Wise Guys Two Stars and A Wish for Back to School 2014!

We are excited to be a part of the Two Stars and a Wish Blog hop to begin the 2014-2015 school year. The beginning of the year is always filled with excitement and anticipation. We aim to help you by giving you two great star ideas and one big wish for our students this school year. Enjoy!

Our first star idea is to instill a love of reading in each child that steps through your classroom door. You may think this is impossible, but it isn't. On that first day of school, have your students write down their hobbies, what they like to do for fun, favorite TV shows/movies, and favorite books/genres. From that list, you can start to build, or add to, your classroom library. Just this past year, I had a few students who were behavior issues right from the start. But I sat down with each of them and found out their interests and preferences in books (wrestling, World War II, graphic novels). I made it a goal to use some of my Scholastic bonus points and even some of my own money to add books with these topics in my library. You should've seen the looks on their faces when these books arrived! They now knew two things about this classroom. #1 The teacher cares about them. #2 They have something to read during the school day! Just taking a little extra time in the beginning of the year can go a long way toward a successful school year!

Our second star idea is how to create active engagement in your students from the start. We have an amazing FREE resource that that includes 16 great ideas for you to use in your classroom to help maintain your students attention. You can download this free resource by clicking here or on on the picture below.

And our wish for the 2014-2015 school year is to help prepare our students for the Common Core State Standards Exam. In order to do this, we know that students will have to cite evidence from informational text when answering questions. We have created a resource titled Citing Evidence: A Kid Friendly Guide to CCSS Test Prep. This resource takes the students through the process of discovering what citing evidence means, how to use clues from the text, provides them with some sample texts to practice, and even gives an assignment at the end that you can assess. It also includes small cards to cut out that offer reminders for students when responding to questions that require them to cite evidence. You can download it by clicking here or on the picture below.

If you have enjoyed these bright ideas, please consider following our TPT store, and our pages on facebook, and pinterest!

For more star ideas, from more than 40 different bloggers please browse through the link up below and choose a topic that interests you. Thanks for visiting!

An InLinkz Link-up