Welcome to this edition of Freebie Friday. This week’s Freebie from the Teachers Pay Teachers site is courtesy of SK Designs, but more on that later. All reviews have been organised on the TpT Sellers’ Forum by Victoria Leon and all reviews have been conducted with love and the full permission of the sellers to review their free resources.
SK Designs
SK Designs is a family business with S and K having a wide range of educational experience over the past 25 years. These wonderful women have experience as resource makers, teacher trainers, dyslexia therapists alongside their teaching in the classroom roles. The resume takes my breath away! They have a range of high-level qualifications and an ethos we can all agree with – make learning creative and fun! Basically, these gals know their stuff.
Who are SK Designs making resources for?
The store has a main focus on the skills involved with English such as Guided Reading and Grammar. There are some lovely seasonal and holiday products, but what I love the most is the focus on promoting a love of reading in the classroom. It calls my inner bookworm. They have a whopping 309 products in their TpT store (as September 2020), and 19 are freebies! All there- ready and waiting for you.
A lot of the products are novel study question cards with upwards of 50 cards in a product. This is fantastic for those who use and love them – because once you have embraced their format and love the style you can basically download any product and immediately know how to incorporate it into your teaching practice.
Uniquely to SK Designs, they also offer some amazing internet research, tasks such as one for Diwali, and most of their products are fully interactive and digital through Google slides. This is basically an essential function in this Covid Quarrantine Distance Learning era.
Didn’t you mention a Freebie?
The featured freebie for SK Designs is Part One of a set of Novel Cards for the book “The One and Only Bob” by Katherine Applegate. The freebie is a collection of 20 cards, each with its own question, but the full resource (that you can buy here for $7) contains a massive 152 question cards.
What’s great about this Freebie?
I love a product that eliminates the requirement of thinking from my day. I want someone to tell me how to complete an activity (most of the time). These questions take all the hassle out of planning for a specific book which is awesome to me.
So what did I think?
Sometimes the time pressures of reading the book, working out the important teaching points, relating them to the curriculum, and then creating a tailor-made lesson using these facts can be overwhelming. And that doesn’t even acknowledge that this is always time consuming. Using these pre-prepared question cards are perfect for a Guided Reading session with minimal hassle. You will still need to read the book, but now you can have the questions with you as you do this, and work out the type of answers you want – oral? Written? Formal? Informal? Discussion? Home Learning?
If I were to use them in the classroom I would also train the students to use these as sort of a “lucky dip” card in a small group so that they could do small group discussion, and recording ideas independently too. Have you ever eavesdropped on a kiddo conversation? The gems they come up with when no adults are pushing them in a certain direction or angling for a particular answer – perfect.
With over a thousand reviews and an average 5* rating – I really recommend that you head on over to the SK Designs TpT store and check them out. They have variety, depth, interactivity and comprehensive resources that are bound to ease your workload. Whilst you are there, why not also check out my TpT store too? Don’t forget to like, comment and sign-up for my zoedidthat site updates!
All resources and store reviews have been done with love, and full permission of the store holders. I receive no financial reward for these reviews. For full information about any monetisation on this blog please read the disclosures page.