5th Grade Essentials

Every year, as summer reaches its midway point, I sit down and think about what I would like to do the same the next year, what I would like to get rid of, and what I would like to try.  This summer has been no different.

When I sat down and really thought about what programs make my year as a teacher run smoothly, four things popped up into my mind:

5th Grade Spiral Math
Calendar Math
Paragraph of the Week
Essay of the Month

Math Homework

Calendar Math

Essay of the Month

Paragraph of the Week

I can honestly tell you that these year long programs save my sanity.  Each one of them helps me to build eager, excited, motivated, and skilled scholars from my students.  Each one of them makes my day as a teacher fly by.  Each one of them lets me leave the classroom at the end of the day knowing that I did all I could to teach the standards and enable my students to excel.

How do they do that, you ask?

Well, all four of them take these big huge things that I am supposed to teach (hello, writing an essay!!) and breaks it down step by step into manageable chunks.  Kids are constantly practicing paragraph writing.  Kids are always going over those math standards that they just can't seem to master in the one lesson I have to teach it.  Kids are going back to things they never thought they would see again, and practicing, practicing, practicing.

Calendar and the Math Homework keep me on top of the math standards.  I love them for that.  I know that even if I don't get to a math lesson that day (because of pull outs, assemblies, fire drills, whatever) my students are covered for their math skills just because we do Calendar and HW.   They also cover the skills so I can focus on problem solving in class.

Paragraph of the Week and Essay of the Month (known as POTW and EOTM in my room) help my students to build STRUCTURED writing pieces so that in class we can focus on craft.  Knowing how to effectively build a paragraph, and then practicing it, has made my students competent writers who are able to then apply this structure to, say, the standardized tests where they are expected to formulate a complete essay within a given time frame.

These four things have truly revolutionized my classroom.  I am not a stress case about teaching.  I know it will all get done because I have the simple basics covered.

And now I want to help you get it covered too.  I have bundled these four things....all four YEAR LONG programs....into one big bundle, the 5th grade ESSENTIALS pack.  Getting it this way saves you about 20% off the price of all four individually.  Now, I know it is still expensive, but I know that you will find it worth it in the end.   But to help ease the pain just slightly, it is on sale at an even bigger discount!

I am also going to give one pack away.  All you have to do it pin the link from tpt, write on your pin why you would want this pack, and leave the link to the pin in the comments below (with your email address so I can contact you if you win).  Because this is such a big pack, I am going to be checking the pins closely.  I will chose the winner using a random number generator at 8pm PST on July 5, 2014.   Happy pinning and good luck!  (and if you can't wait because you want to get started NOW, it is on sale for you!)