Join a Postcard Exchange to receive a postcard from all over America!

You might want to participate in a fantastic activity for your classroom - a postcard exchange. Here is how it works: a teacher organizes an exchange, and finds 50 different teachers to sign up - each teacher represents one state in America. 

Each teacher works with their classroom to collect 50 postcards representing their state. They also brainstorm together what would be interesting to share about their state and town.

The teacher organizing the exchange shares the addresses of all involved, so each teacher can easily print out and glue down the addresses onto their postcards.

On a certain date in the school year, each teacher involved in the exchange has to mail their stack of 50 postcards. What happens next is amazing! Your classroom will receive a postcard from every state!

Besides making a fantastic bulletin board, your students can learn so much with a postcard exchange. They can learn facts typed up on the postcards, see what interesting places there are to visit in each state, learn the locations of states as you track which postcards have arrived, and they can also learn about their own state as you have your students help you write a few paragraphs that will printed and glued onto all of the postcards that you will mail out.

To save on postage costs, I ask my school or district to pay the postage. I also ask each student to try and bring in 3-4 postcards. For those students that can't get to RiteAid or the local drug store and buy postcards, I have them pay me a quarter for each postcard I have bought.  Many of my students are thrilled to pay a few quarters for some postcards to mail out. Don't buy the extra large postcard size, or your postage will be higher! 

For the past 16 years, I have been running a very popular and successful postcard exchange. The reason many people stay with our exchange for years is that everyone who signs up participates! It is very disappointing to belong to an exchange where you only receive 20 postcards instead of 50, due to low participation. 

Our postcard exchange takes all elementary grade levels, from kindergarten - sixth. I will send you labels so it is very easy to mail your postcards out. Our exchange has a few extra locations!  - You will receive in early December a postcard from each state, one from Canada, and one from Washington, D.C. too.

If you teach in the states we need, please send me an email to join our exchange!   We need teachers from these states only:
Hawaii, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Vermont, Wyoming

Be sure to include your email address and your school mailing address so I can begin corresponding with you! If we don't currently need your state, email me anyway, so I can try and add you in case a space opens up next year!

If you don't see your state listed, there are other exchanges you can join. Try the Post Office posts at ProTeacher, and the Classroom Project posts at Teachers.net

BizWorld Inspires Children to Become Tomorrow’s Leaders

What are the skills that the Leaders of Tomorrow need? Being problems solvers, collaborators, creative thinkers, and flexible. BizWorld provides all of this through cooperative learning, simulations of running a business, and "selling" a product. Students work in teams to start and run their own small business in a simulated friendship bracelet company.

I love BizWorld, and you might love using it in your classroom too! The Caring Classrooms Giving Community is offering a BizWorld kit valued at up to $300 in our big celebration contest this weekend! Click over to the Caring Classrooms Contest page to learn how to enter. 

This is what the BizWorld kit looks like

Students and parents are given BizBucks to go bracelet shopping as the culminating project in the BizWorld Bazaar! This is the most amazing 15 minutes you will ever experience!

The BizWorld bracelet program can take several months to do if you follow the script in the Teacher Manual. I select my favorite parts so my program lasts around one month. Perfect to relieve the testing at the end of the year stress!

The students learn how to be entrepreneurs as they create companies in the friendship bracelet industry. The kit includes a Teacher Manual, stock cards, BizBucks, 80 bundles of bracelet string, 30 students packets for students to write in, and 5 company packets for each company to complete.

Here are some of the activities I love for my students to do: Apply for a job after reading a classified ad, raise money from a venture capitalist (the teacher and/or a parent), design the product (friendship bracelet), build prototypes of the bracelet and then begin manufacturing, calculate the finances of running a business with salaries, rent, a loan from the bank, advertise the business by creating signs, slogans, and making a commercial, and finally - selling at the BizWorld Bazaar!

The Teachers Manual provides everything you need, plus there are also PDF files to print whatever you need. Even if you know nothing about financial literacy, the Teacher Manual has an easy to use script that makes you sound like an expert!

The Art Component is amazing: designing a logo, slogan, prototype, ad campaign, posters, and a commercial.

The Math Component is great: Students work in their Profit and Loss statements to see how their business is doing, and they happily count up their BizBucks at the end of the Bazaar to see what their profit is. They also learn that they have to "pay back" the entrepreneur who invested 20% in their company, and they have to pay for Billy's salary even if he didn't work very hard.

You need to replace the string each year, and BizWorld will provide it to you for free if you have your students complete an online Pre and Post Assessment test.

Visit the BizWorld website to learn more!  

How to Write Lots of DonorsChoose Proposals and get them Funded!

I was featured in a DonorsChoose blog on how to be successful in funding projects!

Laura Candler had asked me last year to write an article about DonorsChoose for her great blog, Corkboard Connections.

One Key Tip to getting your DonorsChoose projects funded: When there is a sponsor match, immediately submit a proposal that is not too expensive so you can realistically get your project funded in a few weeks!  Then have every friend and family member donate small amounts to your project so you have lots of donors!

Be sure to sign up for Laura's Corkboard Connections, the DonorsChoose blog, and my blog too!

Get Paid to Teach your Students Programming with PwC's Earn Your Future Curriculum

PwC has a great way for you to earn a DonorsChoose gift card valued up to $1,500! PwC wants students to get a financial education through PwC’s Earn Your Future curriculum. The curriculum’s modules are available at no cost online with topics ranging from saving and investing to credit and debt and paying for college.

For every two modules (6 modules maximum) a teacher delivers to 15 or more students, the teacher will earn a $500 gift code to DonorsChoose.org. Teachers can earn up to $1,500 in DonorsChoose gift codes!
   
After teachers register through the PwC-CEE Online Assessment Center, students can take the pre and post assessment required for each module.
   
After all requirements have been fulfilled, DonorsChoose.org will send the teacher a gift code that can be redeemed on the classroom project of their choice (including their own!).

Teachers can register for the online assessment center starting Tuesday, September 8!

Teachers can review the EYF modules then select one based on grade level, topic and students’ interest.

Go to this link to get started. There are dropdown menus so you can look over the curriculum available to teach. $1500 in DC gift cards sounds great to me. I can differentiate my classroom and have my 15 students that are fast finishers work through the modules.

http://www.pwc.com/finlit