Cyber Monday Teachers Pay Teachers Sale! Save 28%!

This Monday and Tuesday, December 2nd and 3rd, 2013 Teachers Pay Teachers is having a site wide sale! Most sellers, including myself and Etc will be listing their stores at 20% off. Using code CYBER, TPT will give you an additional 10% off for a total of 28%! Site wide sales like this are sparse so if you have been thinking about getting something now is the time!

For fun seasonal activities and Spanish and high school English lessons, check out Etc's store.

For fun elementary level seasonal math and literacy activities, games and art lessons check out my (Lesson Lady) store.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Lesson Lady and I at One Less Headache want to wish you and your family a wonderful Thanksgiving! We will be taking a short break this week from writing our regular posts and will pick up after Thursday with some great deals to offer you!  

Find more Freebies on Facebook!

If you enjoy freebies, you may want to check out my Facebook page. A few times a week I post freebies there that most of the time I don't have time to share here. I also have a special promotion that will be coming up in the next two weeks that will be a great help to those that love teacher freebies.

I am thankful for each 'like'!

Fabulous Friday Freebies: 100 Holiday Classroom Ideas Worth Reading

1. Make bake-less Christmas cookies with your class.  These are simple, yummy and could be adapted to any season.
2. Buy some pipe cleaners, googley eyes and red pom-pons.  Rent a movie and make some healthy reindeer snacks to munch on.
3. Is it snowing yet?  Take the kiddies outside and play snow games.  Here are seven great ideas.
4. Make a candy turkey.  They are super cute and a big hit with all ages.
5. Martha Stewart has a high quality photo gallery of 32 easy Christmas crafts.
6. Have students research how Christmas is celebrated around the world.
7. Encourage your students to commit random acts of kindness.
8. Have some fun with holiday puns.
9. Create your own ornaments.  Here are 8 great ornament ideas for older kids.
10. Who doesn't love to get their hands full of paint once in a while?  You can choose between 15 great ideas and have your students make hand and footprint Christmas crafts.  
11. Have your students make a piñata.  That is one of the coolest group projects that I remember doing as a kid and have done since becoming a teacher with my students.
12. Download boardgames, word searches and 25 other free Christmas activities to build excitement as we count down day to Christmas.
13. Do your kids like to color?  There are coloring pages galore online and about 50 Christmas coloring pages on this site.

Make it: Easy Baked Banana Oatmeal for Busy Folks

When school started back in session in August, I was overwhelmed as a new mom with everything that had to be done in the morning before leaving the house. Kudos to all the working moms out there! It was much more demanding and hectic than I thought it would be.

One thing that helped me get ready in a timely fashion was having things done the night before. I started packing both breakfast and lunch at least the night before so it was easy to grab. I looked for recipes that would be easy to make on Sunday and able to divide into five parts so I could have breakfast for the whole week ready to go.

Although we normally focus on educational materials, I thought I would share this recipe with you since it helped me have something healthy and tasty to eat each morning and made my school day start a little better.

As a bonus, this recipe would work for all sorts of diets such as gluten free, vegan, vegetarian, dairy free and low sugar!

I adapted this recipe from Sweet Roots.

Easy Baked Banana Oatmeal

3 bananas
2 cups oats
2 tablespoons ground flax seeds (I never left these out but I think the recipe would be fine without them too.)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup liquid sweetener such as maple syrup or even a Da Vinci syrup (I tried one time with sugar free hazelnut and it was good!)
Season to taste with cinnamon and salt
1 can coconut milk - both light and heavy work okay for this

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and grease an 8x8 inch pan.

2. Slice the bananas and layer them along the bottom of the pan. If you wish, you can also save some bananas for on the top of the oatmeal.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix together the oats, flax seeds, baking powder, liquid sweetener and vanilla extract. Add salt and/or cinnamon if you would like. I enjoyed this with cinnamon!

4. Press the mixture over the bananas into the pan. If you have more bananas to add to the top of the oatmeal, slice them on top now.

5. Pour the coconut milk over the top of the oatmeal. Don't worry if it doesn't soak in right away.

6. Bake for 40 minutes. I have enjoyed this hot or cold and it's a great amount for the whole week!  Typically I made this on Sunday and divided it into containers for the whole week after it cooled so each morning I could just grab breakfast and go.

Hope this recipe can help make your mornings a little easier.

Fabulous Freebies: Share a Seasonal Freebie!

This week I invite you to share your favorite seasonal teacher freebie on my Facebook page! Please 'like' my page if you have not already done so and share your free seasonal item. Share one this week and in the future I would love to invite others to share more!

Pros and Cons of 0-4 Grading Scale

Recently, I have had some interesting discussions and read several articles about the 0-100 point grading scale versus the 1-4 point grading scale.  Apparently, it has become a fairly controversial topic with people passionately arguing both sides.  A synopsis of the arguments for and against changing from a 100 point scale to a 4 point scale are below.

Pros of the 1 to 4 point scale:
1) Since the letters basically go in order, making a 4 an A, a 3 a B, a 2 a C and a 1 a D correlates better.  Proponents of the 4 point scale argue that an F should not cover a 60 point spread, as is seen in the 100 point scale.
2) Students feel that it is easier to make up lost ground on a 4 point scale than a 100 point scale.
3) Not giving students a 0 eliminates the use of a grade to punish students.  Instead, students are given incompletes.  That way, students learn that the expectation that they master the objectives is an imperative and they can't just accept the 0 and let it go.
4) The 4 point scale correlates to how most qualitative rubrics are scored.



Cons of the 1-4 point scale:
1) If you have a grading program that automatically calculates percentages, the four point scale will still be converted to a 100 point scale in the end anyway.
2) Teachers who feel that the even increments of the letter grades is not reflected by the 100 point scale can give students number grades instead of letter grades.
3) Giving students zeros for not turning in assignments teaches them that there is a consequence when they do not complete an assignment.  Students need to learn that there is a correlation between their actions and the outcome.  This encourages an internal locus of control.  This also prepares them for the "real world" where they will be expected to meet deadlines, complete assignments, etc.
4) The 100 points scale allows a more accurate assessment of how much of the assignment they did and/or did correctly.