State Assessment Prep 2012

 Don't let the test sneak up on you!

It's that time of year again, state assessment prep....here are some tips I have had success with over the years when preparing my students for the state assessment.  I hope they help you out too. I recommend starting by reviewing the KCA tutorial with students, best way to do this is giving them practice CETE tests. If you haven't started doing that, it's never too late.

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     Test prep strategies:

o   Scanning Practice 

o   Critical Reader

·         Reading Activities:

o  Time for Kids Article & the highlighter tool in Word

o   Labette County Resources by Grade level  then subject 

o   Reading Comprehension activities 

o   Reading Matrix Comprehension Beginner Practice

o   Reading Matrix Comprehension Intermediate Practice

o   Reading Matrix Comprehension Advanced Practice
Reading online text

§  Story with Questions

§  Reading text online

§  Story (Grade 5) with Questions

o   Reading Lessons 

o   Fact/Opinion

o   Drawing Conclusions

o   Main Idea 

o   Author’s Purpose

§  matching game 

§  Author's Purpose & Point of View Practice

o   Activity Search based on Content Area  
o   Practice Assessment, 4th grade
    Sequence Assessment  

·         Math Activities:

o   Great site to practice reading math problems online 

o   Basic Calculator practice site

o   Labette County Resources by Grade level then subject 

o   Math Operations practice

o   Practice Assessment
   4^th grade
  3-5th grade

o   Brain Teasers
    3^rd grade

          4th grade 
    5^th grade 

o   Online tools

Illuminations Math tools

Graph Creator

3^rd grade 

4th grade

5^th grade 

o   Math games based on Kansas standards
Math Lessons

Classroom Management Tool- Class Dojo

Do you want to unlock the full potential of your classroom? With this tool it's easy.  Today I want to share a classroom management tool with you. It's called Class Dojo and my teachers love it. This in class tool helps you boost classroom engagement and improves behavior quickly and easily.  You set up your class in minutes and can customize the positive and negative behaviors in your classroom. The best part is the real-time data, analytic and reporting that is available. You can email or print behavior cards for parents with the click of a button.

I know I sound like a salesman but it's because I have seen my teachers set up their classes and use it with ease. The kids love it too. The other day a teacher shared a story with me about an incident that happened in the classroom. She said she was observing the students working, panning the room and noticed that a student went over to pick up his pencil off the floor a few feet away from his desk. She thought maybe he was misbehaving but wasn't certain. Then the student goes over to the interactive white board and gives himself a negative behavior without being prompted. The teacher walks over to the student and praises him for his action (even though she wasn't exactly sure what he did). He then confesses that he threw his pencil on the floor because he was mad and after he did it he knew she was going to make put it up on Class Dojo so he thought he would just take care of it.  She then told him that she hadn't see the pencil throwing but that he deserved a positive behavior for taking care of it before being told. Before Class Dojo that student wouldn't have told on himself but now he is more aware of his behavior and it's effect on himself and his class.

It's funny how powerful a little web tool can be in helping change the climate of a classroom. I hope you find it to be useful as well.

Dogs In Need

Sample Poster created by Clare

Students in Heather House's 5th grade class at Franklin Elementary wanted to help out some forgotten puppies by creating posters to help them get adopted from the Humane Society in Wichita, KS.  After students read a story in their Treasures book about a girl who relied on a therapy dog to help her function, they wanted to help dogs out in some way. The students began by researching 3 different breeds of dogs that were available for adoption from the Humane Society and create a chart to easily organize their research. 

Once their research was done, students selected their favorite breed  and then went to Big Huge Lab's Motivator tool to create their poster. This web-based tool easily creates a poster for you in several simple steps. Students used it to motivate someone in the community to adopt one of the puppies waiting for their forever home. The posters were then posted around the community in hopes that they would be rescued. The posters were also taken to the Humane Society and displayed in their front window.

Image taken by Jenny Gridley

In speaking to the Humane Society representative we learned that the marketing department wanted to take what Heather's class had done and make it into a competition for schools in the area. The students were excited to hear that their idea was well received and might be made into a yearly activity.

Parent-Teacher Conferences

 I don't know about your school but both of my schools are gearing up for conferences this month. This made me start thinking about how I could help my teachers have smoother conferences. Here are a few ideas I plan to share with them, see if they will work for you:

• Use this google form or this form to help schedule conferences with parents. 
• Do a student lead conference with this Smartboard Template or this PowerPoint template.
• Have soft music playing in the background to help create a soothing, calm environment.
• Have parents use the technology in your classroom in an interactive way (i.e a Smartboard activity, a Google survey)

Fall Is Coming...isn't It?

image provided by seemann

After one of the HOTTEST, DRIEST summers I can remember in the Midwest we are ready for Fall. Football games, drinking cider, pumpkin picking, cool breezes and comfortable weather are all things I look forward to in the Fall (especially this fall). I also always enjoyed doing Autumn based activities with my students. Here are some resources that will help you & your students explore all the wonder of this wonderful season.

Solving Math Word Problems:
Challenge students to solve  word problems based on the pictures and information on the Pumpkinfest Winners Web page (using the wayback machine). Here are some sample questions:

• How much more did Gary Burke's winning pumpkin (1998) weigh than the pumpkin grown by Harry Willemse (2000)? (130 pounds)
• How much more did Gary Burke's pumpkin weigh than the one grown by Andrew Papez? (172 pounds)
• How many pounds did five winning pumpkins between 1998 and 2002 weigh altogether? (4,949.5 pounds)
• In 2000, how much heavier was Harry Willemse's pumpkin than the squash grown by Dave McCallum? (19 pounds)

If you want to go totally paperless, create a Google Form for student to submit their answers.

Editing Practice:
A great way to teach students how to use Track Changes in Microsoft Word by having them copy and paste the following article  in a Word document (or Google Doc) & use Track Changes to find the 10 mistakes in the document.

Science/Photosynthesis:Students read this article about Why Leaves Change Color then have the students take a poll that you create using Poll Junkie using the questions here about the article.  Poll Junkie is a great polling site that allows you to create polls without registering. Students could also take this article into a Word document (or Google Doc) & use track changes (or comments) to allow students to make connects to the text (text to text, text to self, text to world).


Making a Word Cloud:
Having students think about Fall & what the associate with this season. In pairs have students use Wordle or Tagxedo to create World Clouds. If students type their list of words in Microsoft Word or notepad they can check their spelling & have a copy of it. This is helpful a glitch takes out their work on the web or if they create their cloud and don't like it.  As an extension, students could use this word clouds to write a story or poem about fall.


Ideas adapted from Education World