Five for Friday Time and an Annoucement!

Woohoo! So excited it's Friday and to link up with Kaci! :)

 

1) Next week, I'll be participating in interviews.  I've been waiting to tell y'all some big news, now that it's official, I can!  Next year, my little school will be adding an extra class to my grade level, so I will no longer be self contained.  While parts of me are sad, I do love getting to know my kids really well and the community that develops throughout the year in a self contained classroom. However, I'm really excited to focus on one area and teach it well. 

So, what will I be teaching? 

   

I will really, really, really miss teaching math BUT teaching reading is my passion and I just couldn't deny that. :)  Since I LOVE creating math materials, I still plan on sharing and creating some math goodies for y'all...just not as often. :)

2) We are still loving our fluency tubs but I've implemented a change in the fast few weeks.   Mainly, switching our fourth tub to task cards on skills I feel we need extra work on, which has been great so close to our state assessments. I own a lot of task cards, so this change has been quite easy for me. :)  This week, we worked on Rachel's Context Clue Task Cards.  The kids have responded really well to this change and have really benefit from the extra practice.  I check them right away and am able to clarify any misconceptions immediately!

 3) Blank Walls

We take our state tests in reading and math next week, so I spent some time after school "OAAing" my room.  My focus wall looks so lonely with the one rogue fourth quarter book report that was turned in early this week.  

4) Our school mascot is stars, so I took that theme and ran with it this week as we did our final surge of test prep.  My kiddos loved it. :)  I don't think anybody enjoys test prep, but it doesn't have to be ugly! We made these stars today as fun final way to remind ourselves of good testing strategies and I customized a Walk of Fame Star for our themed online and hung it up outside our room.  They really loved this extra touch!

  

5) Crafty Test Prep 

We need a little bit of extra reinforcement on some important terms that will appear on the vocabulary section of our state test, so I tried to do some crafts to make the topics stick.  The anchor charts aren't pretty BUT my kiddos really did enjoy these activities and I think served their purpose quite well!

The cinammon rolls were inspired by the sweet Cara at The First Grade Parade.  For the antonyms activity, I just used some flip flop clip art I had and had them list pairs of antonyms on the flip flops.  We also did my friend Jen's Rainbow of Similes, I just forgot to take a picture of them!

I'm off to enjoy House Hunters!  :)  HAPPY FRIDAY!