Indy Blog Hop and Post-it Template Freebie!!

Welcome to the Indy Blog Hop!  In Indiana, the month of May is always a a time of excitement!  As mentioned in a previous post this month, the Mini Marathon is the kick off to the month of May here in Indy.

If you're joining from Aimee's page over at Pencils, Books, and Dirty Looks, welcome to my blog!  I was so excited to join in on this fun Indy Adventure full of freebies.  Once upon a time I was an Indy 500 Festival Princess and lived the month of May through a racing lens.  It was so much fun!  Here are a just couple of pictures that give you a glimpse of the excitement!

Some of the princesses with Marco Andretti...part of the legendary family!  

                    

              At the track for some practice laps!      Yes, we even got to race!  Flame-retardant suits and all!


Okay, back to teaching reality again!  As a part of my job I have the great opportunity to do a lot of professional development.  Our district is trying to "retool" our RtI program so that it is more intentional and aligned to our core instruction.  As a part of this, I have joined a team of people to provide full day PD sessions for a variety of educators in our district.  To organize myself, I needed some sort of organizational tool to help me set up...the problem is that all of these are being held outside of my building, so setting up early was not an option.  Being a planner, I was trying to control as much as possible.  As I was organizing my handouts, readings, activities, etc. I began using post-its on file folders to keep all of organized and easy to follow throughout the day.  Then I realized...WHY am I writing on my file folders and not just using post-its as the labels!  I'm constantly changing these and needing them for different things, so post-its make it flexible.

Here you can see my bag getting ready to go for the next day.  I have my folders organized by each part of the day, and marked with post-its.  For my next session, I can remove those post-its and change the different pieces.
                                                                                                 On the file on the right, I wrote my agenda, the chart papers I would need to create, and the materials I needed to bring.  I added to these as I continued to plan my day.  I also included all of my original copies so that if I needed more I could easily do that.

Then I was thinking...rather than having all one color, I could type and print up decorative post-its, theme based, subject based, or just fun designs!  So here is your copy too!

Here are the 3 x 3 post-it templates that I have created for you to print, put your own post-its on, and then send through the printer again to reprint these images!  It's as easy as pie, and your files will be so much more fun!  I wish I would have thought of this when I was planning my RTI sessions...they certainly would have been impressed with the design.  Hmmm...what kind of clipart goes with RtI?

From one Indy Blog Hopper to the next, I hope you race through this fun freebie adventure and learn from us fellow Hoosiers along the way!  Thanks for taking a pit stop at Run Teacher Run! Speed on to Heather's blog Teaching through Turbulence for your next stop by clicking on our Blog Hop button below.  Buckle up...you're in for a big treat as you continue around the track of Indy bloggers.

Gotta run!

Mini Marathon, Teacher Appreciation Freebie, and SALE Time!!

Mini Marathon...
Put the 2013 Mini Marathon in the books!  My official 13.1 race is done and although, it wasn't quite what I wanted, I finished!  Part of the mileage is done on the 2.5 mile track where the Indy 500 takes place...the magical Indianapolis Motor Speedway!  Here is a photo of Flash and Spiderman in front of me on the track.  I was certainly okay with them passing me...after all it is the Flash!

I must say I am a complete sucker when it comes to motivational moments and crying.  At the start of the race there are over 30,000, yes 30,000 people waiting to start this race.  There was a huge tribute to Boston, our soldiers, and all that makes the United States the greatest place in the world.  I was running by myself, but really had to choke back some tears during all of the beginning festivities.  It gave me great motivation to start the race at a good pace and appreciate the ability to run!

Teacher Appreciation Freebie!
As many of you know, my new role this year has given me a completely different perspective on teaching, the demands teachers have, and the increasing accountability put on both teachers and administrators.  I must say, however, I am pretty darn lucky!  I have the best staff who is willing to do anything and everything for their students.  We are a decent size school with about 640 students, and we have a great amount of collaboration and teamwork that works together to increase student learning.  They truly are THE BEST!

As teachers, we need to appreciate each other as well during this week and thank those around us who have made this school year just that much better.  Here is a link to some FREE Teacher Appreciation labels I created last year.  You can also check out my blog post from last year too!

  

Teacher Appreciation Big Time Up-to-28%-Off Sale!

It's that time of year!  Where YOU deserve to be treated to something special.  Use this discount to get some things in your cart or make life easier for these last few weeks of school!  Some frequent purchases are listed below for you to check out!  

Graphic by Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah (who has awesome graphics on TPT too!)

ake 

A simple but fun Vocabulary Game just for Weather! Get for $1.08!

A 57-page comprehensive weather unit with foldables!  Just $3.60!

78 pages of Data Binder fun and how-to documents for conferences...just $4.32 during the sale!

A great I have...Who has? game for addition with regrouping.  

This is perfect for the end of the school year.  $1.08. 

Poetry unit with 7 different types of poems, posters, and publishing paper.

55 pages for $2.88.  Wow!

Enjoy the week you have so richly deserved this year.  YOU ARE APPRECIATED!!  

Gotta run!

Posting failure, Half Marathon, and May's Currently!

Good evening!  Well, it's been a bit since my last post and I was soooo excited to post about planning a professional development day centered on RTI!  That was, however, until I went to email my pictures from my phone and accidentally hit the trash button instead of share! Ugh!!  The feeling I have right now is like when get to the drive-thru at McDonald's and can't wait to order a hot fudge sundae and they say their ice cream machine isn't working!  Disappointment mixed with a little mad.  Okay, there's my rant.  I'll try to "stage" some pictures to post about it later!

On to more exciting things...my half marathon is this weekend!!! I'm not sure if I should be this excited since I really haven't trained as well as I had hoped, but oh well.  The time has come!  The month of May is pretty exciting in Indiana with the Indy 500.  We kick off the month-long festivities with the Mini Marathon!  As it shows...just under 1 day, 10 hours, and 4 minutes.

A lot of my emotions right now are similar to what I feel like our students are feeling with standardized testing and our ISTEP+ tests.  We gear them up, practice, talk about it (A LOT), and have accountability tied to it.  Now we wait to see if I (and the students) can perform.  At least I 'll have immediate results for my run!

And now...it's my currently for the month of May!  My most exciting piece of this is that I'm down to single digits for the number of observations I need to do!  Each teacher has a total of 5 observations ( 3 short observations of 10 minutes and 2 extended observations of at least 40 minutes) over the course of the year.  Needless to say balancing these, having student contact, and doing my ELL teaching duties is quite the combo, but I can at least say it is getting done! :) 

Lastly is my summer bucket list.  I can't wait to have some pool time and get into reading.  I have found that as I become older, I enjoy reading more and more.  How fun it is to continue learning everyday!

Gotta run...no, really 13.1!