Gifts for the Book Nerd, English Teacher, Bibliophile, Librarian, or Grammar Nazi

The problem with buying gifts for the book lover is that you never know which books they have already read and own or whether they will even like them. I'm offering suggestions because I am a verified 100% book nerd English teacher myself and my husband finds me incredibly hard to buy for. Hopefully this will help you find the perfect gift for your loved one! Click on each picture below to go to the website to purchase (most are on Amazon).

STOCKING STUFFERS

Who wouldn't love these literary-inspired stocking stuffers?
(Images courtesy of Amazon.com, unless otherwise noted)

This just seems completely appropriate for those of us who love words:
The Best Christmas Word Search Puzzle Book



Help your loved one keep their Kindle, iPad, smart phone, or other reading device's screen clean:


Scrabble Slam Cards: Taking your favorite board game to another level:



Inspire the book lover with a Magnetic Poetry Kit (Book Lover edition, of course!):

Every book nerd knows you can never have too many bookmarks. Get these cute punctuation magnetic i-clip bookmarks:

Or elegant Harry Potter Hogwarts Houses bookmarks:

Keep Calm and Read On:

Sometimes you just want one hand free while reading. These Thumb Things book holders come to the rescue! (Great for read-alouds or snacking while reading.):

As long as they don't think you are sending them a hint with this Edgar Allan Poe-inspired air freshener (perfect for their car, classroom, office, library, etc.):

Or perhaps they would like Jane Austen's better:

Every teacher should keep bandages in her drawer for those pesky paper cuts. Keep it real with Shakespeare's Insults Bandages kit:

These ultra-cute sticky notes are perfectly shaped for annotating books:

Or these "Sticky Fingers":

A teacher (or writer) can never have too many pens! These Pentel gel ink pens are my favorite for grading papers, writing notes, doodling, whatever. And they are reasonably priced:

Harry Potter candy is always a fun treat:





If your book nerd friend doesn't have a mockingjay pin yet, this would be a great stocking stuffer:

Gift cards are perfect stocking stuffers! Get cards from favorite book stores, coffee houses where your loved one likes to hang out, or teaching resources sites like TeachersPayTeachers:

Image courtesy of TeachersPayTeachers.com

GIFTS

The Complete Far Side by Gary Larson: Considering this book collection was just released November 25th, perhaps your loved one doesn't have it yet. Chances are, they will cherish this for years to come:

Book nerds will drool over this new release of the Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales. These are the original stories translated into American English:

A reading journal for the book lover: seems perfect, right?

I Judge You When You Use Poor Grammar; for a great laugh, your Grammar Nazi will love this:

Any book by Grammar Girl is the perfect gift for the grammar lover. I love her website and her books are great to have on hand for easy reference:

TOTE IT

Big books are the best. "I Like Big Books and I Cannot Lie" tote:

Is that special someone you are buying for a Jane Austen fan? How about a Pride and Prejudice inspired tote:

Blue Q's bags are great for carrying books:




Or cover multiple books AND make a statement with this Banned Books tote:

How about a phone case inspired by the book? (This one is for the new iPhone 6, but they make them for many different brands/models - just click on the link):

How about a recycled book purse?

Image by Etsy.com

Gone With the Wind pouch:

WRITE ALL ABOUT IT

It's a black pen, a red pen, a pencil, and a stylus--all in an elegant shell:

Vintage card catalog-inspired notecards; they are straight from the Library of Congress:

These beautiful journals are sure to please anyone on your list who loves to write:

Tree of Life journal:

In spirals:

Cute vintage-looking roll-up pencil cases:

READING IN BED SOLUTIONS

This reading light is my all-time favorite. Make sure you get the LightWedge brand (the quality is far superior than other brands, though Verilux now makes one and I love their reading lights but haven't tried their book light):

Here's a classy-looking plush book stand (other colors available):

Does your loved one need a hands-free laptop stand for their nighttime reading or working?
This stand makes it easy:

Or how about a hands-free stand they can use for reading on their Kindle, iPad, or Nook? Did I mention they can lie on their back without fear of dropping their device on their face?

