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Showing posts with label hyperlinks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hyperlinks. Show all posts

May 11, 2016

How to Create Review Game Slideshows


Do you ever wonder how all of these review games are made? How do they link all the slides together? Where do you even start!? Well folks, you're in luck because today that's exactly what I plan on showing you.

1. Start by opening PowerPoint. I will be using PowerPoint 2010 for Windows, but the commands are virtually the same if you're using 2007.


2. Select your design.  I always do this first so I know how everything I set up will work. Click on the design tab and then pick your favorite. If you want to design a custom slideshow you can select your fonts under the design tab and your background by right clicking on the slide itself and selecting the file from your own computer.


3. Input your introductory information. This is pretty simple and no different from any other PowerPoint creation. 


4. Create your table. Now you can create your review game menu! Create a new slide and in the center area, click on the table icon. 


 This will bring up a dialogue box where you will select how many rows and columns you'd like. I'm selected four columns and five rows. This will create a four category, four question review game. If you'd like more categories, select more columns, if you'd like more questions, select more rows.



Your finalized table will look like this:


5. Input your categories and point values. This is simple insertion and is completely up to you and what you want your game to be about! I prefer my tables to be centered. Go to layout and then select the two centering tools.


Once I have my table set, I input the data I am going to hyperlink!


6. Add the number of slides you will need for your game. You will need two slides per question, one for the actual question and the other for the answer. I recommend labeling each slide as you go because it will make hyperlinking in the next step that much easier.


Once you have your slides set up, you're ready to hyperlink! Go back to your main menu slide and highlight the "100" for your first category. Once highlighted, go to the insert tab at the top of the program and hit "Hyperlink."


Once you've selected hyperlink a dialogue box will appear. You will need to select "Place in this document" and select the slide matching the game menu. For example, if you highlighted Weather 100 (like I did), you will want to make sure you select the Weather - 100 slide (this is why titling your slides in the previous step was so important).


After you've successfully hyperlinked your slide to the game menu, you will need to create a "back to menu" link as well. Go to the answer slide for the 100 question you just hyperlinked. Go back to insert and select text box. Draw your box in the bottom right corner of the slide and type in "Back to Menu." 


Repeat the hyperlinking process by highlighting the "Back to Menu" and select hyperlink, place in this document, and select the game menu slide.


7. Repeat for each slide. Repeat the hyperlinking process until you've reached the whole slideshow! A shortcut you can utilize is copying the text box "Back to Menu" and pasting it on the return slides. The hyperlink will stay in tact and it will save you a lot of time.

     See! It's that easy! If you're looking at these steps and thinking, "this is too much for me... I don't have enough time to do this" don't worry. I have review game templates in my store for four and six categories (with four questions per category).

Good luck with your creation!

February 3, 2016

What They Told Me as a New Seller

MILESTONE ANNOUNCEMENT: For the first time since opening my store in December, I had my first back to back sales day! That's right, my Valentine's Day Fitness Bingo sold yesterday and today! My store has officially sold five items in a little over a month. Big day!

As exciting as my personal story is, I really wanted to share something that I know a lot of bloggers write about, which is how to get started on TpT. There are countless blogs, forum posts, and YouTube videos jam packed with advice, but the ocean of information is so vast, I honestly feel like many people just glance over it and don't take it seriously. I was not that type of person and listened to everything they said...


