Testing Freebie

I got a little creative last night and created a little goodie to send home with my kiddos before the big testing day. It's a little pocket you can glue together that says "You're such a SMARTIE! Owl bet you'll do great!" On the back, there is a little poem. I simply glued them together and stuck a few SMARTIES inside for a little treat to boost their confidence. I hope you can use it in your classroom with your kiddos too! It's free on my TPT store. :)

It's About That Time...

I'm sure many of you are approaching state tests soon...our is actually this week! We've been working really hard in Room 203 and I think we are ready to show what we've learned this year. :)  We test on Tuesday and Wednesday each year so we always have that awkward Monday where you don't want to bog students down with test strategies yet you don't want to waste the day either. Tomorrow we'll be reading books like Hooray for Diffendoofer Day and Testing Miss Malarkey which are some of my favorites. We'll also be building the Reading Brain Book that I mentioned in one of my earlier posts.

As for math, I decided it would be fun to review with a game so Jeopardy it is! I used a simple Jeopardy PowerPoint template to create a fun game to review the major skills we'll be tested on this year. I'm thinking of splitting up the class into two teams to play against each other. It'll be review mixed with some competitive fun! The Jeopardy game is available on my TPT store for free so hop on by to download if you'd like to use it in your classroom.
 

One of the most difficult things that we struggle with in my room in reading is multiple meaning words.  To keep in the game mood of the day, I decided to create a fun matching game that I'll have my kids play in 'Memory' style. It's simply four different words, each with four different meanings. Each meaning can be matched up with a sentence using the word.  It's a quick, fun, and easy way to review before a test.  It can also be downloaded at my TPT store.

Well, I'm off to relax the rest of the night. It'll be a busy week so have a great one. Good luck to all of those who are testing this week!

Test Taking Strategies for Reading...

I've been off the radar because it's been extremely crazy around here. Our house is up on the market and we are looking for a house in Phoenix now so my spare time has been close to zero! At school we have the state test, STAAR, coming up in just a week and our review is underway! I've been using a "brain book" for the past couple of years and I'm not sure who the idea came from. This year I updated it a bit with the new standards that are tested. We usually review a few things a day during the week prior to the test. By the time Monday rolls around, students have a cute little booklet they can take home with them. It's a fun way to review instead of "drill and kill". I hope you can find some use for it in your classrooms! It is free on my TPT store so feel free to stop by and check it out. Happy Sunday!

    

Happy Spring!

Hey everyone! We've spent the last 24 hours being pounded by rain, thunder, and lightning. But, hey..it's the first day of Spring! We just came back from Spring Break Monday and it's already been a whirlwind of a week. Now that break is over, we have 9 more weeks of school and a state test to prepare for. It'll be busy, busy, busy! I'm hoping to post a couple of times each week over the next few weeks...sorry I haven't been so great with posting lately! Life has been a bit crazy here at my house. We found out my husband's job is being transferred to Arizona. So, believe it or not, in three months this Texas girl is packing up and moving closer to the west coast. It's going to be quite a change! I can't even begin to think about the realtor, packing, a new job, new school, and everything else! So, for today, I just thought about my favorite season, Spring!

We are preparing for our state assessment at the end of April and no matter how many things I try to do to get my kids to learn their multiplication facts, it's just not working. So today, I started something new in my room with a spring twist. I introduced "Buzzing Through Multiplication". As you can see in the pictures below, students each have a bee with their number on it. We started at our 3s because I'm pretty sure we all know our 1s and 2s by now! Each day, we are taking a timed multiplication test based on what fact we are still working on. I'm hoping they will feel like "buzzing" through the flowers as quickly as they can for the "SECRET" prize they get at the end! (It's only secret because I have no idea what the prize will be just yet ...)

      

I am still creating the tests right now but they consist of 35 problems for each level. For example, the threes test is all problems that are multiplying by three (up to 12). I'm posting the flowers and bees on my TPT store for free so stop on by and download it if you feel like adding some spring to your classroom! (I'll post the tests once I'm finished with them.) I also included some bees without numbers in case you want to write student names or use them for something else.  You could even use this with lower grades for memorizing addition and subtraction facts or in a fourth grade classroom for division facts! Have fun multiplying and Happy Spring!

Read Alouds

I'm always looking for the next read aloud book for my classroom. I think it's my favorite part of the day because I truly love reading and my kids can really see that through my read alouds. I also get a chance to think aloud to get my kids engaged in thinking while reading and of course there's also expression and fluency to be modeled. :)

This week, we are finishing up one of my all-time favorite read alouds, Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat by Lynne Jonell. If you've never read it, it's a must read! It is an incredible story and has so many teaching moments for visualizing, word choice, context clues, character changes, and so much more! We actually just created a comic for our read aloud on Make Beliefs Comix to show Emmy's character change throught the book. (By the way, Make Beliefs Comix is the greatest comic creation site to use in your classroom...and no accounts needed!)



She's also written two follow-up books that my kids always get after I read aloud the first in the series. I love getting kids hooked on a good series! One of my other favs I read earlier this year is A Nest for Celeste:A Story About Art, Inspiration, and the Meaning of Home by Henry Cole. One of my students gave me this book last year and I fell in love with it! It has a lot of wonderful illustrations but it is a chapter book also. The main character, Celeste, tells her story about life in a house that has some unique visitors. It is a great story for studying character change and also vocabulary and context clues. My students have fallen in love with this character the past two years and it's one of my absolute favs. If you're a third grade teacher, these are two must-read books for you!

I also start off the year with Judy Moody Was In a Mood by Megan McDonald every year. It's a great way to introduce the Judy Moody series to third graders. It also has so many great activities to connect with since she is also starting off a new school year in the first book of the series. We've had our students create tshirts to show a place they visited during the summer similar to what she does in the book. She also creates a "Me Collage" which we do as a getting to know you activity at the beginning of the year. If you've never read this book, pick it up and see if you can use it as a beginning of the year introduction to read aloud novels. :)

Leave a comment and share what your favorite read alouds are!

Summary for Miss Nelson is Back

I thought I'd post this quick pic of an anchor chart we completed last week. We read Miss Nelson is Back which is one of my absolute favorites! We talked about how we need to include the characters, problem, and solution in a summary and show the flow of the story. The kids really enjoyed thinking of a summary as a story arc as you see in the chart below.

Happy reading!

Verdi

This week starts the two week road to Open House! I always seem a bit overwhelmed the week of Open House so I've decided to start a bit early. We've been learning all about characters, problem, solution, genre, theme, and summary over the past few weeks. This week, I'm having my kids complete a comprehension activity for the book Verdi by Janell Canon. I absolutely love this book and it's great for summary! I originally got this idea from one of my coworkers and thought I'd add some stuff to it. I created a few things for students to complete and glue onto a "green snake" when they are finished reading Verdi.
 

 

 Students will write about the characters, problem, and solution for the top section of their snake. In the middle, they will write their summary. On the bottom section, they will write about the genre and theme of the book. You can download this activity here for free. :) It's a great way to see if student's are comprehending what they read while adding a little fun to it! Until next time...