Standards Board for the classroom

So do you want to make your kinders take ownership of their learning?? Several months ago, we visited a K class at a great school in our system. We got several ideas, but the Standards Board was by far the coolest!!

This board will help your kinders keep track of their learning as well as serve as immediate documentation for several TKES standards. Evaluators who come to observe will see immediately goals that students have mastered and ones they are currently working on. Best of all, the standards board shows you current student data to use when meeting for parent conferences or grading for progress reports or report cards.

Don't worry about confidentiality because there are no names on the standards board, just numbers. Each student learns his/her number thereby keeping student names confidential.

Check out this adorable way for students and teachers to monitor progress.

We would love to hear about what you do in your classroom!!

Retiring, Egg Hunt & Happy Spring Break!

Hi Friends! Hope you are either finishing up or beginning your spring break with some rest and relaxation!!

Before you get too SAD, Cristy and I are not the ones who are retiring! We have lots of years to go (13), but who's counting :). Any way our SUPER FABULOUS principal announced her retirement. While we wish her well, we are a bit devastated at the news. We knew it was coming soon, but just didn't want to think it was now.

Have you ever had a principal who expected 110% from everyone and if someone could not give 110% he/she devoted time and resources to help get that person performing? Well, that's our principal!! She is one of those service leaders who will get you what you need so you can do your job better. She is also one of those leaders who goes into any situation with a bucket of water in one hand and  fire in the other. She is ready to put out a fire or get one started depending on the situation!

Enough about our sad news! On to FUN things like---EASTER!  So sorry if this activity is a day late! Maybe you could use it next year ;).

We had a super fun "Egg"tastic Math Egg Hunt! It was awesome. We bought enough plastic eggs for every kiddo to have one. We stuffed each kid's egg with 10 jelly beans. If you want to do this activity, feel free to put any number of jelly beans that work for you.

After we stuffed the eggs, we wrote each kid's name on an egg then hid them outside. The kiddos had to find the egg with their name on it. They couldn't tell their friend if they saw someone else's name. After finding the eggs, the students got a clipboard and work paper.

Students had to count the number of jelly beans and record. Then students had to decompose the
number of jelly beans they were working on into pairs. Finally, students wrote a word problem about their jelly beans and then gobbled them up. Yummy! Thanks Mrs. Kari, our student teacher, for getting us jelly beans!

Below is a copy of the "Egg"tastic math recording form we used. If you think you could use it sometime, feel free to grab it by clicking on the picture!

Hope y'all have(had) a great spring break and fabulous Easter!!

Free Assessments and a Giveaway!

Where does time go? We can't believe our year is almost over. Boohoo! Just when you get your babies trained really well, it is time to give them up. We spend the first 6 weeks of kindergarten wishing we could have our babies from the previous year back. We always forget how well we get them trained by the end of the year.

Can you believe it is already time for us to enter grades for the 3rd Nine Weeks? What is crazy is that we conduct formative assessments all the time. However, a couple weeks before we have to enter grades, we scramble because we decide our checklists, individual conference forms, journal entries, and work samples, may not be enough to prove to parents that their child Meets or Does Not Meet the Standard.

So, we get busy making one more final assessment to test these new skills.  Below are a couple of assessments for some Common Core Language Arts Standards that we just created.

If you are like us and just need ONE--- MORE--- ASSESSMENT to make SURE your kiddos meet the standard, feel free to click on it and grab.

If you don't need anymore assessments, you could also use these for formative assessments and/or extra practice.

K.RFS.3 (d) - Distinguish between similarly spelled words by identifying the sounds of the letters that differ.


K.RL.9 - Compare and Contrast the adventrues and experiences of characters in familiar stories.

K.RIT.9 - Identify basic similarities in and differences between two texts on the same topic.

Congratulations to our blogging buddy, Tammy over at 1..2..3..Teach With Me on 600 Followers. Thanks so much for letting us share in your success and participate in your giveaway. We are giving away our Common Core Unit 4 Math Pack: Wild About Addition and Subtraction. The giveaway ends Monday so hop on over and check it out.

If you have any great assessment ideas, we would love to hear them :). Thanks for reading!!

 Good luck in the GIVEAWAY!!

How to Avoid Assessing!

We just started back to school this past Wednesday with a teacher workday.  Oh...my...goodness!

Work Day Schedule
7:00 - Holy moley...what IS that sound?
7:01 Throw phone in  floor to make noise STOP!
7:10  Find said phone to turn off horrible noise that continues (because some moron set it to do that!-ME!)
7:15  Get out from under new snuggly blanket (with whom I have become good friends!) and step on cold floor.
7:20  Shower, throw on some jeans, kiss hubs goodbye
7:45  Drive to work with music up WAY too LOUD ( kiddos are still at home in bed...NOT FAIR!!)
7:55  Pull in to school
8:00  Socialize - Talk about  7 pounds gained over break!  YES...7!  How can I even eat that much...truly...truly!
8:30 Notice ants have attacked snack bin...How dare they!!!
8:31  Fight back!  1 point Cristy! 0 points Ants!  (That will teach them to mess with our cheese puffs!)
8:35  Eye stack of papers sitting on desk to assess and record grades. Take down Christmas decorations instead!
9:00  Clean up the room.  Notice stack of papers again. Divert eyes and keep cleaning!  Ok...well...move some things around a bit just to make me FEEL like I cleaned the room...it's not that bad, is it?
10:00  Walk past desk.  Are those papers still sitting there?  Better tackle that in a bit!  Move on to writing lesson plans for the next 2 days.  Who doesn't love a SHORT week!
11:00 Almost lunch!  But really...those papers aren't gonna grade themselves!  Finally tackle checking papers, work samples, and checklists to get ready to enter 2nd 9 week grades.
11:45  What's that Page?  You are ready to go grab some lunch?  Am I in the middle of anything?  Nah!
12:15  Return from Zaxby's.  Eat lunch!  Still not sure where those 7 pounds came from!
12:30  No more excuses!  MUST...GRADE...PAPERS!
2:00  All papers, work samples, and checklists have been tackled!  Time to enter grades on the computer.
3:00  All grades are entered!  Well, all the ones that I have information for.  Realize I missed a few assessments.  Really...that standard is in the 2ND NINE weeks???  OK...better make a plan for that!
3:30  Plan for 1st day back with the kiddos!  "Good morning sweet babies. I missed you.  How was Christmas.  Now go get your pencil boxes and sit down!  We have some assessing to do!
4:00  Principal kicks us out of the building!  Bless you sweet principal!  Glad she makes us leave or I swear we stay until midnight!

OK...mostly productive day, but do you ever find yourself in this situation?  You collect work samples, assess all along to spread it out, make checklists, but wait until the last minute to get it all recorded and organized so that you can enter grades!  Ugh!!!  Why do we do it to ourselves!!!!!!

SO...STINKIN...GLAD that is over...well...until the next 9 weeks!!! :)

OK---So maybe we can't really AVOID assessing!  Just in case you are like us, and realized you forgot to assess one or two of those standards for report cards, here are a couple of assessment pieces we created to use with our kiddos.  Nothing fancy, but maybe 1 or 2 of them can help you out in a pinch!

      

Here are 2 others: 

 Prepositions and Extending Sentences 

Subject/Verb Agreement

Hope you had a great first few days if you started back this week!  If you don't start back until next week, please don't tell me!  I'll just be jealous! ;)