  1. GET ON THE FORUMS. If I could only give a new seller like me one piece of advice, this would be it! The forums are PACKED with information, advice, community support, and positivity. Everything you ever need to know is in the forums and if you can't find what you need, you can ask in your own forum and other sellers will flock to help you!
  2. GO PREMIUM ASAP. I kept waiting to make a sale that never came and ignored everyone telling me to go premium from the beginning. I didn't want to "waste" $69.99 on something I didn't even know would be successful. I ended up going premium and TWO DAYS LATER made my first sale! The product was $5.00 and I kept $4.45. If I had remained a basic seller, I would have made HALF!!! I've now made five sales, which may not seem like a lot, but of the $27.00 in products I've sold, I've been able to keep $22.95 as opposed to $13.50. Overtime, that missed income would really add up. Believe in yourself, believe in your store, and go premium. You won't regret it {and everyone telling you this is telling you the truth}!
  3. DESIGN YOUR COVER PAGES. Include your store logo so buyers can recognize your products in searches. Make them bright and colorful. Include picture examples of your product. Make them consistent.
  4. INVEST IN QUALITY CLIP ART. It is worth it. Clip art will also become your new obsession... As will fonts. Remember to be practical and buy what you need and wish list others you may want so you don't blow a ton of money {I'm speaking from experience here folks, this current paycheck is tight due to overspending on clip art and fonts}.
  5. PRODUCT DESCRIPTIONS. Make them short and simple, but ensure there is enough information so your buyers know exactly what they are getting. Include what is contained in the item, how you've used it, each of the components, and...
  6. PRODUCT LINKING. In your descriptions, link to other products within your store so buyers keep shopping. I have started to link to entire product categories as opposed to a single product in order to expose buyers to more of my store! Remember to use the <a href= "" > TEXT< /a> code {minus the spaces} so your links are clean and easy to use.
Sadly, it is late and I still have to finish some lessons for tomorrow since my classes moved through material faster than anticipated! The joys of having dedicated children. I hope to come back and add pictures/examples tomorrow.

Until next time,
xoxo The Sassy PE Teacher

January 22, 2016

All About the Valentine

As we come to the end of January, we quickly begin to approach {in my opinion} one of the most fun holidays of the year, Valentine's Day! I love this holiday for school, especially physical education, because there is virtually an endless supply of topics we can cover that coincide with the day. Heart health is a huge topic, both in PE and while in health. Since the we are quickly approaching this magical day full of hearts, love, and all the feelings, I wanted to highlight a few of my products that go with the day.

Valentine's Day Fitness Bingo | $8.00

This is the most expensive product in my store, but holy moly is it worth the money! I am so thrilled about this set and incredibly proud of the hard work and detail I put into it.


This set includes:

• 40 unique bingo cards
• 7 even sets of space covers {heart shaped - 62 each}
• Instructor Call Sheet
• Directions, Set-Up, and Game Play Information
• Exercise Zones for activities that require a mat or additional space
• Multiple Bingo Calling Pattern Ideas
• PDF formatted for easy and differentiated printing





I will note that this set does require a fair amount of work on the buyers end, but once it is complete, you are going to LOVE this amazing bingo game. I highly recommend laminating everything that comes with this product.

Another physical education resource I created specifically Valentine's Day is a fitness circuit that specializes in cardiovascular fitness:



This set includes:

10 Cardiovascular Fitness Stations
Minimal Equipment Required
PNG formatted for easy use and printing
Great for grades 5 - 8






For the health classroom, I have a fun, educational review game for the circulatory system. This Jeopardy game is the perfect review tool for grades 7-9, depending on your school and curriculum.


The PowerPoint presentation includes four question categories, with four individual questions (and answers) in each. Categories include:

• Parts with Heart (reviewing parts of the heart)
• Feeling Veiny (reviewing different types of vessels)
• What's Wrong (reviewing cardiac illnesses)
• Dracula's Tastebud's (reviewing blood types)

The presentation does include a final jeopardy question that was not included in the text the other questions were taken from. You can easily change any questions or final jeopardy once you've downloaded this product to fit your needs!

In other exciting news, I now have a grand total of 13 followers on TpT! I know that probably isn't a large number to other teacher authors, especially those who have been doing this for quite some time, but it is a big deal to me! I look forward to continuing to grow and learn in this amazing community.

Until next time,
xoxo The Sassy PE Teacher

January 20, 2016

Upcoming Ideas

Happy Wednesday! We are getting ready for some winter weather here in Virginia and with that comes a much needed snow day so I can work on some awesome ideas I've been thinking of. Is it weird that I want to take my day off to do more work? Sometimes I think I'm crazy... Oh well, to each their own!

