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!

Currently and Catch Up

Hey there, friends! After two days of benchmark testing, I am SO ready for spring break! At least the kids have a test to work on during the 4 hour testing window - I just had to walk around and actively  monitor - booooooooring!

Anyway, I wanted to share just one more solar system activity we did two weeks ago. We read Margaret Wise Brown's The Important Book (I'm sure you all know it well!), and we discussed the way the author used lots of descriptions to explain to the reader why and how that item/object was important. Then, I told my kids they were going to write their own important book, but there was a catch - their whole book had to be about the sun, so everything they wrote needed to explain how and/or why the sun was important. I made each kid a book out of a single sheet of long construction paper, following this tutorial, and they turned out so great! Here's what a few of my kids thought was important about the sun:

This student made his own copyright page - the little rocket says, "Better than Scholastic!" - haha!

Love this illustration (and isn't his handwriting beautiful?!).

He wrote, "The sun makes the moon gloe (glow)." - shows me he was paying attention during our moon studies!

I love that this student drew the orbital lines with his planets!

I was proud of this student's connection of the sun to the water cycle - great thinking!

I am so on board with what this girl drew - I'm ready for sun, bathing suits, and laying out by the pool!

This idea (which came from our curriculum, interestingly enough - I'm not always on board with their suggestions, but I really loved this!) could easily be used with any subject or concept - you could make an important book about a character from a story, an animal, habitats, adding, subtracting, and whatever else you can think of! This activity was great because it was self-directed, and it showed me who had really learned the important concepts about the sun and who hadn't. My kids enjoyed making their books, and even asked if they could make more important books about the planets - my answer was an enthusiastic YES! :)

Now, on to this month's Currently, courtesy of Farley, of course! I created this yesterday, and then ended up not having time to post last night, so that's why my answers sound a little off, but still, here's what's up with me these days:

Your 3 words are supposed to be words that your students, friends, and family would use to describe you, and the words must start with the first letter of your last name. I think I'm a pretty reasonable teacher (I was also going to cheat and write "Really organized," but that's two words and organized doesn't start with R, but I thought it would be a good answer since my students actually DO tell other people that I am really organized!!), my friends know they can rely on me for just about anything, as long as it doesn't involve starting something after 10 pm, and my family definitely thinks I'm a bit random. I send stream of consciousness emails, I love tomato products but hate raw tomatoes, and I enjoy recreating the scene of Buddy the Elf on an escalator when I go to the mall. Maybe that makes me more ridiculous than random, but I digress...

Before I go, I found out yesterday that I was awarded a professional development grant I applied for a few weeks ago from my district (yay!). I'm so excited, because (a) this was my first time to ever apply for a grant and I got it (!!), and (b) it means I get to attend Debbie Diller's Summer 2012 conference in Houston. I'm only going to attend the first two days, since the third day seemed like it was geared more towards lower grades, but I was wondering if any of my blogging friends would also be in attendance? Since I won my funding through the grant, I'll be the only one attending from my school, and maybe even from my district, so it'll be a great opportunity to meet some new people. If you'll be attending, let me know, because I'd love to meet you!!

Now I'm off to start my spring break right - with a glass of vino and a line up of TV shows from Hulu. I'm already in my sweatpants; it can only get better from here. Happy spring break y'all!