WEAR IT FAVORITES

How about a beautiful infinity scarf straight from a page of her favorite book? Check out Storiarts on Etsy:

Image: Storiarts on Etsy.com

While you are visiting Etsy, check out one of my favorite shops: the Boolady. Her To Kill a Mockingbird inspired jewelry is awesome (favorites of mine from last year!):

Image: Boolady on Etsy.com

Every bibliophile would appreciate these Book Lover Flip Flops for their trips to the beach...or anywhere:

Image: CafePress.com

More big books:

Just to keep going with the theme...

And for the book junkie:

Alice in Wonderland inspired necklace:



"So It Goes" Necklace, inspired by Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse V:


Thoreau-inspired t-shirt:


Or The Great Gatsby:

FOR THE HOME

I love the look of the card catalog cabinets! Here's a beautiful piece to add to give your loved one for home, office, or classroom (holds CDs, DVDs, etc.):

For the Harry Potter fan: a Marauder's Map blanket to keep your book nerd warm this winter:

The grammar nazi in your life will appreciate these dishes:




It's always time to read with these clocks:








Book ends are always useful:

Vintage typewriters:



Magnetic arrow book ends:


For the Doctor Who fan:

From A to Z or @ and & book ends:




Shakespeare book ends:



The only bad thing about this Hunger Games Mockingjay book end is that it only comes with one!

Because every book lover will continue to acquire new books, give them a place to keep them all:

Front view of swivel bookcase.

MISCELLANEOUS

Here's a beautiful and easy way for bibliophiles to label their books:



Because most book berds are creative themselves--because this game does take some creative-thinking--I offer up the Cards Against Humanity game. This is a game for horrible, terrible, rotten people who laugh at the expense of others. And it's highly addicting. Oh, the humanity:






Need more ideas? Check out my Pinterest pin board for more gift suggestions:

What are YOUR favorite gifts to receive? To give? Post them below with a link!

Happy Holidays from Mrs. Orman's Classroom

Cyber Monday and Tuesday Sale at TeachersPayTeachers

TpT SUPER CYBER SAVINGS 2014! 

Up to 28% off the entire site Monday, December 1st and Tuesday, December 2nd 

Use this promotional code at check out: TPTCYBER 

My fellow teachers who will be participating:

Danielle Knight

James Whitaker

Created by Mr.Hughes

Juggling ELA

Ruth S.

Miss Math Dork

The Creative Classroom

Kate's Classroom Cafe

Live Love Math

Darlene Anne

Michele Luck's Social Studies

Charlene Tess

Teaching Math By Hart

2 Peas and a Dog

Pamela Kranz

Kristin Lee

The Career Ready Teacher

All Things Algebra

4mulaFun

The SuperHERO Teacher

Liz's Lessons

For the Love of Teaching Math

Secondary Solutions

Teaching High School Math

A Space to Create

The Classroom Sparrow

Science Stuff

Addie Williams

The Tutor House

Connie Casserly

Tracee Orman

Teaching FSL

FisherReyna Education

Lessons With Coffee

Karol Steele

Margaret Whisnant
Mad Science Lessons
The Math Post
It's My Business
Room 213
Getting Nerdy with Mel and Gerdy

Linda Jennifer

Super secondary TpT teachers want to wish you a wonderful holiday season!

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If you don't want to wait for the sale to start on Monday, 
I am currently having a huge BUNDLE BlackFriday14 sale on my clip art graphics and interactive reading notebook activities. This sale will only extend through today, so get them while you can!

New interactive reading notebook activity bundle:

Stay tuned for MORE great products I'll be uploading this weekend!

Publishing Student Work

How many times have you been grading your students' papers and thought, I wonder if they would write better if they knew others could read this? 

The answer, for most students, is "Yes." Most do put forth more effort and take a little more pride in their final product when they know ahead of time their work will be published and public on the web.

Years ago, I began a short story writing unit by telling students they would be writing for their peers. I asked them to create stories their friends would like (still school appropriate, of course). I assigned the students to read all of the stories and comment on them. Then I asked them to share their favorites. If the writers wanted to reveal themselves, they could. But they could also choose to stay anonymous.

The first couple of years of this method were a little rough. Even though I specified that all feedback should be constructive and respectful, there were times when students blurted out comments like "This is the stupidest story ever!" or "Doesn't this person know how to use spell check?" I found myself in damage-control mode often.

Students also wrote about other students, making snide remarks or writing stories that were not actually fiction. Some students were embarrassed. Feelings were hurt. I felt like the worst teacher ever.