I have a few ideas cooking in the old noggin and I'm really excited to share them! With Valentine's Day approaching, I want to create some holiday specific lesson ideas. I thought a "heart hunt" would be a great addition to my store. The concept would be to have a "scavenger hunt" with seven stations and circuits. Each station would allow the students to collect a unique heart. In order to earn their heart, they must perform a cardiovascular activity and answer a question on the circulatory system in order to find their next clue station. I could even create three separate events, one for sixth, seventh, and eight grade.

Another idea I have is to create instant activity sheets, similar to my Five Large Group Games collection that I currently have on my store. I would love to continue to add similar products for various PE games.

I would also LOVE to create a Valentine's Day Bingo set for physical education as well. The only downside to this product is that there would be a lot of work for the teacher who utilizes it. They would have to cut out the cards, cut out the pieces to cover the bingo, or invest in a class set of sharpies which would force the teacher to have them laminated unless they want to reprint cards for every class which isn't practical. I love this idea, but I'm unsure of its practicality. Any ideas on this front?

Thank you for reading! If you think of any helpful suggestions, please leave me a comment!

Until next time,
xoxo. The Sassy PE Teacher

January 19, 2016

BIG DAY, BIG NEWS!

Today, I hit my first TpT milestone... I MADE MY FIRST SALE! {In the process of writing this post, I MADE MY SECOND SALE} I am thrilled beyond words that someone valued my work enough to purchase my product. It also reaffirmed my decision to upgrade to a premium seller two days ago. Needless to say, that was a smart idea!

I have also added some holiday themed materials to my store! My new product is all about promoting heart health and fitness for Valentine's Day! Check it out below...

Heart Start Fitness | $3.00

This set includes ten task cards:
• Wall Sits
• Jumping Jacks
• Mountain Climbers
• Jump Rope
• Lunges
• Push Ups
• Squat Jumps
• Crunches
• Hula Hoop
• Plank

Cover Font | Cover Clip Art | Slide Title Font | Border

Exercise Clip Art 1 | Exercise Clip Art 2 | Heart Art





I hope everyone is having a wonderful week! Good luck with the Start Your Year Inspired sale on January 20 and 21st!

Until next time,
xoxo The Sassy PE Teacher

January 18, 2016

Rolling Out the Red Carpet {And a few products}

WHAT A DAY! I am so excited to share some new things I've been working on {and recreating} for my store. I became so wrapped up in these projects that I was up until 3am {don't judge me} and I've been working on them since I woke up this morning. So without further ado...

**NEW PRODUCT**
Five Large Group Games | $3.00

Includes

Pin Fall Ball
Thief in the Kingdom
Shark Island
Pizza Tag
Math Match




-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
**Revamped Product**

Includes:

20 unique colors
PNG formatted for easy use
Personal & Commercial Use Allowed {See TOS}




-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

**Revamped Product**

Includes:

20 unique colors
PNG formatted for easy use

Personal & Commercial Use Allowed {See TOS}



-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*Revamped Product*

Includes:

16 Jeopardy Questions & Answers
Four Question Categories
Hyperlinks for easy navigation
Final Jeopardy Question
Editable Presentation

Product is for personal/classroom use {Cannot be resold}, see TOS

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

**Revamped Product**

Includes:

30 borders
Three different base colors {white, navy, and grey}
Varying stripe colors for each base color
PNG formatted for easy use
Personal & Commercial Use Allowed {See TOS}


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
**Revamped Product**

Includes:

Three border styles {polka dots, thick stripes, thin stripes}
Multiple color variations
PNG formatted for easy use
Personal & Commercial Use Allowed {See TOS}



-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
**Revamped Product**
Basketball Station Task Cards | $5.00

Includes:

16 Station Cards {8 Basketball & 8 Fitness}
PNG formatted for easy use/printing
Product is for personal/classroom use {Cannot be resold}, see TOS



-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I am so excited to have the products on my TpT store! I have worked incredibly hard to create or recreate them. I have been reading the seller forums like a hawk, taking in advice, researching product tips, and really trying to improve my products! I know I still have a lot to learn, but I'm thrilled to be doing this.

