Last week of school!

This week was the last week of school and is my last week at Welborn in KCK. I am sad to leave many things, but very excited for a new opportunity. I'm also happy to say there are only 2 days (well, 1 now!) days of school left before summer break!

Balloons

I did this last year and did it again this year. I originally started with about 15 balloons counting down school. In each balloon is a slip of paper with an activity that the class gets to do the next day if we have a good day.  Today's balloon was to have a "slumber party" in the classroom. I have students bring blankets and pillows and we spend the entire day on the floor for our last day festivities. The students really loved it last year and I'm sure they will again this year!  (The last balloon has my age in it because for some reason this class is incredibly interested in how old I am!)

 Sunglasses Project

I'd seen the sunglasses with lines on TpT (It does cost money, but this is the link!) so I broke down and spent the $2.50 for the template, bought some big poster paper and let the kids' imaginations run wild! 

In the glasses they had to write 2 paragraphs about what they are doing or would like to do this summer. Then they were to draw themselves doing something they mentioned in their paragraphs.

These are only a couple of them, but they are turned out really great and I think the families are going to be excited to see these too!

Keepsake books

Many of my students didn't get yearbooks so each year I do keepsake books where they write about their friends and their favorites. I posted the link for it on my post last year if you're interested!

Wrap Up

Before I showcase my end of the year activities-- I'm saving all of those for my next post-- I wanted to show some of the wrap up things I've done this year to help the students review and help me reflect for next year.

With that in mind, I would also like to share that next school year I will be teaching 2nd grade at Harmony Elementary in the Blue Valley District! I'm very excited for the opportunity and can't wait to get started!

Anchor Charts for Review

I wanted to find a fun way to practice measuring and text features while meeting standards.  For math, I posted different strips around the room and they met the Core Standard where they have to use different items to measure the same thing and then compare.

For text features, they had to find that text feature in the book (Life in a Garden) and explain its usefulness.

Testing Update

We just finished our Math MAP testing 1 1/2 weeks ago and 80% of the class met their improvement goal! That was the highest in the school and 35% higher than the district goal! So proud of the class-- they've worked so hard!

I'm wrapping up the Fountas and Pinnel testing now and it looks as though almost every student has improved by several letters! 

Student Reflections

I wanted to try out this foldable this year to have the students reflect on their year and to help me see what stands out to them this year and to see what things they feel they need to keep working on or what they want to learn more about.

Most students expressed that they wanted to learn more about science and multiplication and the other answers for what they learned and are working on gave me a chance to really see how much they've grown and learned this year--very proud!

Estimation Review

We had a chance to review estimation this week using Fruit Loops! 

A link to the worksheet we used is right here.

The end product ended up pretty cute-- they look like this when it's said and done:

The kids really had fun and got a chance to review!

Those are my classroom wrap ups! I will have end of the year activities in the next post--I can't believe next week is our last week already!

Reading and Writing Progress and Goals

USD 500 is closed today so I'm making the most of it! I'm caught up on all my grading and making some plans for the rest of this year and the next!

I'm going to share some of the great things I got to hear and see in my professional development meeting!

Reading

Sometimes students struggle choosing books. They will either choose something too easy or too hard. In addition to the Goldilocks rule (Too hard, too easy, just right), I think I'd like to use the IPICK method next year.

Courtesy of Ms. Peterson, 1st grade, we got to see a video of an IPICK rap for the kids to remember all of the pieces to choosing a good book.  Enjoy!

Another teacher also showed up the 5 finger method for choosing a book.  It means that when a student looks through the first page of the book, if there are 5 words they don't know then the book is too hard.

She also had her students help make anchor charts for her classroom. (3rd grade, Ms. Labar)

I think that's a great idea if I teach upper grades again someday!

Word work:  I still have some students that are struggling with vowel sounds and patterns so I created a new word work station for those students to practice matching and recognizing similar vowel sounds. There are four words with the same vowel sound and they have to match them together. There are also words on the back for an added challenge. I think they'll really like getting to manipulate these puzzle pieces. :)

Writing

The teacher leaders provided us with a format to help students work on opinion writing which is a part of the core standards.  I haven't had a chance to scan the original, but if you contact me I can get that scanned and email it to you.

I had the students write an opinion paragraph about a book in their leveled book bag (each student has 4 books at their F&P level that are swapped out each week).

We are really working on the structure of sentences and paragraphs so for this first attempt at opinion writing, several papers were selected to be published in the hall.  There were very proud! We will certainly be using this format again.

