Testing Week

This is my 19th year to teach and my first year to administer the state test. I may be more nervous than my students. I hope I am because I don't want them nervous.

We all have door decorations to encourage the students. I like mine, but if I hadn't procrastinated so long, I know it would have turned out better than it did. It was really sort of a "squirrel" moment when I came up with the idea. I was looking up synonyms for smart, since I hadn't found what I was wanting, I looked up brilliant. Radiant popped up as one along with shining, etc... Well, when I saw radiant, I immediately thought of "Charlotte's Web" and that is where my inspiration came from.

In case you can't read it, Wilbur is saying, "Charlotte, what does it all mean?"
Charlotte replies,  "Wilbur, it means these kids are ready for the test."

I started with the word brilliant and each day I added a new one in the web and put the other word some where else. If i hadn't procrastinated so much, I was going to try and make the words look like spider webs using white pipe cleaners.

On Friday, I let the kids make some posters for the classroom and the hallways. we looked at a few ideas and then I let them do what they wanted. Here's what they came up with.

We did good together, now we can do it apart.

One of the girls said to me, "Oh I guess we should have put the state flag on it for the state test." LOL!

I think the message they were trying to say was something like, You can't be judged by the state test.
We had talked about all of the things the state test couldn't judge about them like creativity , kindness, helpfulness, etc...

I almost cracked up when I saw this. I guess I didn't really read it when they brought it up to me,
 needless to say,  I hung it in the classroom instead of the hallway. ;)

In case you are interested, a friend and I wrote a testing song several years ago, to the tune of "Jingle Bells" you can find it HERE there are several different color borders to choose from.

I'm not sure why, but the school isn't providing the cute incentive snacks this year. So I decided I would do some for my class. Since my printer is out of ink, I thought I would make the signs and put them on my Smartboard if you are interested in using them instead of printing all of the little labels, you can find it HERE. This is a sample.

I am making one more poster for the kids. I got the idea from this pin.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/221591244139998028/

I sent home pieces of construction paper popcorn with the kids so the parents could write a positive message to the class. I'll post a picture of it when I get it finished.

Hope you have a wonderful week!

Testing Incentives and Teacher Appreciation...A Month Late

I think every post I make in the next few weeks will say, "A Month Late". I'm not sure why I have had so many problems making posts this year. My lessons plans are easy and they are only for two subjects since we are departmentalized, so I'm not sure what is going on.

I was a little disappointed that no one made any posters for the 3rd  graders to encourage them as they tested so my class and I made some the first day of testing.

We made one for each of the third grade classes and put the students names on the posters.

We had all of the 3rd graders sign this poster.

OK now to Teacher Appreciation. This year I wanted to try and reach out to those teachers that sometimes get left out during Teacher Appreciation Week. I have a good friend who is a SPED teacher and another that is a Title 1 Reading Teacher and they seldom receive anything. So I decided I would do what I could to make sure the teachers received some appreciation from at least my students. 

I made good use of the afternoons after my class finished testing. We made our Mother's Day cards, cards for the Secretary's Day and posters for those special teachers. 

This is the poster we made for the Title 1 Reading Teacher. My kids all knew her because she is also runs a book club that a lot of them go to and she is the one in charge of the AR challenges. Each of the students put their favorite book on the poster with a nice note to the teacher inside.

I got this idea from this pin.

This one was for our PE teacher, the kids were supposed to draw their 

favorite activity and the write her a note on the drawing.

 Next up the music teacher.

This one was for the librarian.

I had a the students who went to speech, gifted, and sped make 

smaller cards or posters for those teachers.

I thought I was finished, but no the kids wanted to make one for the 

reading teacher, math teacher, principal and counselor.

Mine look much different, 

but I got my idea from this pin. 

Here's a couple of things we made for Delaney's teachers.

I hope everyone felt appreciated!

Testing Incentive Song

Fortunately, our first graders do NOT have to take the big TEST. Several years ago, I did have to give the Iowa Test to kindergarten. That was tough! The kids squirmed, dropped their pencils, etc... It was NOt fun.

Our 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders will start testing next week. The lower grades always make signs for encouragement. Several years ago, I had my class make "quilts" for each testing class. I wrote names on the blocks and my kids drew a picture of each child. Then I taped it together and if it needed a some fill in blocks I wrote positive sayings. The older kids loved the quilts and it goes without saying that some of the drawing were, well let's just say interesting. My daughter is in third grade this year, so I will be doing quilts again.

My old teaching buddy and I wrote a little song to cheer on the test takers. Several of the upper grade teachers say they sing the song each morning before testing. I thought I would share it with anyone who might be reading this blog.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4viYvUGzTgqRnhUNVN3M3pSbmVUWUNFZHFGZXlJUQ/edit