Until next time,
xoxo. The Sassy PE Teacher

January 17, 2016

Cover Pages and the Art of Creation

What a wonderful weekend it has been! Snow was coming down when I woke up the morning and I had the opportunity to see a teacher friend from my former school for lunch. Needless to say, I am glad we have a holiday tomorrow because I need some extra time to make my new store beautiful!

That being said, today I am focusing on cover pages. The possibilities for these bad boys are endless and the thought of coming up with one from scratch can be somewhat overwhelming to a new TpT seller, but I think I am up to the task. I've decided that for my post today, I am actually going to create a new cover page design step-by-step and post the progress photos within this at the same time, almost like creating a small guide.

To begin, I prefer using Publisher to PowerPoint (moving items is easier and they don't jump around as much). I am working on Windows 7 (versions 8 and 10 simply aren't for me) and I'm using Microsoft Office 2016 software. My goal is to create my own cover page template that I can use in all of my TpT products. I really want clean and consist product listings and CPs... So let's get started!

1. First things first, I love nice thick black lines. So when I'm creating my cover, I want that aspect to stand out. This may not be everyone's style, but that is okay! In order to accomplish this look, I simply go to the top bar and select insert shape, click on the rectangle, and draw it to match the blue lines on the sheet. I then click on Drawing Tools Format in the top bar to edit my shape. Select shape outline, slide down to weight, and select 4 1/2 pt.






2. Now that I have my base shape and outline completed, I want to add a place for my product title and a very brief description. In order to place these areas, I will be using the principle of thirds. To learn more about this, check out an awesome {and free} product by Tracee Orman that can be found here. When completing this step, I inserted a text box and centered it based on the green lines I placed in those third categories. I then when to format shape, outline, and selected a short dashed line for the border of this box. I also made the line thickness for this object slightly thinner at 3 pt instead of the 4.5 pt I used for the outer border. If you'd like to make more work for yourself, you can also insert a regular rectangle {as opposed to the text box}, format the outline of that box and then insert a text box. This does allow you to move and play with the font inside the box as opposed to the box only fitting to the font. Just some food for thought when designing your CP.


3. Now I need to spice up the CP with some fun fonts! I have downloaded my fonts from a lot of different sources, but I find myself constantly going back to Graphics from the Pond. They have some amazing fonts at low prices, as well as free font options that they allow for use in commercial products. I also enjoy fonts from Teach To Tell. The 15 font bundle cost $5.00 and the fonts are fantastic. Today I downloaded a new font from Kimberly Geswein Fonts which I will be using in this mock up. Now that my text box is set up, I'm going to insert the title of my product. I'm following the principle of thirds by equally filling the entire upper third {horizontally} and each upper third {vertically}. My font is set at size 65 so that it is the center of attention. You can make it more attractive by adding colors, however some people like it to remain black and that's fine too.

4. Now I'm ready to add some pop and clip art! Using the principle of thirds, I want to place my clipart where two of my third lines meet. In this circumstance, I'm going to place my clipart in the lower right thirds. The clipart I've been using in a lot of my products come from The Imaginative Teacher. He was some great physical education clipart that I really enjoy using. I've elected to use his running man for the sake of this CP. What's nice about this style of clipart is that you can also change the color of the image if you'd like, but for now, since I've used a lot of color in the title, I'm going to keep this image simple. Now that I've added an extra element, it's time to add some features. This can be a multitude of things so bear with the next section.

5. When adding highlights of your product to the CP, you can go in many different directions. I prefer to showcase the product itself as opposed to adding a bunch of clip art pictures. For this CP, I'm going to add PNG files of my product pages on the left hand side to fill all the leftover white space. To make your products into PNG format, simply select them all, right click, and select save as picture. You can then insert it into your CP product later! I like the feel and appeal of this layered look for highlighting the content in my product. You get a feel for multiple pages within and have the opportunity to highlight two titles you're excited about. I also decided that once I added the two PNG's that I wanted my running man to face the opposite direction, so I simply performed a rotate horizontal function on him and bam!


