"The secret of teaching is to appear to have known all your life what you learned this afternoon." ~Anonymous

If you don't know already, I'm a second grade learning support teacher. I've been wanting to share tips I've found or the ideas I get when I need to "wing it" in the classroom because my students are staring at me like deer in headlights! So I thought I'd create "Teacher Thursdays" for my blog. I'm thinking of creating a whole new "teacher blog" but for now I'll just start here.

First, I want to share two of my favorite teacher bogs. I set a goal to be more organized at work, and so I started with Mrs. McDavid who I found through Pinterest here. I LOVE this site and it gave me tons of ideas. Most important is became what I call my Lesson Plan Binder. It has so much more than lesson plans in it!

The other blogger I found through Pinterest was Mr. Smith from Teacher Tipster. I LOVE LOVE LOVE this dude! He's quirky like me and has amazing ideas that he vlogs about to get kids engaged. Make sure you check him out!!

So all that being said, here are two ideas for writing I'm using in my classroom right now.

Many of my students are in OT for writing. They just love to write....NOT!! To encourage neat handwriting and correct sentence structure I found an idea on Pinterest called Spotlight Writer. I got a desk lamp, a clipboard, and a picture stand. Anytime I see good handwriting or good sentences, it goes up in the spotlight!

My students LOVE this and are working their tails off to get in the spotlight.

**Disclaimer** Beware of those that will now take twice a long to do their work because they are working so hard to make it neat!!

The other idea I wanted to share was our How To Writing we did last month. I had planned for the kids to write a How To about getting ready for school. BOOOOORRRING! But, it was easy and I already had the graphic organizer to go with it. That was the plan. Until the morning of the lesson....

That day my daughter was moving slower than a slug and was giving me the "I'm so annoyed by you mother" attitude all morning. That's when I got the idea....How To Drive Your Mom Crazy!! My students LOVED writing this piece!!! They were so into it and are proud that their writing is displayed in the hall that includes a picture of them with their moms! :)  (Of course I forgot to take a picture of the display, so I'll have to check back later! Sorry!!)


So there you have it. Some "Teacher Tips" for you. What do you think? Should I create a whole new blog for teacher tips? Leave your comments!