Then something magical happened. Students asked for their stories back to make changes, improvements. They wanted to edit and peer edit. They begged me to let them make revisions after they had already handed in a final draft.

What? This can't be. Students wanting to make revisions?

Yes. There's something called pride that creeps in during this unit and turns ordinary slackers into Hemingways. No one wants to look like a lazy fool in front of their classmates.

USING SHORT STORIES
For this unit I use students' short stories because 1. They aren't personal narratives, so students can remain anonymous, and 2. They are much more interesting to read than a research or informative essay. Can you imagine your students' reaction if they had to read 60 or more research papers their classmates wrote? Snoozeville.

ORGANIZING THE STORIES

In the beginning, I just published the stories in my room. I basically made photocopies of each story, making sure the writer's name was either covered up or whited-out. Each story was assigned a number. Students were given a sheet of paper with the titles of the stories and a blank area to write their feedback.  I would then cut the paper in strips and give the writers the feedback (usually throwing away the comments that were hurtful or irrelevant). 

I used a small file organizer with hanging files (see below). I labeled the folders in groups of 5 or 10 stories each so they would be easy for the students to find. 

It would take my students about 4-5 class periods (about 45 min. periods) to read through most of the stories, depending on length. We read some of the longer ones aloud. Years that I had more students, we took about six class periods to finish reading the stories.

Students wrote their feedback on a separate page. Some years I even had students grade the stories. That was always interesting. They usually gave their classmates much lower grades than I did. I do think it also made them appreciate how hard it is to grade a creative assignment as objectively as possible.

Did some students slack off and only read some of the stories? Yes. Did some just copy the feedback from their classmates paper? Yes. But the majority of students really liked this unit and, boy, did they read a lot of pages! I've always had the attitude that reading something–no matter what the material–is better than not reading at all. If reading their classmates' stories will get a reluctant reader to read, I am all for it. 

ORGANIZING THE STORIES ONLINE
Over the past few years, I've been publishing the stories online. Students can then comment online right after the story. The writers are still anonymous and the students create user names in order to comment (though most students know their classmates' user names because they can't help but tell each other).

One rule I do stick to for the feedback online: keep it positive and constructive.

Will some students still be embarrassed? Yes. And here's why I think that is OK: the times I have been embarrassed by my mistakes in grammar, spelling, etc., I LEARNED from it. I became more careful with my writing. Each time I messed up publicly, I improved my writing exponentially. This growth does not come when we mess up privately because no one calls us on it, or we never notice our mistakes.

I could give pages of feedback to each student on their stories. Some may read it. Some may toss it in the trash without looking at it. Very few (if any) will try to improve that story. And why should they? It's already been graded. But one comment from a classmate saying, "It drives me nuts when people use the wrong 'your'!" is all it may take to get that writer to make changes.


PUBLISHING USING BLOGGER
I use Blogger to publish student work because we all have Google accounts at school, so it makes it easy for the students to comment on the stories. I also appreciate the fact that Google Drive now has an "embed" feature, so I can share the stories as PDFs right on the blog post. Before, the formatting of the story (italics, special fonts) was usually lost when I copied and pasted them in.

{It should be noted that all my students have MacBook Pros. If you have limited access to the internet, I would choose to do the paper-publishing option instead.}

After students have read the stories, I have them vote for their favorites in categories such as "Best Plot," "Best Characters," "Most Creative," "Saddest," "Funniest," etc. If students wish to reveal which story is theirs after voting has finished, I allow them to do so, but they don't have to.

You can see past blogs here (note - some of the comments have been disabled to prevent just anyone from posting):
http://erie2015.blogspot.com/
http://ehsclass2016.blogspot.com/
and currently (not all of the stories are published): http://ehsclass2017.blogspot.com/

Do you publish your students' stories? Please share your experiences in the comments below!

I will be updating my SHORT STORY WRITING UNIT within the next week to include all the handouts and information about publishing student work. 

Soon to be updated!

Decorating Your Secondary Classroom {18 Things to Consider}

 

  My friends over at Created for Learning put together an excellent blog post with tips from several secondary teachers on decorating classrooms. You'll want to head over there to get the entire blog post, but I'll share a few here as a tease. ;)

It's weird how sometimes our decorations end up disconnected with how old our students really are. I teach 7th and 8th graders. Some of them come from fine, constant, healthy family and personal lives.

