Testing Strategies | The Teaching Reef

Category: Testing Strategies

Apr 15

Big Troubles and Classroom Activities

Well I know that I said I would have my Superhero unit up and posted by yesterday…..however my Microsoft Word is not doing so well! It shut down on me 3 times yesterday when I went to save the document!!!! So as badly as I want to post the unit, I don’t want to until I know it is perfect. So until it lets me save my updates (which I have to re-due every time it shuts down) then I wont post it. AAAHHH! It just makes me want to scream at the computer (which I know wont really help anything except let some of my frustrations out) So AS SOON AS IT IS SAVED, I will post it and let everyone know. So sorry.

Anyway I thought I would show you the craftivity I made to go with the unit. I am pretty proud of it. Check it out, she is really cute…..in the unit there is also a boy option you just don’t put the pigtails on. This makes it easy for giving directions for the whole class.

Again so sorry its not up but I promise it will be very soon. Oh and I almost forgot my husband came up with this great idea to offer the craftivity and some other activities separate from the whole unit I created so I did that! I have a mini superhero unit and the BIG superhero unit. It makes it so you can choose what fits your needs the best. Thanks Mark for the great idea!! I think I will be doing this from now on. =)

Okay so on to my classroom. We started to learn about life cycles this week and we also wanted to tie it into our world travels that we will be starting on Monday. So we researched butterflies from around the world and got out a world map and had the children identify the 7 different continents and where the butterflies were from. We also found out that Antarctica is too cold for butterflies! =) After watching Cold Planet on Animal Planet I found out that there is moths though.

Then to help the children understand about the Northern and Southern hemispheres we got an orange and pretended it was our earth. We drew the equator on it with a Sharpie. After that we cut the orange along the equator for the Northern and Southern hemisphere! One kid even said “look if you look at the inside, it has the Earth’s layers, you see the crust, the mantel, and the core”!! I love when that happens! To conclude our little orange activity we had the students take out their world maps with butterflies and color and label the 2 hemispheres. We then made observations with our maps like, what hemispheres are the continents in? and which continents are in both hemispheres? It was a really great activity and the kids really GOT IT!

So now about the butterflies. I was searching Pinterest and found a super cute idea on how to create a life cycle. So on Friday we made them with the kids. Let me tell you they were over the moon excited to make this. I am definitely going to be doing this one again next year (along with the orange activity). It was so much fun. All you need is 2 leaves cut out, a noodle, a popcorn kernel, a cotton ball, a twig cut out, a coffee filter, and a pipe-cleaner. The first one below is my teacher example.

On Friday we were also busy making little treats for the third graders! They are taking the BIG FCAT test starting Monday so we like to give them some love and encouragement. We made some signs and wrote messages on them and signed our names but we also made these little treats! The kids loved them and I wasn’t sure when it came time to give them up if they were really going to! LOL! Of course they did but I mean they were pretty attached!

So cute right! The third graders L-O-V-E-D them!

I also wanted to show you the clock that my students were obsessing over when we were learning about time. We have already taken our time and money test but I wanted to show you the foldable (which is available in my time unit on TpT). They just love using it and it really helped them understand hour and half hour (our benchmarks) but now they still use it and enjoy telling time to other minutes.

All of the numbers have the minute representations underneath. I just showed the basic 4 and sorry I forgot to move the minute and hour hands as I was taking the pictures but yes they do and should move. But you guys get the point.

Last we did this really fun activity with telling time. The kids created their own watch with a time on it from our day (part of the schedule) and then whenever we got to that time in the day they were allowed to yell it out! Whenever! Even if Mrs. Moyer was talking! Which is a big NO- NO! Their eyes beamed in excitement- I think it was the fact that they were going to be able to yell out in class (but I am going to go with it is because they loved their watches so much).

You can’t tell from the picture but in addition to the analog clock they also had to write it in digital on the top of the clock and the subject they were responsible for underneath! This was great fun.

Well in hopes of getting my superhero unit up I am going to go try again! Have a fantastic Sunday and great week with your kiddos! If there are any other teachers out there that are going to take the FCAT starting on Monday, I wish you ALL THE LUCK.

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Posted in Life Cycle, Reading, Testing Strategies, Time

Apr 01

Continent Boxes, Book Study Update and Unit

First things first. I would like to say thank you to all of you that participated in my 3 day sale in honor of my 1 year wedding anniversary. Thank you so much for all your support!

Okay now on to things in my classroom. This past week my students had to take the SAT. I am so proud of all of them, they really took control of the test! In case you are wondering what I am talking about I took an idea that I saw on Pinterest and created it for my classroom. Here is the picture of the anchor chart I found on Pinterest and the candy game controller tags I made for the students to go along with what we had practiced. I only wrote test taking strategies that I felt my students would use, so I didn’t use all of the strategies that you will see on the picture below. However I did think it had a tone of strategies so that is why I posted it.

As you all know my students have been hard at work on their idiom pages. They are still putting the finishing touches on them so as soon as they are done I will post their finished product. I do have to say they are very creative and some are pretty funny. If you are looking for a creative writing activity you should take a look at my Idiom unit. Click on the picture below to take you to my TpT store. I have added a class book cover, alphabet choice cards, and an idiom definition teaching chart to the unit. After I used it in my classroom I felt these were needed so if you purchased it make sure you re-download it if you haven’t already.

A few weeks ago I had posted about a book study that I was in. We are talking a look at the book called “Reciprocal Teaching at Work” which is geared toward improving reading comprehension. Recently we had to read over chapter one where were took a deeper look into the fab four strategies all good readers use: predicting, questioning, clarifying, and summarizing. After reading this chapter my brain was buzzing with ideas. One idea that I have is to provide my students with better strategies to use when clarifying text or ideas. So I started thinking and, Ta-Da, a new unit is in the making. Here is a preview of the unit. I am hoping to have it finished sometime this week.

Okay so on to my Continent Boxes project. I have seen tons of continent boxes on Pinterest and all over the internet. I have been totally inspired to create them for my classroom. We have just finished studying the United States and are moving to learn about the 7 continents of the world. So I have started looking up resources that I could use to create them and here is what I have so far.

First I purchased 7 of the photo boxes from Michael’s Craft Supply Store.

Then I purchased Landmarks Around the World Toob. You can click on the link to purchase them from Amazon. However I bought mine from Michael’s Craft Store.

The next item that I was pretty excited about was hats from around the world. I found these at Oriental Trading. I just love this online store. It has great crafts for kids at a great price!

The last item that I have purchased is a book series called A True Book Series. If you haven’t looked at this series before it is a really great nonfiction series that I perfect for young readers. They also make books in lots of topics, so even if you are not interested in their continent series you should still take a look. Below are the books that I purchased for the continent boxes. I found them originally at Barnes and Nobel however they didn’t have all the books so I ordered the rest from Amazon.

Now I need to decorate the boxes and fill them up with all the goodies. I am still on the lookout for some things to add to what I have already purchased. I will keep you posted as I create each box. I am really excited to start crafting each box to represent each continent. I just love making resources for my students and classroom.

That is it for now. I hope everyone has a great week with their students.