September 2017 - So Blessed to Be a Teacher

My last post was about my #1 suggestion for the new school year, which is to join Teachers Pay Teachers. I talked about my decision to become a buyer (and soon afterward, a seller!) during the last year, and how thrilled I am to be able to get awesome resources for my students for cheap – or often, free!

No matter what you teach, there are most likely a ton of freebies available on Teachers Pay Teachers that will be useful to you. But I’m a library girl, so today I am going to bring you on a little shopping spree to get some cool FREE products that you can use if you are a school librarian (or a library/media specialist, library teacher, teacher-librarian, library superhero rock star diva, or whatever you call yourself these days.) 🙂

YOU DON’T NEED ANY MONEY FOR THIS SHOPPING SPREE! If you want to download any of this fabulous free-ness, you just need an account on Teachers Pay Teachers (and joining, is, of course, also free). I have organized this freebie-for-all into different library-related subjects to make your shopping trip free AND easy!

Let’s grab our imaginary reusable shopping bags and go! (Get ready for a LOT of exclamation points! But really, who isn’t excited about a freebie shopping spree?!?!?!)

Parts of a Book/Text Features

Let’s start with a free Bingo activity by The LibraryFox to review text features!

And here is everything you need for a text feature Scoot game by Live Laugh Teach First Grade!

Why not turn identifying text features into a scavenger hunt? Download iHeartLiteracy’s free product to get it started!

Here is a printable poster by Create-Abilities you can display or distribute to remind your kids about everything they have learned about text features!

Library Behavior & Etiquette

You can display these free signs by Leah the Librarian or these posters by Kathryn Garcia to remind your kids about how to behave in the library!

Ooh ooh! This one’s mine! 🙂 Print out these free worksheets (by me!) to reinforce your lessons on library behavior and etiquette at the beginning of the school year (or any time the kiddos need a refresher!).

Reference Materials

When your students are learning about reference materials, try this ABC Research resource by The Library Patch!

And Linda the Librarian’s Hunting for Information is another cute resource that your kids can use to practice using books from the reference section!

This Dictionary Scavenger Hunt, created by Rachel Lynette, is a great resource to download when your students are learning to use dictionaries!

Taking Care of Books

These spaceship-themed book care bookmarks created by The Library Patch will remind your library students about the rules of taking care of books!

And Staying Cool in the Library’s adorable book care product includes a coloring page and bookmarks to reinforce your lessons on book care! (I literally just used this product with my new kindergarteners earlier this week!) 🙂

Dewey Decimal System

These cute bookmarks by Staying Cool in the Library can help your students learn the categories of the Dewey Decimal System!

Using Call Numbers

This free resource by Summer Pittman gets students up and moving around the library by asking them to locate books with different call numbers!

Fiction vs. Nonfiction

Here is a free resource by Mrs. J in the Library that you can use to assess student knowledge of fiction vs. nonfiction (along with author/illustrator and basic parts of a book as well)!

Book Fair

Download, print, and display this free banner, designed by ATBOT the Book Bug, to advertise your Book Fair!

Support your colleagues who teach math by making your Book Fair into a math lesson! Try the Trapped Librarian’s Book Fair Math product!

Genres

This free product by Kathryn Garcia includes bookmarks, a coloring book, and other resources to help teach your students about genres of literature!

And please try my Genre Easter Egg Hunt as a fun activity to reinforce the characteristics of several genres!

So let’s say you want to plan a lesson to teach your first or second grade students about the graphic novel genre. Why, here is a lesson plan by Mrs. J in the library! Boom. Done.

When one of your lower elementary classes is working with the biography genre, download this free product by Elle Madison, which includes coloring pages with information about the lives of Michael Jordan and Dr. Seuss! Adorable!

Coding

Need some suggestions on how to introduce coding to your library students? Download this free resource by the Trapped Librarian that includes ideas for Hour of Code!

Bookmarks to Color

Here are some free Columbus Day-themed bookmarks by Lil Country Librarian that your students can color and decorate!

And some bookmarks especially for the 100th day of school by Library Learners!

This winter, you can make your kids laugh as they decorate these joke bookmarks created by LittleRed!

When it’s springtime, how about some Peeps bookmarks? Here are Elementary Library Mama’s Peeps bookmarks to color!

And…for any time of the year…some cute reading-themed bookmarks by Elementary Lesson Plans and animal bookmarks by Mrs. Molly’s Menagerie!

End of the School Year

Do you remember that process-and-a-half of getting all the books back to the library at the end of the school year? Here are some free award certificates by Elementary Library Mama that will be great incentives for your kids!

When book checkout is over for the year, but you need a few activities to get your littlest library students through the last class or two, try these activities (in this resource by…me!).

And if you are looking for a fun way to encourage your library students to keep reading over the summer, just download Summer Reading Bingo by Primary Playground!

Or help your students to try out different genres in the summer with this summer reading product by Kathryn Garcia!

Library Decor

Now, here we have a set of posters with quotations about reading, designed by Staying Cool in the Library, and some more reading-themed posters by My First Grade Gems!

You can plan ahead for winter by downloading these free posters by ATBOT the Book Bug that will make your library look fantastic!

