Back to School Sales

It's that time of year again. Time to kick it into high gear for back to school! Since it’s “Tax Free Weekend” in Virginia, which I count as one of my favorite holidays, I’ve been running around to stores like Wal-Mart, Target, Office Depot, Staples, Michaels, AC Moore, etc. scooping up some awesome deals. This week also marks the beginning of my obsessive price checking on back to school supplies. How much are glue sticks at Target? Are they really four for $0.25 at Office Depot this week? (YES!) Will Crayola crayons get down to 25 cents a pack again this year? What are the Staples penny deals?

But there’s one more sale I always look forward to! Last year Ann Marie and I opened our store on Teachers pay Teachers and have had a good time adding products to our listings.

We’ve made lists of our favorite Can’t Miss Books for each month (that you can snag for free), 

shared our fun Reward Coupons for Positive Behavior,

revealed our new way to utilize the Content Word Wall,

and much more. The time has come for it all to go on sale! That’s right, it’s the Teachers pay Teacher Back to School Sale!

You know those items you’ve been drooling over for months and maybe even put them on your Wish List? They could be up to 20% off during this sale! The site wide (seller permitting) sale runs on Monday and Tuesday. However, I can’t count the number of times I’ve missed a sale and kicked myself over it, so we’re going to extend ours until Thursday! If you’ve never visited our store before, you should at least check out “Make Each Day Special.” It's one of our Top 10 End of the Year Traditions and it’s FREE! We use it every year in our classrooms and it’s got some great ideas you can use at home with your own kids as a way to celebrate the end of summer vacation.

What are your favorite ways to gear up for the beginning of the school year?

Content Word Wall

We all know that a good understanding of vocabulary is essential for student success. One way teachers and administrators love to support vocabulary development is through the use of word walls. But how often are your students reading the words with little knowledge of what they mean?

A content word wall is a great way to help tackle this problem. Some teachers like to put word walls in alphabetical order, but we thought, “Why not separate them by content area?” This led us to group the terms into categories that will help students both read and define the words.

We separated a bulletin board into four sections and created these headings for Language (language arts, reading and writing), Math, Science, and Social Studies. To aid our visual learners, we also color coordinated the different subjects. As new vocabulary was introduced, we added it to our boards.

We also turned the word wall into a center to encourage students to actively use it. We made pointers available at the center and had students read the words to each other. They also discussed what each word meant and/or how to use it in a sentence. Once students were familiar with the whole board, they filled out a card letting us know they were ready to read the word wall. We further enticed them by offering a chance to earn a small prize (a bookmark, extra snack, etc.) if all terms were correctly read and defined/used. Students loved this center and would often be found there after completing their classwork.

Check out our Content Word Wall on Teachers pay Teachers. It’s aligned to the CCSS for K-2 as well as the Virginia First Grade SOLs. It has almost 400 words on it to make creating your word wall much easier.