They are the 3rd and 4th sibling to come through our school and succeed. They play Flappy Bird, use Snapchat and Ask.fm, watch videos on Vine and play medieval phone app games before school.

However, while still maintaining privacy, I can share that just last year, I had students bullying each other, students sharing racy photos on social media to improve modeling portfolios, students cutting themselves, students attempting suicide, even students creating fake online profiles to bully themselves to gain attention.

This is the middle school world we teach in. These are the students we are decorating our rooms for. These just might not be clip-art kids. And high school is another giant leap forward (or backward), but it's a giant leap somewhere. What would our classrooms look like if we designed them to engage these minds and attentions?

As a teacher, you can use words in clever ways to ìdecorateî your classroom, not only to fill up walls but also to make your students wise. One idea is to title specific areas of your wall in a

targeted/meaningful way.  Carol used an idiom over her writing wall to teach idioms and open the door to the fundamentals of figurative language. In Johnís class, he uses ìCognitive Content Dictionariesî to be placed in a prominent locations which teaches key academic vocabulary as well as ìTier 2î vocabulary to aid in understanding text for EL learners.  Inspirational or humorous posters and quotes can also be used to fill smaller spaces and give students ideas to ponder on their own.

 

I have several items that I have in my room from my first year of teaching in 1999. Why do I keep them around? Mostly because they are either funny, sentimental, timeless, or related to a favorite book. Here are some examples: 

• (Funny) Close to Home (by John McPherson) comic: It has hung on my classroom door for many
years. I like to show my students that no matter how strict I may seem, I'm nothing compared to Mrs. Mutner. 

• (Sentimental) Pictures of former students: Students love looking at pictures of past students. Plus, it helps me remember the names of my former students.

 

• (Timeless) This quote is timeless (and a great lesson on perspective), funny, and sentimental: my brother was an assistant coach for the St. Francis baseball team at the time (April, 1996). Robert Morris threw in the towel after the fourth inning, but the fact that they persevered until then also shows
character.

 

• (Favorite Book): My To Kill a Mockingbird framed pictures. TKaM is still my favorite book and I love being able to share my love for it with my students. My framed pictures and book review from 1960 are probably my most prized classroom items.

As a 14 year teaching veteran, I have tried countless ways to create bulletin boards for cheap. Cost does become a factor, and something a teacher should think of- we spend enough money on our classes without adding the extra cost of bulletin board decorations.  

I have found that some of my most engaging and most talked about boards were not the ones with flawless borders and themed decorations. Actually, it was just the contrary- Black butcher paper background, with the titles and words written in chalk with borders that were hand-drawn, got quite the reaction from my students. These example pictures will help explain what I mean:

 

Also, don't forget to use items in your room. For example, when teaching about a topic, I hang mentor texts from my bulletin board so the kids can "see" examples of published work that supports the topic. 

 

Remember to keep it simple, engaging, and useful!

All praise and adoration to my teachers growing up, but I can't remember a single one that decorated their room for us guys. And I probably lean toward decorating for the boys...I tend to teach novels that will engage boys. So we deserve it to both genders to take a good long hard look at our rooms and decorations and ask if the boys and girls will be entertained and informed, tantalized and taught.

"But what if I think it's good? What do I do then?"

  Ask our students. They will be honest. Sometimes too much so. But we'll always find out what they think. If we need to, we can do a quick anonymous poll or ballot or something. But we can find out what each gender thinks, if we ask.

CLICK HERE to read ALL the tips for secondary teachers!

Again, thank you Created for Learning for putting together this great blog post with fabulous tips from our fellow secondary teachers! The contributors are listed below:

Blog Contributors Cliff's Notes

Laura Randazzo >>> Blog ||| TeachersPayTeachers Store
The Teacher Team >>> Blog ||| TeachersPayTeachers Store
Tracee Orman >>> Blog ||| TeachersPayTeachers Store 

Created by Mr. Hughes >>> Blog ||| TeachersPayTeachers Store
Julie Faulkner >>> Blog ||| TeachersPayTeachers Store
Students of History >>> Blog ||| TeachersPayTeachers Store 

Created for Learning >>> Blog ||| TeachersPayTeachers Store