Stuff Your Stocking with Freebies!

Sunday, December 14, 2014

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Welcome to the Stuff Your Stocking Linky
Collect fabulous freebies, sign up for my monthly newsletter, and enter to win a $25 Teachers Pay Teachers gift certificate! 



Beginning in January, I will be sending out a monthly newsletter! It will include upcoming events, informative blog posts, my book of the month recommendation, fabulous freebies, and the newest ELA resource from my store offered at 50% off for a limited time! As a special thanks, subscribers are automatically entered to win a $10 TPT gift certificate each month! Subscribe by clicking the link above or in the giveaway below.


Enter to Win
a Rafflecopter giveaway


Stuff Your Stocking
Grab as many freebies as you can! Feel free to link up your own freebies as well (they do not have to be holiday themed).  

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Giving Back

Saturday, December 13, 2014

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I'm linking up with some phenomenal teacher authors for a day of giving back! Tomorrow, December 14th, I will be giving 100% of my TPT earnings to Autism Speaks. This charity is extremely important to me because I have many family members diagnosed with autism.


Take a look at some of the great resources you can purchase. Click any of the images below or click the logo above to go directly to my TPT store






Stop by the other stores below! Each seller is donating a portion of their earnings to a charity that is near and dear to them. Please join us in making this day successful! You will be helping wonderful charities as you stock up on teaching resources to start the new year! After shopping, reward yourself! Visit my Stuff Your Stocking with Freebies linky to stock up on even more resources!


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Rebranding Celebration!

Sunday, November 16, 2014

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After an almost year long hiatus from blogging and TPT, I decided it was time for a fresh start! I've spent the last few months working on updating my products and blog. I've finally finished rebranding The Center Based Classroom into Reading Royalty (to better fit my new position as a reading specialist) and want to celebrate with all of you! 

From today until Wednesday, November 19th, I'm having a HUGE rebranding celebration! 70 amazing TPT sellers have joined me by donating products from their stores. I'm hosting SIX giveaways and daily flash freebies on Reading Royalty's Facebook page. Everything in my TPT store will also be 20% off! 




K-2 Bundle # 2
Special thanks to: Nancy Strout, Clark's Spark, Mrs. W, Engaging Elementary, Celeste DiDonato, Kay Sommer, Maureen Prezioso, Carmen RichardKristyBear Designs, Dynelle Dunn, and K's Kreations.


a Rafflecopter giveaway

a Rafflecopter giveaway
Thanks so much for stopping by! Be sure to follow Reading Royalty on Facebook and TPT so you don't miss out on any flash freebies!
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Making the Most of Your Classroom Library

Saturday, November 15, 2014

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When I was a classroom teacher, one thing I was extremely proud of was my classroom library. Books have always been extremely important in my life and I wanted to convey that to my students through a rich and extensive library. I scoured library sales, found deals online, and used all of the Scholastic points I could find to build my library. 

I had close to 1,000 books in my library, separated only into fiction and nonfiction sections. My students often told me they couldn't find books they liked. It's not that the books weren't in there, it was the way I was organizing my library that was the problem. 

I decided to make my library more student friendly. A trip to to the store to buy tons of buckets, labels, and a large variety of stickers was all I needed to make it happen (seriously though, this project took hours upon hours of work, but it was completely worth it!)

Here's how to do it: 

Gather all of your books and start placing them into categories one by one. My two favorite ways are by genre and themes. There are a ton of different genres and themes you can categories your books into. I chose to organize my books into genres, but have recently discovered organizing books by themes, and I LOVE this idea as well! Below are a few examples of different genres and themes.

Sample genres: Caldecott winners, classics, mysteries, fantasy, adventure, school, animals, etc. 
Sample themes: friendship, families, inspiring others, love of reading, perseverance, respect, etc. 

Once you've sorted all of your books into genres or themes, put them in buckets. I've seen those fancy colorful buckets in the online teacher stores, but the prices can be pretty steep. I bought clear plastic Sterilite buckets and they worked perfectly! 

Label each bucket with the genre or theme and decide on a color coding system. Each genre bin should have its own color coded sticker on the front, with matching stickers on the back cover of each book in that genre (see the pictures below for an example).

The sticker system is SO important for keeping your library organized. It holds students accountable for returning books to the correct bins (it's almost kid-proof). Though it's very time consuming, it's well worth it when you don't have to re-organize your books at the end of the year! 


