Books! Books!! and more Books!!!

Well now that I have the opportunity to return to my favorite curriculum... if you haven't picked up on it yet it's 6th grade, it is time to refresh some of my teaching resources.  I get so many of my resource books from this wonderful business here in Arizona called Treasures 4 Teachers.  It's a non-profit organization which collects donations from businesses which can be recycled and repurposed by teachers for classroom use.  There is a section of resource books as you enter the facility and you can put as many as you can desire or select in a bag which you fill and it only costs $5 upon checkout.  Way in the back of the store is a section which is filled with items for free these include 3 ring binders in a variety of sizes, empty shoe, and tissue boxes, magazines, and other items.  This is a wonderful place for teachers here in Arizona to get their classroom set up and the resources we are in need of for pennies on the dollar.  I LOVE THIS PLACE.  It does require a $35 membership fee to be paid annually but, the savings is well worth it 5 times over!!  Because of this wonderful group, I have almost 2 cabinets full of teaching resource books, and not to mention the electronic resources I purchased from TeachersPayTeachers I am inundated with options of creative ways to teach the expected content.  Even with this abundance of resources I still find myself buying more.  I hate textbooks so I do everything in my power to find resources which will be engaging but not found within the permabond covers of a textbook which here in my district are at least 15 years outdated.  Here are pictures of the new treasures I purchased through Amazon and Carson Dellosa to help revamp and rejuvenate my curriculum.

Here are some of the new books for my collection.  These will be used for my Social Studies curriculum because here in Arizona we focus on Ancient Civilizations for 6th Grade.  This content is why I love 6th grade so much.  There are so many different projects and ideas that come from this content which is rich in content, history, and culture it is really engaging for the students.












I am really excited to use Interactive Notebooking this year.  I have already asked my administration for 6 composition books for each of my 35 students because we all know they will not buy enough or the ones you are expecting no matter what you put on the back to school supply list.  So, to appease my Type A issue, I made sure they had exactly what I wanted to ensure success upon utilizing this strategy to learn the expected content.

Finally, I want to use more differentiation since students show their "What I Know" different ways.  So, in turn, I am planning on using the option of Menus for performance assessments.  I plan on using a lot of performance assessments next year.  This allows a lot of integration, cross-curricular, and problem-solving strategies to come into play.  Along with my wonderful opportunity to create a paperless classroom with Google Chromebooks next year I cannot wait to get started.  I know I am going to drive my teammates crazy with everything I want to implement.  I know I need to do it in steps and little chunks at a time but, I think by mid 2nd trimester we will be in a great rhythm and the students will show wonderful growth and retention of the expected content.

I am so excited for this next school year to get started... now if I could just get my Donor's Choose project funded I will have an amazing year to the wonderful start so far...