Opening a Teachers Pay Teachers Store

Happy (Early) Thanksgiving!!!

I know I am a few days early, but I doubt with all of the holiday hustle and bustle I will be able to find time to post.

As I comb through the lessons, activities, games, and resources I have created over the last two months for my STEM class I began wondering if there would be value to opening a TPT store.  I rarely find resources I can use anymore on TPT since I teach such a unique class.  With this said, I have created a number of thematic units that encompass science, technology, engineering, and math that other teachers can use.  Does anyone have any experience with TPT?  What I can sell and is it worth the time?  Should I use Teachers Notebook - a site that does not take a percentage of my sales?  Can I post on both?  Please post any information you might have on how to open a TPT store.  Have a lovely Thanksgiving!!!

What does a STEM classroom look like?

As I complete my budget request for the 2012 - 2013 school year, I am thinking...

What does a STEM classroom look like?  What does it have in it?

We all know what we would find if we walked into a literacy room.  Comfortable places to read, visual reading cues for students and an overflowing library.  You would see literacy journals and notebooks as well as examples of paired books.  There would also be obvious evidence of guided reading and possibly Cafe.

In a math classroom (which I use to have) you would see my colorful bins of math manipulatives, a library with math fiction and non-fiction books, and calculators.  I had containers of general school supplies as well.  Reference charts and helpful information filled my walls.

But STEM?

What should that look like?

Well, starting with the units I currently plan on teaching (more to come) - money management, Rubik's cube, renewable energy (wind), green building, and restaurant design and management - I should have the supplies for those units.  So, I have my K'NEX kits organized in Ziploc bags stored in their plastic bins, general classroom supplies for building projects tucked neatly away in drawers, and my Rubik's cubes in colorful bins.  But what is next?  In order for an inquiry approach to learning work, I need my classroom to promote open-ended exploration.  Enter... THE STEM LIBRARY!  Scholastic and Delta Education (Green Collars and Mechanical Engineering) offer some great STEM library starter kits.  Continuing down this road, I decided an additional K'NEX kit may be the way to go.  The Discover Controls K'NEX Education kit offers students the opportunity to play around with computer programming - something I am very familiar with!  But will this be too much in the way of K'NEX?  I do not want a K'NEX curriculum.  So off to Amazon (my favorite place to shop and search for goodies)!  I found a number of Solar Energy, Renewable Energy, Force and Motion, etc. kits for sale, but are they meant for repeated use in the classroom?  Will they survive the kids and me?  Most of what I teach is computer based, so in addition to wanting a few laptops I am at a loss of what else would create a true STEM environment...unless that is what I am already doing?

Please post comments, suggestions, and links to resources that you have found helpful when teaching STEM (or any of the four subjects individually.) 

Vistaprint & Classroom Decor. UPDATE!

I got my posters from Vistaprint and they look AWESOME!  For one, they are HUGE!  The large is way too big for my classroom, but I made room for them all over my classroom - inside and out.  I had them laminated so that I could hot glue them to the wall.  (The humidity in my room is unbelievable!  Everything peels and/or falls off the wall.)  

In addition to hanging my posters, my fun goodies arrived from Oriental Trading and I was able to hang the striped & polka dot banners as well as the apple shaped dry erase stickers.  My pencils turned out great too!  So, banners, tissue paper decorations, patterned Duck tape, and Dollar Tree wall stickers are helping me create the classroom environment I am striving for.  Next I plan to remove all of the hardware from the cabinets in the back of the classroom and cover the cabinets with black paper.

Above the cabinets, I have my character pillars and school required posters on bullying and our vision statement.  The posters had some water damage and I could not keep them on the wall, so I glued them to clean poster board, added colored Duck tape with a Chevron pattern, and had them laminated!  They look a lot better and stand out against the plain walls.  

Next, I had to decide on both a display for my Essential Questions and my tickets-out-the-door.  So, I laminated some white paper and made day-of-the-week signs with my Cricut for my EQ display.  It works really well, especially since I do not currently have a white board in my classroom.  For my ticket-out-the-door I turned the side of one of the cabinets near the door (with the fire extinguisher) into a Twitter display.  I have green and pink baskets at each table group with various supplies, including Post-it Notes.  The students will "tweet" a response to the EQ for the day and post it according to their class period.  I will be going over "tweeting" with the kids on Monday. 

Things are slowly coming together.  It is my first year in this position in a new school, so I am chugging along.  I am sure I will be putting in countless hours over the summer putting all of the finishing touches on my classroom.  My Word Wall is a little challenging to see, so I may be moving that to the cabinets after I cover them with black paper.  I am still torn on what to put where, so PLEASE share thoughts and ideas!!!

 

L.F.S. Training

Today I spent my day in Learning-Focused Training.  I have always been a foldable junkie, and now I am an officially trained foldable junkie.  Here is K.U.D. - Know Understand Do - chart I made during training.  My next unit is Green Architecture.  The kids will be redesigning our school using green building materials.  I am very excited to be starting this unit in a week and a half.  More to come...

