Radio Silence… means new products!

Remember me? I know, it has been a while since I blogged, but for good reason. Here’s a quick update about what I have been up to (personally), what I am doing work wise, and the exciting new products in my store.

Moving Continents 

J.R.R. Tolkien famously wrote that “not all who wander are lost.” (The Fellowship of the Ring). I sure hope that is true, as I certainly have done a fair bit of wandering.

At the end of August my husband and I, once again, packed our worldly contents into a couple of suitcases and five boxes, and moved continents. It was emotional leaving family and friends in South Africa, but we are so excited to be back in Canada. We love this place, and cannot wait to make it home in a longterm way… as in, long enough to actually buy furniture.

Since being married we have moved so often that we have always rented furnished places, or borrowed furniture; this time we are planning to be in Vancouver for at least five years, so I finally got to buy a sofa (and we got such a pretty one too!) We have loved exploring the neighbourhood more, finding all the great furniture and decor shops, and it has certainly indulged my creative side. Do check out my Instagram (stacey.lloyd) for more pictures of our new home and neighbourhood.

Work Update

Of course, this new move means that I am out of the classroom. Unfortunately, we moved back just after the school year started, and so not exactly the best time to find work as a high school English teacher. However, I still scan the job postings daily and am desperately hoping that something will come up. I am itching to get back into the classroom and teach. I miss interacting with students, collaborating with fellow educators, engaging in educational dialogue… and you know what? I actually even miss grading essays. No, really. I miss reading students’ efforts, their deep thoughts and ideas; I miss celebrating their small triumphs and achievements, and I miss having the opportunity to guide them through the learning process.

So please, fingers crossed for me. And any encouragement you want to send my way…

New Products

One of the first pieces of furniture we bought was an office desk. I couldn’t wait to get back to working on some new teaching products. So, what have I been up to? You may want to check out these new resources:

MORE FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE TASK CARDS

My Figurative Language in Famous Fiction Task Cards product is one of my best-sellers. I have been amazed at how popular it is, and then I realised that it isn’t all that surprising: there is a plethora of resources out there for identifying figurative language in poetry, but very little for identifying it elsewhere. Thus I have now created these FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE IN EVERYDAY USE TASK CARDS.

Included on these cards are examples of figurative language in sports commentary, advertisements, political speeches, movie tag lines, and social media posts. I hope that students will love seeing the relevance of learning about figurative language, as it really is all around them.

CLOSE READING RESOURCES

In my teaching, I have found that one of the most challenging aspects of teaching ELA, is teaching students to be critical readers: getting them to sucessfully understand how to make inferences, how to comprehend and recall facts, how to analyse, evaluate and make predictions. These are such valuable skills for non-fiction reading, visual literacy and for analysing literature. Moreover, they are skills which students will need in the real world.

Therefore, I have started working on some CLOSE READING resources to help guide students through the process of acquiring these vital skills. One of the exercises I love most are my graphic organisers which help students process what they have read, and guide them though critical reading skills without them even realising it.

So far I have two new complete products based around a couple of amazing original short stories by the extremely talented Lara Ferrari. These stories are engaging and thought-provoking, and come with all sorts of activities to help you teach close reading: making inferences worksheets; grammar and language analysis exercises; plot structure graphic organisers; writing prompts and rubrics; and more. Plus they also come with three levels of comprehension questions for differentiated teaching. Each one of these packets could easily be used over three days and would even be useful as an emergency sub-lesson.

You can grab a FREE version of some of these reading resources by clicking on the link below:

And finally SOME MORE POSTERS! 

I love making posters for the middle/high school classroom. I feel like there are so many elementary products out there for decorating the classroom which are gorgeous, but totally not age-appropriate for teens. So I do love making posters which are engaging and  add to students’ learning experience, while at the same time being visually age-appropriate. So, do check out my latest product: CRITICAL THINKING TERMS POSTERS.

***Now, did you make it to the end of this blog post?! Well done to you! And as a special thank you… for a limited time only, if you comment below, follow me on Instagram or  like my Facebook page, and then email me at stacey_lloyd@ymail.com telling me which of the products mentioned in this blog post you would like to get your hands on… I will send it through to you FOR FREE!***