Clip Art

More of a DIY-er, are ya? If you want to make your own educational resources for your school library, TpT has you covered there too.

Here is some book clip art by Elementary Lesson Plans!

And here is a set of free clip art from DarraKadisha that includes books and other school supplies!

The next freebie is from Optimistic Kids and Families Art, and as the artist says in her description of the resource, they are, in fact, “free bees.” (Bee clip art, of course! And one of them is reading – perfect for library resources! A cute product and a cute pun.) 🙂

Here is some free clip art by Kari Bolt Clip Art that would be perfect for your library newsletters, signs, and other creations!

And let’s end with some adorable reading owl clip art by Clipartino!

And There is So Much More!

We could seriously chow down on this all-you-can-eat buffet of free stuff all day. My list is just a little sample of all the great resources that are available on Teachers Pay Teachers, but I hope our free spree today got you set up with a bunch of printables and other freebies that will help you throughout this new school year!

(Update! 02/01/2018: If you loved these freebies, check out my more recent post with over 40 MORE free TpT products for your school library!)

*A huge “thank you!” to the Teachers Pay Teachers teacher-authors who gave me permission to include their resources in this list!*

Disclosure: The banner below is an affiliate link. If you click through and make a purchase, I may receive compensation at no additional cost to you. Thank you for your support of my blog!

I think most teachers would agree that the real “New Year” begins in August or September when the school year starts. New students and new policies and new schedules are bigger changes than what we see when the ball drops between December and January.

From planning to cleaning to decorating to organizing to copying, there is a ton of work to do as the school year starts, and I’m going to suggest that you add one more itty bitty thing to your list. But it’s a thing that will ultimately make some of the other things easier. AND make the rest of the school year easier.

JOIN TEACHERS PAY TEACHERS!

Really. Do it. Yesterday.

What It Is…and What Else It Is

Okay. So I had heard about Teachers Pay Teachers long before I actually tried it, and waiting so long to give it a go was a MISTAKE. Basically, before I registered for TpT, I used to spend a lot of time on Google trying to search for “free” lesson ideas and worksheets and coloring pages for my students. Sometimes, a search result would pop up that said it was on Teachers Pay Teachers and I’d be like, “Oh, that sounds great!” but then I’d be like, “Oh, it’s on Teachers Pay Teachers. And I don’t want to pay for anything right now. So, no thanks.” To be honest, something about the name Teachers PAY Teachers irked me a little at first and made me feel like everything was going to be really expensive.

As time went on, those Teachers Pay Teachers items showed up more and more. Meanwhile, I also found that more often than not, randomly searching the rest of internet brought me to a bunch of weird spammy sites. I eventually concluded that I WAS going to end up paying SOMEONE, and it was beginning to look like the money would be going to a tech-y dude who gets spyware off your computer. I figured I was better off giving money to some fellow teachers than having my computer infected with internet gunk.

So I joined the site and accepted that I would, in fact, be a teacher that was paying other teachers.

But in my first few minutes looking around the site, I found out something very important about Teachers Pay Teachers. Yes, it is a site where you can purchase fantastic resources created by other teachers. But IT IS ALSO a place where teachers GIVE AWAY FABULOUS FREE PRODUCTS.

Yay TpT! SO MUCH is Free!

There are FREE lesson plans, FREE coloring pages, FREE classroom posters, FREE fonts, FREE videos, FREE printable worksheets, and much more. Get this- every single person who sells on Teachers Pay Teachers MUST have at least one freebie (really – it is a requirement in order to be a seller!). So we are talking about THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of FREE products.

So I went on a free downloading spree. It was basically what I had been TRYING to do many times before during my Googling sprees, but SO much easier and more successful. I can’t even believe how many free worksheets and other resources I have found for free from the talented sellers on TpT.

And If It’s Not Free, It’s Probably Worth It!

If I have a very specific need and I can’t find something free, I can usually find something inexpensive and worth every penny. I really would rather not pay for resources, of course, but then I stopped and realized that I never hesitate to spend $5 here or there for office supplies, stickers, or prizes for school. So, why not pay a couple of bucks for something that is actually designed to help my students learn something? And it is fun to know that a purchase on Teachers Pay Teachers will help support a teacher.

So…Who’s Paying Whom?

Ultimately, I’m less than a year into using TpT, yet I have downloaded a ton of resources and spent a pretty tiny amount of money. For all these years, I stayed away from Teachers Pay Teachers, when all along I didn’t realize it was like a dollar store / FREE store for teaching resources. Almost every time I visit the site, I get paid in freebies, which leads me to wonder – are the sellers or buyers really winning out here? Or is it just a fantastic partnership for everybody involved?

Check It Out Today!

If you haven’t joined yet, go for it! Joining is free and as I mentioned, there is a ton of great stuff that is just waiting for you, no matter what subject you teach! I am so happy that I joined, and I loved TpT so much that I opened my own store there a few months after making my first purchase.

So…all that free stuff we were talking about? As soon as you sign up, feel free to start your own personal free download spree with some of my free products!

Enjoy!

Month: September 2017

Freebies for Your School Library on Teachers Pay Teachers!