My Rockin' Resources

Now that I am out for summer break, one of the first big things that I first take time to do is reflect on the previous school year. And while I create most of my “stuff” myself, I have found a prime opportunity to share with you some of the resources and supplies that I could not live without in my classroom this year in...

 

Some of these are big name, big cost...some not so much!  I have included links (if you are interested in checking any of these out!)

Dry-erase boards and markers

I have two different kinds of dry erase boards...ones with a centimeter grid from EAI Education...

and ones that are plain from Oriental Trading Company...

I use dry-erase boards in nearly every subject.  The students enjoy using these for practice in math.  The grided boards work well for helping students to line up their numbers.  We use them for review in science and social studies.  The students also enjoy them to complete word work.

And I have found that the best value for dry-erase markers has to be these from Discount School Supply ...

DRP (Daily Reading Practice) 

I just started using this program this year, and it is a fabu way for every student to get comprehension practice. It has short 1-2 paragraph passages, and, like its name, daily comprehension activities to complete. Weekly, the students complete similar activities. Each Monday is about subject, title, author’s purpose, reader’s purpose, and genre. Tuesday is all about word study and vocabulary. Wednesday is practicing inference, idiom, problem, point of view, setting, type of writing, true/false, fact/opinion, or mood. Thursday practice is about main idea, skimming, predicting, topic sentence, details, or graphic organizers. Friday is about finding key words and summarizing. This was practice was excellent for my students this year that needed repetitive practice which research shows is very important!

Standardized Test Practice: Long Reading Passages by Scholastic

While I give my students shorter passages for reading practice, our testing includes longer 1 – 2 page passages. So in order to help my students also build their stamina for longer testing situations, I use this book to help me give comprehension assessments. It has a variety of genres of passages, and a variety of short answer, long answer, and multiple choices questions.

Scholastic’s Study Jams

StudyJams is an incredible website similar to BrainPop, but I think it could be free! (I haven’t paid for it, but I am a subscriber to other Scholastic things...so I’m not quite sure!) The only difference is StudyJams focuses only on Science and Math...but contains videos, quizzes, slide show, and karaoke. The students love it!

Evan-Moor’s Teacher File Box and Scholastic’s Printables

Both of these subscription websites are very similar only by different publishers. I will go to these sources to find good homework type sheets...especially since they have ones that allow students to check their work! It also saves me a lot of time and energy to go to one of these sources to help create assessments.

What are some the resources that you rock all the time in your room?