Chit Chat

Here's something that I think we often forget: Teaching is not a competition.  We do not get bonus points for reinventing the wheel and no one benefits when we keep good ideas to ourselves.  Can you imagine what would happen if a doctor or researcher discovered a cure for cancer, but decided to use it only on her patients?  As teachers we need to break out of this cycle and focus on sharing best practices for the benefit of all of our students!

Teachers Pay Teachers is really changing the teaching culture.  In just a few years, they have made it not only easy, but profitable for teachers to share their best ideas.  Instead of purchasing lessons and resources from big publishing companies, we can now get them from some of the world's best teachers.  Love it!

This week our Pre-K Sound Box letter was M.  I was excited to find a "Chit Chat" unit for emergent readers from the very talented Mrs. Jump, and I thought it would be a perfect way to reinforce letters and letter sounds with my kiddos.

They were so excited to use the markers to fill in the M's.  (Didn't they do a great job?!)  Then we brainstormed lots of things that start with M.  Can I just tell you how relieved I was that they named things that I can (mostly!) draw?!

I'm interested to hear from other teachers.  It doesn't feel like many preschool teachers are utilizing TpT for resources.  What about my elementary teacher friends?  Do you feel like this is a goldmine of resources or just more stress?