Camping Under the STAARs

This has officially been the longest week ever! We had a field trip on Wednesday, then Field Day on Friday, and immediately following that I had to rush home to get ready to head to Houston for another wedding weekend (last weekend we drove to New Orleans for my boyfriend's high school friend's wedding). Of course, Thursday evening my new upstairs apartment neighbors decided to have a raging party (my walls were shaking because the music was so loud!), so I didn't even go to sleep until around 2 am. Friday was a very.long.day.

Anyway, we made it to Houston right as the rehearsal dinner was starting last night, and then I went to sleep as soon as it was over. Now I'm taking it easy in our hotel room, and I'm finally going to share with y'all some of the activities we did in my class the week before our STAAR test.

Since I decided to go with a camping theme (I told the kids we were going to be camping under the STAARs), I asked my parents if they had a tent we could borrow, and one parent had a tent that fit perfectly in my room! My kids made stars to help them remember the STAAR acrostic poem (more on that later), and I hung them up above the tent. My students LOVED reading and working in that tent - it was the best motivator ever!

Each day of the week, we reviewed/practiced all of the reading and math skills and concepts we'd learned that year. For the multiplication and division review day, I decided to make things more fun by making a scavenger hunt. In this scavenger hunt, though, my students were hunting for the answers to the problems they'd already worked on in class. I gave my students 12 multiplication and division word problems (they came from an old Step Up to TAKS workbook), and once they finished solving/answering them in class, they would take their word problems, a clipboard and red pen, and a map of our school to go hunt for the answers. The maps had 12 x's on it, and each x marked where a tent would be posted. Each tent was labeled on the outside with the question number, and when you lifted the flaps, you'd see that question inside the tent, with the correct answer bubbled in. So, my students were able to grade themselves as they found each tent. By the time they came back to my room, their paper would be checked, they'd know which questions they missed, and I'd immediately get to go over those missed questions with them. While it took quite a bit of time to make the 12 tents, my kids all loved this activity, and now it's already made and ready to use again next year!

Another fun math activity we did had to do with graphing. I have 6 table groups in my class, and I told each group to come up with a question that had to do with camping (this group's question was What did you sleep in when you went camping?). Then I gave each group a large sheet of graph paper, and they created the answer choice options (I was very proud of this group for realizing that some kids might have slept in more than one of the choices [like both a tent AND a cabin], so they made answer choices for those options, too!). Then my kids walked around to each group and colored in/initialed the square that corresponded to their answer. After the data was collected, my students then had to use that data to create a matching pictograph. One boy was dead set on making one stick person equal 5 people, and when I asked what he would do for answers that were less than 5 people, he said each arm and leg could count as 1, so if the answer were just 3 people, he'd remove one arm and one leg to show that it's 5 - 2 = 3. I guess if just one person had answered that they'd slept in a cabin, the symbol to match that on his pictograph would have been a armless, legless person!

The last thing I wanted to share with y'all was the Tips and Tricks Tent we made. At the beginning of the week, this tent was blank. Then, as we reviewed concepts and ideas, we talked about the strategies and helpful things we could do to solve all the different kinds of questions that might be on the test. As my kids came up with ideas, I recorded them on the tent (one side was for math, the other for reading). Then, in the middle, I wrote down the strategies the kids thought would be helpful to use and remember for both reading and math. I was pleased they remembered so much - like the replacement strategy, for example, is one I taught way back in the fall when we were learning about synonyms, multiple meaning words, and context clues. Then, above the tent, I made my own stars to show the STAAR acrostic poem, which I found here:

          S - Stay focused     

          T - Take small breaks     

          A - Answer carefully     

          A - Always use strategies     

          R - Review your work

Since we were told we had to have all math/reading/test related things taken down or covered during the test, I just made bigger stars to cover the ones I'd made, and I used more brown construction paper to cover up the tent. Studies have shown that students test better in familiar, comfortable environments, so instead of taking everything down or covering it up with unfriendly black butcher paper, I just made it look like it had looked at the beginning of the week (although I just realized as I was typing this that I could have simply taken the tent down and just turned it backwards, with the words facing the wall, instead of covering it up with more paper - how wasteful of me!). That's why the stars that my kids made were only decorated - they couldn't have written the STAAR poem on their stars or else I would have had to take them down during the test - so I just told the kids to think of those stars as a reminder of what the poem meant. Since the poem was short and simple, they memorized it quickly and easily, and one morning for morning work, I had my students come up with their own testing strategy acrostic poem using their name (I found this idea here!), and the poems they came up with were awesome! I'm sad I forgot to take pictures - since we made these poems the day before the test, I had to send them home that day because I couldn't have them posted in my room or even in the hall.

