VA is for Bloggers - Southern Hospitality Freebie Blog Hop

Welcome to Virginia!

Virginia is for Lovers Bloggers!

A lovely group of Virginia bloggers would like to help usher in the new school year by extending a bit of southern hospitality.  You can follow along the blog hop to visit 20+ Virginia teacher blogs for terrific teaching tips and fun freebies to help get your new school year off to a great start.

 For my freebie, I decided to share what I've created for my unit on Citizenship, since I know a lot of teachers like to start the year with that unit!

Click on the picture to go get your freebie!  It includes scenario cards appropriate for K-5, where students have to decide what is the "right" thing to do!  I hope you find it as useful as I do! It's part of my Citizenship Bundle at my store, so if you like this, be sure to check it out! 

I'm also holding a BACK TO SCHOOL sale this week (today - Wednesday) as well, to commiserate celebrate the teachers' return to school in our district this Wednesday!

The next stop on the hop is 

Citizenship Bundle with a Technology Twist!

So a couple weeks ago, inspiration struck and for two days, I was solidly into a unit that frankly, I never find too interesting - Citizenship!

It's something we all need to teach and want to make it fun.  I don't know about you, but I feel bad that my students get bogged down in the vocabulary our state standards and it makes it one of the hardest units, and according to our pacing guide its one of the FIRST units to teach.

I was sitting at my computer a couple weeks ago and was looking at clipart on one of my favorite sites - My Cute Graphics (www.mycutegraphics.com).  Yep, I was procrastinating!  Then, as it often does, inspiration struck like lightning!  

It started with the visual vocabulary cards.

Then, peeking into my Citizenship folder (I put all my network files on my hard drive for the summer - smartest thing I ever did!) I looked at some of the old, drab things I had come up with back in 2008 (yeah, scary isn't it?), and started revamping, combining, creating and came up with:

Scenario cards that students can relate to but still apply citizenship skills towards.

A quilt as a culminating project that students draw and write about how they show certain citizenship traits

Paper Bag Book about citizenship (love my one from Famous Americans and told myself to create more this year!)

Threw in my Citizenship SCOOT

Last but not least, my favorite.  Years ago, I used Voice Thread for a student geometry project, for book talks, and for reading responses.  I've gotten away from it, but something this summer made me come back to it.  I created a Powerpoint, uploaded it to Voice Thread, and will have my students respond vocally to the questions in the Powerpoint.  

The directions are included in the bundle, and I'm hoping what will happen is that students from all over will be able to respond as well as see how other students responded to the questions.  It's exciting, and a great way to show students a global community!

So please go check it out {here} for TpT and {here} for Teacher's Notebook!

(Psst.  I'm having a "Back to School Sale" starting August 4th - my whole store will be 20% off! There's something else special that's happening that day!  Set your calendars to check my blog this Sunday!  I promise you won't regret it!!!!)