MAP testing

I am so proud of our class! We have only done the reading MAP test so far, but with three students still left to test, we have managed to exceed the district improvement goal (stating 55% of the class must reach growth goal).  So far we are at 76% and as I am beginning to wrap up Fountas and Pinnel testing, I am confident my class will meet or exceed the district goal to have 70% of students at level M by the end of the year.

Classroom Library

While I do already have my books in my library sorted by genre, I want to have at least part of my library sorted by F&P level.  So I have started to collect cereal boxes for my containers! I will need to paint or cover the boxes and label them. This is my summer goal and I've posted it on my blog so I can be held accountable! Look for a finished product to be posted over the summer.

Writing

So I've been looking for a way for students to understand the structure of a paragraph and thanks to our teacher leader I think I've found a way for them to be successful understanding AND writing their paragraphs.

Train writing

This foldable helped us create our paragraphs for Women's History month.  The green is for go which is why the TS (topic sentence) is the engine.  Yellow is for slowing down to tell more which is why it has R.F. (reasons or facts) and the paragraph has TS at the end to show that we need to restate our original statement using new words.

This is one student's completed train which she was able to successfully turn into a paragraph. She was so proud of her work and so was I! The entire class did very well with this organization tool. I plan to use it more in the future.

Anchor Charts

We had a Professional Day to meet with other 2nd grade teachers in the district to discuss techniques used with interactive read aloud.  This was a very handy anchor chart that another teacher brought that she adds to every time they read a fable. Fables are in the core standards and they are very tricky to students. I think this will be a great tool to use for them to understand a story as well as compare it to other fables.

Research display

My mom saw my blog and wanted to show off some of her great work in her junior high classroom too! She works with the highest group of MTSS and provides enrichment activities (on top of teaching science and coaching!). For Kansas Day, she assigned a several counties for groups to research and display on this flower.  She had set things the students needed to find out and displayed the projects for Kansas Day proudly. I think it turned out to be a great way to display a research project about Kansas!

Those are my updates! Lots of writing happening right now. Soon we will be MAP testing and I'll be wrapping up my F&P assessments. The running records are showing a lot of growth from the students so I can't wait to show their families how much they've improved :)

Spring Break is not a break!

So Spring Break is looking more like a snow break, but I'm still managing to do a lot to prepare for the last quarter of the school year. It was really too pretty to ignore for the first day. I posted a video of it snowing at my parent's house. The break had a very calming start, but now I'm in high gear!

Reading

I'm still doing the Daily 5 in my classroom for reading groups, but I'm noticing that some of my students are struggling repeating their Word Work station so I'm planning on having a sign in sheet where they write in what day they did the activity on. I've also limited the options to only 5 choices because I think I may have had too many choices as of late which is why they may be getting confused.

I've also been checking out pinterest a lot for more options for my word work station. I'm already picking out some Spring themed word work for the first week of April. I'll try to get better about posting that once I get it in April. It's hard to keep up with when I'm teaching!

Math

I'm also still using the BUILD math model mentioned in a previous post and this is another creation for those centers.  To help students work on fact families, they use the numbers on the peace signs. It's crazy how much more students enjoy practicing fact families when the numbers are on glittery neon  peace signs! :)

Also, kind of with math is my new whole class behavior system.  They met their cocoa compliments goal and now they are working to get 10 numbers in a row on our 100s chart.  At the end of the day, if the class agrees that we had a good day then I'll have one student pull numbers to decide what number we get to color in today. I think they'll love it!

This idea is from pinterest from this blog. This time I think we'll work a classroom party-- they really enjoyed that the last time we had one. 

Classroom Management

I already have behavior contracts set in place for several of my students, but I know with the end of the year in sight that I may need to change it up a bit for my students.

For most of the class I'm going to use Caught You Coupons when they follow directions for the first time. I'll give them the chance to "cash" those in for computer time at the beginning/end of the day or prize box.

I think it's important to have a prize that everyone can get (not just target behavior students) because it's important that the students see that good behavior is rewarded.

For my students who have more behavioral needs, I found a site that had so many behavior charts I was up to my neck in them! Sorry I couldn't help being cheese-tastic! :)

They have behavior sheets for all ages of students ranging from ages 3 and up. They have some for parents at home too!

I did already have some behavior sheets, but they weren't a great fit for the skills the students were working on. I love the sheets I found because they have single target behavior or multiple behavior pages.  You should certainly check it out if you want to mix it up. Get the link here and look around! They have contracts, homework charts and tons more!