6. We're almost there! We've followed the principle of thirds throughout our CP placement, but we're still looking a little plain. I personally enjoy how clean the white looks, but we're missing something... When in doubt, I firmly believe in BORDERS. They can take a plain paper and make it look quite nice. For the sake of this example, I'm just going to add two new rectangles to my page, each slightly smaller than the larger border. I want to make sure to set the fill to "no fill" so that it doesn't block the elements I already have on the page. Once you've done this, pat yourself on the back because YOU DID IT! You've created your own awesome cover page for your next TpT product! Now go celebrate by posting that bad boy and hopefully making some sales!



Until next time,
xoxo. The Sassy PE Teacher

January 15, 2016

Updates, Banners, and GIFs... Oh my!


Yesterday was a busy day! Before I jump into all the TpT happenings, I would love to share some very exciting news! I was offered {and accepted} the head coaching job for my schools girls soccer team yesterday! Everything is now official and I've been bursting to share the news! I coached at my former school for two years, but it was in a co-coaching capacity. It will be so refreshing to have my own team and run it solely the way I see fit without the added give and take. Not only that, but this will be my first paid coaching position! Yes, my other three positions were all on a volunteer basis... Needless to say the extra income will be incredibly beneficial, but I'm more excited to just have a team again.

Alright, on to the meat of this post! Yesterday I focused on reading the TpT sellers forum and making adjustments to my store as needed. The challenge I took on involved updating my banner and creating a GIF for my store, as opposed to using a quote in the upper area of the site. My mind was blown by how easy it was to complete and how awesome it looked afterwards. I watched an entertaining {but somewhat hard to follow} video by Kayse Morris about banners and GIFs. You can find that YouTube video here. It was a great resource to use, but while playing around with her suggestions, I think I discovered a short cut. When using Photobucket and GifMaker, you don't have to resize everything in Photobucket, simply adjust the size of your PowerPoint slide to 2.5 inches by 1 inch. You can even stretch this to 3 inches if necessary {it will really depend on the look you're trying to achieve}. By using this size, you won't have to resize the photos within Photobucket! 

After watching that video and creating my new banner and GIF, I went back and began reading forums about when to start using a blog or facebook/twitter to promote your products. I'm reading a lot of different opinions on this! Some say to do it all right away, while others say to wait... We'll since I've already started the blog, I'm going to keep it going, but I really want to focus on my products before moving too far into other things. I currently have 12 active products on my store, but while reading the forum today, a lot of people recommended having 12 SOLID products before promoting them in various social media forums. I'm not feeling "solid" about all of my products. I think they're all a great starting point, but they can be better! So, after a quick nap, I decided to re-create my basketball borders! The original clip art basketball I made for myself was not very well made, so I recreated it and reformatted the borders on the frames and now I think they look clean, well-made, and cute! I finally finished that just before this post. You can check out them out by clicking here.


Until next time,
xoxo The Sassy PE Teacher

TpT: All About Linking!

I know this is my second post today, but as I mentioned before, I'm in the process of bringing the content from my old blog onto this one so bear with the extravagant posting for today!

As a new seller on Teachers Pay Teachers {TpT}, I am still learning new things every day. One of the biggest mistakes I made in the beginning of my store was posting entire links to products I've created or used from others in the product descriptions. It caused them to be long, sloppy, and unorganized. Thankfully, I went to the seller's forum on TpT and all of my evil habits are slowly but surely going back into hiding. Today, that habit pertains to linking in my TpT store!

In order to solve my problem many users directed me here. The site allows you to insert the link to the webpage and insert the text you would like the link to say. What then happens is magical! Your product description goes from looking like a hot mess {on the left}into a beautiful display of organization {on the right}:



I personally just love the simplicity of the hyperlink, as well as the organization of it. I highly recommend that all TpT sellers utilize this tool for crediting other products or showcasing their own products that are similar to the one being viewed.


You can find more information about these links from the forum thread. I hope you found this information helpful! I look forward to continuing my TpT Seller "education" and look forward to posting more information like this in the future!

xoxo. The Sassy PE Teacher