Thanks for the Liebster Award!

I am excited to have been nominated for the Liebster Award by both Literary Sherri and Brynn Allison from The Literary Maven. Thank you for the recognition, ladies and fellow bloggers!

The Liebster Award is awarded to bloggers by other bloggers as a way of both recognizing and welcoming them as they begin their blogging journey. It is an award that “pays it forward” and helps new bloggers realize that there is someone out there, someone who is reading! So, if you are out there and reading, here are the answers to my eleven Liebster Award questions:

Why and how long ago did you start blogging? I started my first blog to use as a class website for my students. It began as an information source only but morphed into a place where students “meet” to discuss class work. When I started selling on TpT last year, I began a wordpress blog to reach out to teachers. Recently I switched over here to use blogger.

What is one word that sums up the heart of my blog? Relevancy. I want my students to see the relevancy of what they are doing—otherwise, I don’t get much buy in. If they see a connection to their lives in the work we do, they are much more likely to engage. So, I like to use my blog to offer teachers ideas about how they can do that too.

Is there something you learned late in your blog journey that you wished you knew before? Yes. I started with wordpress and realized there were a couple of things I couldn’t do with it, like joining a linky with other teachers. So just recently I switched to blogger. Right now my blog has a bit of a split personality as I’m posting in both to try to reach my old followers. Right now I’m trying to figure out the best way to incorporate some of my favourite posts from the old blog into the new one. Any suggestions?

What is my favourite pastime other than blogging? Making products for TpT! I love the creative process and I had been ignoring that all-important part of myself for so long. When I discovered TpT, I knew I had found the perfect outlet. It never feels like work!

How many hours a week do you dedicate to your blog? Hmmmm…probably one. It is something that I want to develop further, though, so I’m going to have to start dedicating more time to it.

What category of blog posts do you like the most? I love knowing that what I am doing is helping someone else, so any post that saves another teacher time is a good one.

Where does your blog inspiration come from? That one’s easy: my students! They are always a source of inspiration. If an idea or lesson works with them, I want to share it so other teachers can try it too.

Which of your posts are you most proud of? My favourite post, and the one that has gotten the most views, is about the unit I call, tongue-in-cheek, my Disney is the Devil unit. It is one that challenges the students and gets them thinking–I love it! You can find it at my old blog, HERE.

Is there any post you’ve been planning to do, but you’ve been postponing? Not really. My head is always swimming with ideas, but once I settle on one, I’m pretty good to sit down and write about it. I do, however, want to think more about the blog and how I want it to evolve.

What is my favourite aspect of blogging? I love knowing that I might be helping a teacher save some time in their busy life. I also like being able to connect and share with other bloggers. I’m having a lot of fun with it and look forward to seeing where it takes me.

Which idea from my nominators’ blogs would I like to try? Brynn, from The Literary Maven, posted this lesson on her blog:

I love this idea! Colour is such a big part of our lives, and whether they’ve consciously thought about it or not, students will have associations with certain colours. It’s a great creative exercise that gets them thinking.

Literary Sherri wrote a post about using cups to signal understanding–it’s an excellent tool for the formative assessment toolkit!