This past weekend I attended an amazing writer’s retreat. We all taught each other and critiqued each other’s manuscripts. Someone snapped a photo of me during my time to teach. (Yes, they had a tiara there that we took turns wearing!) During the retreat, we talked about using Teachers Pay Teachers as a platform to promote your published books.
The very first thing you will need to post in your store at Teachers Pay Teachers is a freebie.
If you’re super techie and comfortable with art programs such as Inkscape or Photoshop, or if you like to use a platform such as Powerpoint to create visually stunning presentations, this will be easy peasy. Just create a product in the platform you’re familiar with, save it as a pdf and upload it to your store at Teachers Pay Teachers.
However, if you’re already sweating in your socks at this very idea, click below for a basic worksheet you can create in a word document. No graphics. No frills. No fuss. But it gets the job done. As long as you know how to type in a word document program and save it as a pdf file, you’ve got all the technologocial savvy you need to know.
Jane Austen for Kids worksheet
(And yes! Now the secret is out!!! My upcoming book will be Jane Austen for Kids!)
The great thing about learning how to create this basic worksheet is that even if you do know how to use awesome graphics platforms, you can still create a bunch of these basic worksheets to pad your product if you want to make educator’s guides to promote your published books or bundles or units to sell to teachers on topics you love best.
Here’s how to create a basic worksheet:
Please feel free to copy this entire worksheet, word for word, if that will help you overcome your fears about creating it. Just tailor your worksheet to either support your own book title that you’ve written, or a topic that you want to sell products for on Teachers Pay Teachers. (If you want this worksheet to support a topic, just change the wording to say something like: As you’re reading books or articles about this topic, look for three key things. etc.)
Be sure to include a space for students to write their name at the top.
Make your title in bold at the top center.
Underneath that, if you want your material to support Common Core or another educational standard, list the number of that standard. The letters CC.RA.R.10 is the anchor standard for reading informational text (nonfiction or fact-based text) or fiction. Basically, this anchor standard, R.10, just means that students are reading material that is geared for their age level in school. CLICK HERE to read this standard at the Common Core’s website for informational text. CLICK HERE to read this standard at the Common Core’s website for fiction.
At the very bottom of my worksheets, I like to include a footer. Open the footer of your document and type in the following information:
A title for your educator’s guide (In case you make more worksheets to go along with this book or topic)
Copyright info with the symbol, year you wrote this worksheet, and your name if you own the copyright (which you automatically should unless you are under contract with a publisher that states otherwise).
Your personal website or your book’s website so they can go look for more of your products and books.
The main thing to remember when preparing this worksheet is that this will be in the hands of the children. You want to keep it visually appealing to them and not put in extra info you want their teacher to see.
When you’ve typed out this worksheet, save it as a pdf file as that is a common file Teachers Pay Teachers uses.
To see what this looks like in my Teachers Pay Teachers store, CLICK HERE to see a worksheet I wrote for my book, Frederick Douglass for Kids. (Note that when I wrote it Common Core wasn’t yet adopted and I didn’t know to add my website at the footer.)
Once you reach this point, you have options. You can opt to upload your worksheet as it is, as your very first freebie in your Teachers Pay Teachers store.
Or you can opt to make a cover sheet for it. Look for other products on Teachers Pay Teachers to see what kind of style and format you’d like to use.
And you can opt to include a page or two after it that lists your books for sale or other products you want to sell.
If you’re already keen on that, go ahead and add those extras! But don’t feel like you have to. Feel free to just upload your basic worksheet to get your store started.
In upcoming posts, I’ll share how you can make even more worksheets to sell on Teachers Pay Teachers as part of an educator’s guide to promote your book or topic you love, using only your basic word document program.
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