You Got Jokes?

Ryan found this site that should brighten your day:

http://www.teacher-appreciation-kit.com/humor-2014.html

With football season approaching, we thought this one is a particularly good one:

A football coach was asked his secret of evaluating raw recruits. "Well," he said, "I take 'em out in the woods and make 'em run. The ones that go around the trees, I make into running backs. The ones that run into the trees, I turn into linemen."

Play Ball! Two New Science Games

These two new gems just arrived to spice up Science classrooms everywhere.




The first baseball game covers micro-organisms and bacteria. Sure, it's a gribbly topic, but that's what makes it all the more fun!




Tornadoes, hurricanes, snowstorms, floods, earthquakes, tsunami, and a host of other insurance adjuster nightmares take center stage in our second new game, Natural Disasters Baseball.



Of course, both of these games are perfect for your new interactive whiteboard, but they work great on a regular wall, or a computer lab.

Let us know what you think of them by emailing us at teachersbrunch at teachersdiscovery dot com.

Your Friends at Teacher's Brunch--On the Cutting Edge of Educational Theory

In this month's issue of the English Journal, you'll find a piece called "Turn It On and Turn It Up: Incorporating Music Videos in the ELA Classroom" by Luke Rodesiler.

It's a fine article, one we here at Teacher's Brunch HQ in apparently prescient Auburn Hills, MI firmly endorse.

We endorse it so much, we even went back in time to create a blog post about the exact same thing. You'll find it here.

(We tried to post some of the videos Rodesiler mentions, but the videos are technologically blocked. They are, however, pretty widely available for viewing in your classroom.)

If It's At ESPN.com, It Must Be A Sport, Right?

Take a look here: clicky click

Another New Poster: Periodic Table of Loved and Admired

Our Periodic Table of Loved and Admired is the perfect to companion to our Teacher-Favorite Periodic Table of Dictators, Despots, and the Despised.

We hear pretty often from teachers who use our periodic tables to inspire discussion and writing assignments.

This new one will definitely be a nice addition to the line.

We bundled the two posters in a sort of "Best and Worst" packaged deal, that English teachers can find here, and social studies teachers can find here.



Take a look and let us know how you use them in your classroom.

R.I.P. Les Lye

Those of us from a certain generation here at Teacher's Brunch HQ in soggy Auburn Hills, MI are mourning the passing of a defining actor from our youth (if we had cable tv, of course).

We might not have known his name, but Les Lye, who passed away Tuesday, portrayed nearly every adult male on the Nickelodeon sketch show "You Can't Do That On Television."

At its best, "YCDTOTV" was about a lot of different teenage anxieties--divorce, dating pressures, drug use, and school issues. Les Lye, in his role as the everyday antagonist against the teenage heroes, represented bosses, teachers, parents, and just about every other authority figure you might imagine.

As kids growing up watching Lye's work, we imagined going up against him, and that vented our youthful frustration we experienced in real life.

Something about Lye's characters, though, always made us feel safe in an odd way. Like as bad as our parents were that day, or our teachers, or our bosses, they were NEVER as bad as the guys on "YCDTOTV." And Lye infused each character he played with a back story that we didn't really understand at the time, but appreciate as we look back. Without getting too arty about a show that included loads of flatulence jokes and green slime, Lye exuded pathos.

That said, Lye's characters were just good fun (when we were kids). So, a nod of the cap to him and his work. Let's hope he doesn't have to eat at Barth's in the sky.

"Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Cow has landed."

The title of this post is a not so subtle nod to the anniversary of the Apollo moon landing, but is also serving to announce the distribution of our Fall Social Studies catalogs.

Teachers who purchase items from Teacher's Discovery with their home addresses will be receiving our comprehensive Social Studies catalog featuring the cow on the cover.

Everyone else will have a catalog waiting for them at school.

If you'd like a catalog before that, give us at call at 1-800-543-4180. Tell them the blog sent ya!

Even More Great English Class Posters! Shakespeare Quote Posters This Time!

We have a bumper crop of English posters this week.

Inspired by a Shakespeare class at Wayne State University, we created these seemingly simple posters that feature quotes from every single Shakespeare play we can find. That includes acknowledgment of the so-called "lost" plays.



The posters are split into Tragedies, Comedies, and Histories, using the Oxford arrangement.

Of course, all of the most-famous quotes are included, along with fun bits and baubles from well-known and unknown Shakespeare plays.



The titles of the plays are color-coded to the colors of the quotes, so your students will know where each quote can be found.



Of course, we have a little fun, too, so we invented three Shakespeare plays, and included fake quoted from them. See if you and your students can find them!

You can get the Tragedies poster, the Histories poster, the Comedies poster, or get all three Shakespeare Quotes posters as a complete set.

Foreign Language is Twittering!

We were a little harsh on the Twitter device recently, but to promote the Spanish/French/German folks of Teacher's Discovery, we'll kindly ignore it.

So here goes. . . .

Hey, everyone, from Teacher's Brunch HQ in sitting-in-sun-but-watching-storm-clouds Auburn Hills, MI.

Just a little note for Spanish, French, and German teachers.

Our brothers and sisters in the Teacher's Discovery Foreign Language division recently started posting to Twitter.

They promised us that if we help them get 100 followers, we'd all get cookies.

We love cookies.

So give them a look see, if you care to. They're working on some really great projects for FL teachers, from high tech downloadable and streaming stuff, to great good old-fashioned craft kits. They'll also be tweeting about new projects in the other divisions, too, so Science, Social Studies, and English teachers don't need to feel left out.

You can find their Twitter feed here.

Some New Literary Term Posters

We're pretty excited about a new batch of posters we're carrying. As you can see from the sample, they're really evocative and get attention when displayed on a wall.

You can order the poster in the sample here.

To find the rest of them, search our English site for the following SKUs: P1901E, P1902E, P1903E, P1904E, P1905E, or P1915E for a complete set with a nice bit of savings.