Vistaprint

I am in LOVE with Vistaprint.  I really liked Vistaprint before, but now I am in LOVE!  Through the use of RetailMeNot (a site that provides you with discount codes and offers) and the amazing Vistaprint, I just ordered 6 classroom posters (size LARGE - 24" x 36") and 250 business cards for only $64.  The original total for this order was $150.  I can not wait for them to arrive!  Pictures coming soon...

I have also fallen in love with the cute pennant banners (hot pink and lime green, of course - $3/9 feet) and the pom-pom banner that is on sale right now at Oriental Trading ($4.99/9 feet)!  I have also ordered personalized hot pink pencils for my desk!  I am super PUMPED!  I need to find tissue paper cheap (in hot pink and lime green) soon to make those awesome tissue paper balls that have been all over Pinterest and the School Girl Style blog!

Please share pictures and decorating ideas for my classroom.  I will post before pictures soon as well as what I have been able to accomplish thus far.  I NEED HELP & INSPIRATION!

STEM Resources & Recent Finds

Hello all...

I am so very sorry that I have not posted anything since I was hired.  As most of you can imagine, I have been SWAMPED moving classrooms, redecorating, reorganizing, learning all the ins and outs of a new school, creating lesson plans and materials, and developing the curriculum for the course.  In addition to just barely keeping my head above water professionally, I have had lots going on at home in terms of travel, company, and wrapping up summer projects.  ANYWAY...

I absolutely adore my new job.  It is a lot of work, but the best decision I ever made!  I miss my kids at my previous school, but I love the faculty, opportunities, and content I teach here. I have two things to post today - some recent finds from the other blogs I follow and what I have taught so far in class.

RECENT FINDS

• FREE POSTERS -Krissy Venosdale (Venspired) has created and uploaded 154 educational and motivational posters to Flickr for teachers to use in their classroom.  Jennifer Runde (of Runde's Room) recently blogged about how she had many of Krissy's posters printed through Vistaprint to hang in her classroom.  Vistaprint also allows for you to design your own posters, which Jennifer did, to have printed as well.  The price isn't too awful, $14.99 for a large poster and that includes the 25% new customer discount, but I plan on shopping some other sites before I make my decision.  I will keep you posted...
• Top Educational Apps - This blog is exactly as it sounds.  It shares and rates educational applications for iPads and other devices.  This will be VERY handy when purchasing apps for my iPads.  (If ANY of my readers have ANY suggestions for educational applications for 7th grade students, PLEASE SHARE!)
• School Girl Style - Great ideas for classroom themes and decorations.  I probably won't buy from Melanie, but I will def. follow her creative classroom mind!  Check out the Classroom Couture, Lemon Chiffon in all its glory at my cousin's blog - Teaching in the Mitten.  Courtney has done a phenomenal job decorating her new 4th grade classroom!

STEM RESOURCES

• Rubik's Cube - You Can Do the Cube! - I blogged about this site previously.  I loved this lesson plan!  I was slightly concerned that the students would end up spending many many days coloring and cutting out cubes.  This was not the case AT ALL!  The students were much more interested in being engineers and had their materials prepped in a day or less so they could devote the majority of the week to making their cube move.
• The Wonderous Windmill - K'NEX education kits come with free lesson plans or you can create a free educator account with K'NEX to access their free lesson plans.  I am in the process of completing this unit with my students.  The Construction Conundrum was SO MUCH FUN!  Only one student could look at the directions and then they were responsible for reporting back to their group and only sharing the directions verbally.  The goal of this activity was communication.  Today the students worked with completed windmills to find a way to measure efficiency.  Without ANY help from me, EVERY group of students was able to come up with their own way of measuring RPMs.  WOW!
• KidWind: Windwise Curriculum - This is a FREE curriculum to educators.  I printed out many of the lessons and plan on spending the weekend finding ways to expand my current windmill unit!

Future units include some DefinedSTEM activities like their restaurant project and baseball sweet spot assignment.  I am also planing a Green Building unit in which the students watch a previously recorded webinar I found through the Siemen's STEM Academy.  With the FOSS Science Kits, I hope to do a unit on inventors and include Rube Goldburg machines and Henry Ford.  Everything is still very much a work in progress so resources of any kind are greatly appreciated.

I got the job!

If you haven't noticed, the name and address for my blog has changed.  I was recently hired as a 7th grade Math Applications & Foundations teacher at a neighboring school district.  I am THRILLED!  Essentially this is a STEM position.  I am to teach the entire 7th grade about STEM through real-world projects!  How awesome is that!?!?!  The district has purchased a number of laptops and iPads for me to use, as well as a variety of K'NEX kits and FOS Science Kits.  As I head off for vacation soon, my hubby will find quite a few of these new "toys" in our vehicle to play with over our vacation. 

The reason I adjusted my blog is so that I can focus primarily on what I am teaching in terms of STEM projects and the activities I come across in my search for materials.  I will still be posting cool math stuff and general classroom ideas, but the focus will be on the integration of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics through project-based learning assignments.  Stay tuned for links and rubrics for projects I plan on using.  School starts August 27th, so I do not have a lot of time...