A Fresh Start

Well, it has been a while! Although the school year is over and I am enjoying some down time with my family, I really have been wanting to get back to blogging about all of the plans I have for the upcoming school year.
 I decided the best way to start would be to update my page and to get a few things loaded on Teachers Pay Teachers.
I hope you like the new look, it is from The Cutest Blog on the Block.  I am new to blogging and their templates are so easy to use.  I love the colorful details and of course the dots!
My store on TpT is http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Thoughtfully-Third . Take a look at my products and try out the freebie.  I chose Text Structure Task Cards as a freebie because my kiddos really struggled with identifying text structure this year.  Taking it down to the sentence level helped them focus on signal words and context and build the skill needed to tackle the longer passages.   I hope you enjoy them!

Test Prep: Types of Questions

Happy Easter!  I hope you all had a wonderful day with family and friends.  The meal has been served, the clean up is done, and now I am thinking about the importance of the next two weeks (before state testing)! 
I have created a SMART board unit for how to approach a test, but I like to start earlier in the year thinking about the types of questions, how they relate to the REAL reading work we do and what they look like.  We have been using the anchor posters introduced earlier in the year to review what we have learned.  

We spent time learning many vocabulary strategies this year.  Our biggest hurdle has been to remember that last tip -- the word has to make sense AND cannot change the meaning of the sentence. 

 

This poster will be changing.  Our district has been calling these questions "general" questions this year.  We talk a lot about inferring to answer these types of questions and some general questions do not necessarily need inference.  Time to get back to the drawing board!

This poster was the beginning of sequencing questions.  Now we are learning about sandwich style questions and what we can do to be sure we are not tricked be distractors.

 

Detail questions or Right There questions, whatever you call them these are plentiful! 

Looking for the repetition!  This falls under our "general" questions now, but main idea is such a challenge for some of my kiddos over the years I will keep this poster on.

 

Again, the final tip is the one we need to spend the most time looking at.

 

What have you been using to prep for state testing?  When do you test?  What are you looking forward to doing to get back to normal?

(Sorry about the shadows in the pics! My camera died - I had to rely on the phone!)

Scientifically Thinking...

Last week was Spring Break for our district -- a much needed rest.  I am sure you can all relate!  Of course, relaxing or not, my teacher brain never turns off.  Unfortunately this is one of those times that I thought of an ingenious plan a little too late.  Does that ever happen to you? 

My kiddos are learning about plant structures in science currently and one of the activities planned was the sprouting of a lima bean.  Well, the unit directions had a specific amount of water to place in our baggies.  I have always wet a paper towel, but I thought this way would be better since there would be no obstruction to the students seeing the sprout and the roots.  Like an obedient soldier I carried on with the plans. Well.... shall we say bean soup?  Ick! (I wish I had a picture, but this was prior to my brave attempt at blogging.)  My teammate called me over to track down a smell, and you guessed it -- the beans.  It was a valid lesson for the kids, science is trial and error and things do not always work out the way we anticipate, right?

This brings me to my brilliant plan.  I want to redo the investigation.  The kids are going to diagram what they are seeing at various points in the plant growth, but time is not on our side!  Had I thought of this a few days ago we would be all set.  I could have taken the beans home and set them up in bags so that Monday we had a bean 1 day in its growth cycle, 3 days, etc.  Not the same as them doing the work themselves, but we could have continued from there.  Ah well, hopefully next year I will have the perfect amount of water and will not need my "plan B". 

Do any of you do the bean sprouting in just water?  How much is the right amount?

A New Beginning

This is what happens when Spring Break is cold!  I have cleaned the house, I have bathed the dogs, I have prepped for the week we return from break, and I cannot sit still. So... I have decided to start a blog of my own.  I am new to this world and I have limited knowledge about how these things work, so please be patient and kind!

When we return from break we have two weeks until state testing starts.  No matter how many years I have been doing this these two weeks create PANIC in my heart.  I know they are ready. We have worked hard, but this is the time I start having dreams about realizing on the day of the test that I skipped over something entirely - like multiplication. Ridiculous I know, but it is my crazy worrisome subconscious mind.

Any way, I will come to accept the idea that things will be OK.  In the meantime, I want to do something entertaining with the kiddos to relieve their anxiety.  I have decided to start collecting shoe boxes now because I really like the idea of Rachel Lynette's Book in a Box project.  It will keep them thinking, it is easy to differentiate, and it is FUN - something we need more of!
I will post pictures and let you know how it goes in the next few weeks! 

Meanwhile, any tips from the experienced bloggers would be greatly appreciated!