October Learning Freebies Link Up

Halloween-free Fun for October!

October is such a fun month of the year, but many schools no longer allow Halloween celebrations or even activities with a Halloween theme. As it turns out, there are still many exciting seasonal activities that you can use with your students during this month. For example, October is Fire Prevention Month and there are many free resources on the Internet dealing with Fire Safety. 

To go along with the fire safety theme, I created a fun cooperative learning review game for upper elementary students and I shared it in the October Learning Freebies blog post on Corkboard Connections. It's called Fire Safety Talk Show and it would make a great ending to a mini unit on fire safety. I also invited other bloggers to join me and share a free activity for October that's not related to Halloween, so check back later to see what's been added. Visit the October Learning Freebies Link Up to find great resources for this month! 

Seasonal Activities 

Mini Pack Combo

Seasonal activities aren't just for little kids! As a 5th grade teacher, I loved to create special activities for each month to integrate math, science, literacy, and social studies. A few years ago I began compiling them into seasonal mini packs to share with others. I've now updated all of my original seasonal mini packs with new covers and I've bundled them into one combo pack. You can save over $10 when you purchase all of them together. Remember that you can always preview my digital items online from my website. Just go to the Seasonal page and take a look!  

Character Education Lesson

Did you know that Friday, October 5th is Do Something Nice Day? If you don't believe me, you can search for it on Google to see for yourself! Last year I created this little freebie to use with your students, and I shared some suggestions for using it on Classroom Freebies, a collaborative blog created by Charity Preston. You can download this free resource from my Seasonal Page on Teaching Resources. While you are on the Classroom Freebies blog, be sure to follow it because dozens of new freebies are added each week!

Date: October 10, 2012 

Time: 8 p.m. EST

Have you registered for my upcoming free webinar? I'm excited to have 5 amazing educators join me to share these 5 amazing web tools for collaboration! Joan Young, Erin Klein, Suzy Brooks, Lisa Dabbs, and Paula Naugle will share practical applications for using these web tools with students. Even if you aren't sure you can attend the live session, sign up now so that you will receive the recording link later. Attendance certificates will be available, but they will ONLY be available to attendees for an hour directly after the webinar ends. Register from the Webinars page on Teaching Resources. The webinar starts at 8 p.m., but if you have't attended a Blackboard Collaborate session before, you'll want to attend the webinar introduction that begins at 7:45 p.m.

Tips for Hosting Your Own Parent Night

Download this Freebie Now

Have you hosted your own parent night this year? No, I don't mean a school Open House or having parents drop by the night before school opens. I mean a meeting where you share your goals and expectations for your students and answer questions from their parents. Parent Nights can be really helpful, I found that it was best to wait to schedule one after midterm progress reports went home. Often parents don't know what questions they have until they are presented with concrete data about how their child is doing. They may have felt their child was doing just fine until they saw their child's grades. Even though it seems like a lot of work, hosting a Parent Night will save you time later during Parent-Teacher Conferences. I've created a free packet of teaching tips that you can download from my TpT store to help you get started. Good luck! By the way, be sure to follow me on TpT so you'll always be notified when I add new freebies! 

Did you know that DonorsChoose.org will be having a Friends and Family week in October? This is exciting news, because they will release a matching code on October 8th that will double every donation that's made online with that code! Because of this, I'm going to temporarily stop my DonorsChoose Sunday feature and instead I'm working on a plan to fund even more projects during the Friends and Family week. I'll share more information about this during the coming week. Be sure to follow me on Facebook and Corkboard Connections so that you don't miss out on submitting your project! By the way, if you are a public school teacher in the United States and don't know about DonorsChoose, please visit my DC Page on Teaching Resources for more information!

Announcing the 9th Annual Elementary School Conference!

Plan to Attend and Register Now!

Dates: November 4 - 6, 2012

Location: Koury Convention Center, Greensboro, NC

Hotel Registration Deadline: October 12th

I'm excited to announce the 9th Annual Elementary School Conference which will be held in a little over a month at the Koury Convention Center in Greensboro. This event is sponsored by the NC Association of Elementary Educators, an organization I've actively supported for over five years. In fact, I'm thrilled to be the NCAEE President-elect, and I look forward to becoming the President in November. We have a terrific line up of featured speakers and two awesome keynotes at this year's event. Find out the details and how to register by visiting the NC Association of Elementary Educators website. I hope you'll join us for one of the best educational conferences in the region! I hope to see you there!

Hotel Information

You'll need to act quickly if you want to take advantage of the group rate for your hotel room. The deadline for group rates at the Koury is Oct. 12th. Click this link to the Room Reservations Form and then select "Groups" from the navigation bar. When you see the pop up box, enter code EE2012 and then the words Sign In. This will give you the reduced rate for the hotel room for your stay.     

Announcing the Wednesday Buzz Winner! 

Did you enter the Wednesday Buzz contest on Facebook this week? You can learn more about this feature by reading my blog post on Corkboard Connections.

This week's question was,
"What is one change you've made in your classroom this year that you feel is making a difference?" I loved reading all of the wonderful responses. You can read them yourself by clicking this link. Congratulations to Stacey Thomas McNerney who was selected as this week's winner! She may select one item worth up to $20 from my Teaching Resources website. Stacey, please email help@lauracandler.com to let us know what you want. Thanks to everyone who participated!

Favorite Books for Literature Circles

Congratulations to 

MaryEileen Rufkahr!

Last week I mentioned that I was working on creating a list of recommended books for Literature Circles, and I invited you to add your own suggestions. Over 100 people took me up on this offer and entered to win a $25 gift card from Amazon.com. I selected an entry with a random drawing, and MaryEileen Rufkahr was the lucky winner! I'm still working on putting together that page of Literature Circle book recommendations, and I'll let everyone know when it's ready. Thanks to everyone who submitted an entry!