 


One thing I definitely would've done is add some packing tape as a sort of protective layer over the stickers. This would prevent stickers from falling off! Instead, there was a routine in my classroom that if you found a book without a sticker, you put it in a special bin on top of the bookshelf. I would put a new sticker on those books and put them back in the correct bins. 

After organizing my library this way, students no longer complained that there was nothing they liked to read, and I no longer had to spend a lot of time looking through hundreds of books for one specific title. I even noticed that students were better able to discuss characteristics of genres during our conferences! 

How do you organize your classroom library?

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Halloween Products Giveaway!

Monday, October 20, 2014

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The giveaway is over. Thanks to all those who participated!
I'm celebrating my new Facebook page this week! Since Halloween is only a week away, I thought it would be perfect to giveaway all of my Halloween Products! Enter below by liking my new Facebook page! The giveaway runs from 10/20 through 10/23. Winners will be announced on Reading Royalty's Facebook page on Thursday 10/24 at 9:00 EST! 

Bundle 1: Halloween Literacy Centers, Coordinate Points and Ordered Pairs, Trick or Treat Graphing
Bundle 2: Halloween Synonyms, Parts of Speech, Coordinate Points and Ordered Pairs, Trick or Treat Graphing



This is a set of 2 Halloween themed games, played similarly to Battleship, focusing on coordinate points and ordered pairs. Available in my TPT store for $3.00



This one is a freebie... but I'm including it anyway because it's so stinkin' cute! It's perfect for students to complete as homework or classwork! You can also use this in school to graph the goodies at your classroom Halloween party! Even if you don't win, grab this freebie here!




7 Halloween themed activities: Halloween fact and opinion, spider web synonyms, character candy bag, candy corn story map, Halloween parts of speech, and character costume. Available in my TPT store for $6.00.



Can be used at a center or individually. Use them for weekly vocabulary work or to enhance students current writing pieces. There are 8 pre-made spider webs. These contain "boring" words. Students should use thesauruses to look for more exciting words to fill out the spider webs. This sells in my TPT store for $1.50



Two activities focusing on nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Part of speech sort and building "scary" sentences. This sells in my TPT store for $3.00



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March Mania: Classroom Management

Sunday, March 2, 2014

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March is my least favorite month of the year. I feel like my kiddos would agree with me. Every year "March Mania" sets in. We've all grown weary of winter. We're sick of being stuck inside, but still have weeks of cold, muck, and probably more snow ahead. Not to mention that there are 6 full weeks of school and plenty of state testing before we see another day off.. yikes! 

A teacher has to get creative to keep their students motivated this time of year! 

March Mania is a fun supplement to your classroom management system to help keep your students motivated for the entire month! 

I created a set of board games for one of the bulletin boards in my classroom. I have my kiddos in group of 4-6, so each group has their own game board. There are tons of different ways you can set up the board game, I chose to keep the same guidelines as our class clip chart to make it easy! 



Kiddos can earn either one or two spins each afternoon for good behavior! I made the spinners easily using paper clips and brads. Once they spin, they move their game piece (different colored push pins) the number of spaces and whatever space they land on is their prize. Some spaces have homework passes, iPad passes, choose from the prize box, spin again, etc. 



















Do you want to try this in your classroom? Download the completely editable board game for FREE in my TPT store. 


If you use it, let me know what you think! 
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3 Million Strong Sale

Monday, February 24, 2014

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I couldn't resist linking up with Erin over at Mrs. Beattie's Classroom! Teachers Pay Teachers is having their 3 Million Teachers Strong sitewide sale this Thursday and Friday!! 

I haven't been around too much lately, but I cannot miss a good sale! Plus I'm trying to find a better balance of teaching, grad school, TPT, and life (TPT and life need to get a little more attention!)



My #1 most wishlisted product is Reading Madness - I use this in my own classroom every day! I use it in conjunction with Reading Workshop, though any classroom that sets aside some time for students to read books at their “just right” level can use this! 




My #2 most wishlisted product (which is also my best seller) is Adverb Acting! Adverb Acting is played like charades. Acting out the Adverbs helps students to grasp  that adverbs modify verbs (it is also a great review of verbs!)




I have A LOT of products on my wishlist that I can't wait to finally purchase! I've been dying to buy Lovin' Lit's Interactive Reading Literature Notebook. 



What are you buying at the sale?!



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