Five for Friday Linky!

Happy Friday! I am linking up with Doodle Bugs for another Five for Friday!

Last weekend, I finally decided to create a Facebook page for The Math Nerdette! I've been reading a lot of blog post reflecting on what fellow bloggers learned from their Vegas trip to the TPT conference (totally jealous - wish i could have gone!). One of the repeating pieces of advice I kept reading is how important social media is. I have a blog and I have a TPT store. My TPT store has less than 100 followers and sometimes I feel like no one is reading this blog! So I decided to create a FB page AND become involved with the TPT seller's forum. WHOA! My stats have already gone up so much within the past week! My TPT store followers have gone up by 12!! (This makes me super excited because I was stuck at 69 FOR.EV.ER. and was a little disappointed when I noticed it go down by one). My FB page is almost at 100 likes (and there will be an awesome giveaway/freebie/something special when that happens), and my bloggy numbers have increased as well. I have also learned how to do these so called "pinning parties". I was so intimidated because I'm such a newbie, and seriously, all I had to do was open a thread and read the directions! Super easy to get your products out there via pinterest! For July to be a slow month, I noticed a small bump in sales for me. I share this with you because for other bloggers and TPT sellers who become discouraged (just like me), there is always more that you can do to promote your products! And it does make such a difference with getting your name out there on the forums! 

I've been working a lot on trying to get next year planned (or at least outlined). Last year, I taught 8th grade science, Math I, and Math II. This year, I'm teaching 8th grade math and Foundations of Math II. Two completely new curriculums - not to mention that I will also be the only math teacher on our hall next year. A fellow blogger (I wish I could remember who, I'm sorry I couldn't give you credit!) posted about this AH-MA-ZING website for common core planning called commoncurriculum.com. It's SUCH a great tool to use - not only do you have electronic lesson plans to share with your co-teachers and admin, but it has a section where you can have a year-long plan (just like the districts). If you haven't heard of it or haven't really played around with you, I suggest doing so! It has made planning for next year so much easier.

For each unit, you can easily add your lessons and within the lesson, can add standards, essential questions, and anything else you decide you need by just clicking "add section". It forces me to be super organized and easier for me to know what I'll need to print out or post to Edmodo by just looking at the files I attached for that lesson!

Many students at my school (or just in general) struggle with math vocabulary. Last year, our math department had a discussion on what we could do to expose our students to more vocabulary AND having them understand what we teach and speak "math". Last year, I did frayer models, but they took up too much paper every time we had a unit to do and three other teachers were doing frayers models as well. They were frayered out! What I decided to do next year is make a words worth knowing glossary in the back of their interactive notebooks. My plan is to have my students paste about 4-5 of this template in the back of their ISN like a glossary. Every time we introduce a new vocabulary word or come across a vocab word they don't know, we'll write it in our WWK template. The template has a space for the word, definition, example, and notes. This way, the kids will have a place to refer back to in their ISN's when they come across a word they forgot. I also plan on writing new WWK vocab on little sentence strips I bought from Michaels. They are colorful and bright, so they pop out at you. I laminated (I LOVE MY LAMINATOR!!)them so I can write a word with an Expo marker and wipe off when done.

You can download this FREEBIE template by clicking here!

As mentioned before, I've been working on my interactive notebook for next year. I've created some new templates and practices as I move along to the next lesson. They aren't up for sale yet since I want to write the answers in my notebook first to take pics of and include that in the sale. Here's a sneak peek of a few pages I'm working on...

Whew!! Number 5!! Lastly, on a trip to Target, I found these $1 letter trays that I could use next year! I snagged the last three black trays! They were a little blah looking, so I played around with my ribbon stash and voila! It's still not as cutsy as I would like, but it's a start. I'm thinking of making a label to go in the front.

This was a long, but fun post! Until next time! :-)