We did much, much more than what I showed you here, but this was what I remembered to take pictures of! I realize none of those activities above are about reading, but we just read different fiction stories about camping, and then, to review how to read/answer questions/think about non-fiction stories, we read a bunch of books about different animals and insects that might live in the woods near a camp ground. I also bought this on TpT - Hope's activities definitely made my plans easier!

That's all I've got for y'all today - I am so ready for my schedule to get back to normal so I can feel on top of things again. We'll get back to Austin tomorrow evening, and then my sister's birthday is on Monday, JJ's birthday is on Tuesday, and then Wednesday - Friday I'll be going along with our 5th graders to be a counselor at their big end of the year camp. This'll be my third year to go, and while it's always a lot of fun (especially because some of the 5th graders were in my class two years ago!), that means I have three days worth of sub plans to write...so on that note, it's time to get off my blog and get on to writing plans! Have a great weekend, y'all!

i'm.so.tired.

so, i know i'm supposed to use a capital letter at the beginning of a sentence, but when i type, i've always preferred not to. (shhhh, don't tell my students!) although i usually give in to convention, today i am so.dang.tired. that i can't even muster up the effort it takes to press the shift key to give you all the courtesy of capital letters. at least i'm still using apostrophes, commas, and periods. you're welcome.

this week has totally wiped me out. i think (and hope) my kids have enjoyed the the camping themed review, since it has meant we have had fun treats and two pop up tents in our classroom, but i am so exhausted from getting everything together that i can barely even think straight. yesterday there was a PTA meeting at 6:30, and because i don't live super close to my school, going home before the meeting and coming back wasn't an option. at 7:30, i looked at the agenda and realized we weren't even half way through the meeting, so i had to leave - i hadn't eaten since my lunch time at 12:30, so i'm sure they were glad i left, as my stomach was making some pretty loud and obnoxious noises. then today, we had a staff meeting 'til 4, i worked out, and then i got to get started on prepping for tomorrow...only i didn't really get to because i had so many papers/piles/messes to sort through/clean up. but, now i can see the top of my guided reading table, so at least the table is prepped for tomorrow...

anyway, the real reason i wanted to post today was to see if any of y'all would be interested in seeing/using the DIY math homework my kids have been using these past few weeks. in preparation for our STAAR test, i wanted to be sure my kiddos were still reviewing/practicing the skills they've learned this year, but i wanted to avoid giving them too much "to the test" type work because (a) it's boring, and (b) i didn't want them to become so tired of seeing/doing that kind of work that come test day, they are burnt out. so, in an effort to make things a little more fun and engaging BUT still meaningful, i came up with the idea of having my kids write their own math problems. each week, they must come up with 4 questions, but they have to follow a specific set of instructions as to how to create/write each problem (i.e., what numbers/operations to include, pictures to draw, etc.). they also have to come up with 4 answer choices. then, on fridays, instead of me grading their work for them, they have to get with a partner and trade homework, and they answer each others' questions! i do, obviously, still grade their work, but the conversations i overhear when my kids are answering each others' questions is SO worth not having a one size fits all, easy to grade with an answer key type of assignment. i also love that these assignments are totally self-paced - the kids who feel comfortable playing around with bigger, more complex numbers do, and at the same time, those who feel more confident sticking with smaller, easier numbers are able to do so without being penalized.

so, if you think you'd be interested in seeing and/or using these homework assignments, please let me know by leaving me a comment. i know some of you might want and/or need to tweak things to make the questions correlate with your grade level/state standards, so let me know if you're interested and i'll email you the files!

have a great rest of your week, y'all!