a bit.  Options including salads are available and it can be very convenient.  It can, however be expensive for an adult lunch.  My husband is an expert at making friends with the lunch supervisor and crew.  He receives all kinds of offers from them; everything from full meals to the extra desserts.  They seek him out specifically because he gets to know them and makes jokes with them.  The lunch crew is often ignored as they work behind the glass, and when you show a little special attention, it goes a long way.

In addition to these key people, it’s important to get to know the school staff in general.  Who has that stash of everything that could help you out in a pinch?  Who is the technology guru?  Who knows just how to help you with that one student?

Knowing the people of your school will take you a long way in making life easier so you can concentrate on your job…teaching.

Your freebie for this post in the back to school series are themed thank you notes.  Be sure to use them to let the key people at your school know how much you appreciate them.  I also keep them on hand to give to students when they bring a gift or when a parent helps out in the classroom on a special day. BTW…If you liked the images I used throughout this post, they are available in our store here.

Here are the freebie options.  Click the link to get the PDF file.  They are quarter fold cards.

Thank You Card Nautical     Thank You Card Pirate     Thank You Card Western

Thank You Card Popscicle     Thank You Card Frogs     Thank You Card Robot

Thank You Card Bird

Who are the key people in your school?  In what ways have these relationships helped you?  Be sure to comment, link and hop through other blog posts about the personnel relationships at school.

Congratulations to Sue L. and Lori R. who are the two winners of my recent giveaway sweepstakes.  I have sent them notification emails.  They’ll be choosing one of the items I mentioned in this post.  You can check out these new items and get them here.

Be sure to check back tomorrow for my second post in the Back to School Series.  It’s all about school supplies.