Proud to Make them Practice

It's week 2 of the "new blogger initiative"! 

1) Find one worksheet or activity or test or unit or question or powerpoint slide or syllabus or anything that you are proud of. Share it.

My five years as a teacher have been quite a journey. I honestly cringe when I think about my first year. However, one thing I have always loved doing, and started doing my very first year, is creating my own material for my students. My favorite types of worksheets to build are riddle puzzles and problem sets to use with VersaTiles.  

If you don't have a set of VersaTiles in your classroom, I highly recommend them! I will admit that the first time our math coach came to me and said "look what I bought you" I was a little skeptical. But I figured I could give anything a try (since nothing I was doing during my first year really seemed to work anyway), and not only did I love them, but the kids thought they were pretty cool too. You can buy kits for whatever grade-level and subject area you teach, but sometimes I found that what was already there wasn't exactly what I needed. So I found the book with the patterns and started making my own - most of which are on my tpt store.

In the midst of switching standards over the last few years, some topics were hard to find anything for extra practice, and that's why I made most of my VersaTile worksheets. Best of all, the kids can check their answers when they are finished!

I know I'm only supposed to share one thing I'm proud of, but I can't resist sharing about my riddle puzzles. When I was a kid, i loved puzzles and riddles. I decided to use my love of puzzles and riddles to make worksheets that would be more fun for my students. I found some jokes (usually animal themed) and created my own puzzles! Each correct answer led to the answer to the riddles! They were my main tool a few years ago, and I still like to pull them out to use.