Preparing for State Testing

We just finished our state testing on Friday of last week.  What do you do to prepare for state testing?  I use the typical Jeopardy and Are you Smarter than a fifth graders, but here are some other items that I've created, bought, and thought of over the years...

I made my own Government BINGO cards.  Each card is completely different and the students are mainly reviewing important documents we discussed, amendments, and the amendment process.

On the other side of the same card is an overview of SS for the ENTIRE year!  This is always fun to see kids trying to recall these important events that we've not talked about since the beginning of the school year.

I downloaded these Where Am I Cards and students had fun trying to guess where I was.  Next time, I think I will ask them to point it out on the MAP!!  Here is the link to get these for FREE!!

I started doing these when I taught third grade and I love them, plus the students do too!  Basically, you fold the paper at the bottom up about 2 inches.  You then write three clues about a person and have students guess the Who Am I?  I actually let my students draw names out of bag to get their assigned person.  They then read them to the class and have their classmates guess!  You could do this with Where am I? or even What am I? and do vocabulary words!

Here is the answer, which is written under the 2 inch flap.

In Science, I had created games already for each unit, so we pulled those games out and revisited them.  So what about you, what do you do to make reviewing fun and meaningful?

Making Memories!!

Three days before our last day I did a fun activity with the kids using a sheet I found from one of my bloggy friends, that again I am not sure who!! (Let me know, so that I can tag them!)

Each student was giving a piece of paper that said One thing I like about (insert their name) is... and it was passed around the room. I told the students that they could only write something POSITIVE, which they all ended up doing very well with.

I also was able to pass around mine during each class and wanted to share with you what the students wrote. I will go ahead and tell you that I got all teary eyed!!!

One thing I like about Mrs. Lazenby is...
1. You are always sharing and teaching us things.
2. You give us things and you are nice!
3. You are the greatest teacher who taught science!
4. How you give us things
5. how you always give us second chances (FROM ONE OF THE "BAD" KIDS, how could I not hug him after that?)
6. How you're the best teacher ever
7. Your the funniest teacher ever in history, love ya!
(TOTALLY SKIPPED THE NUMBER 8, but hey I only taught science! ;))
9. I like you cause you a teacher.
10. You are very nice and the greatest teacher in the whooooooole wide world.
11. I like you, you are nice, you are the best teacher I ever had.
12. Your my best teacher ever!!
13. Your clothes.
14. How nice and always honest.
15. That you are really nice and you have a good since of humor.
16. That you are the best teacher ever, I am gonna miss you.
17. She fun and smart woman.
18. She greatest teacher ever
19. You are a good science teacher ever!
20. Your way of making something fun!
21. You are my favorite science teacher ever!
22. I like the way you told me when I was bad and good.
23. Your a good teacher
24. She's a very wonderful and nice teaching in the world.
25. I liked your personality.
26. You're a fun teacher.
27. I like your kindness and science!
28. Nice and beautiful.
29. She is fun
30. That she is the best teacher I ever had and I will never forget you!!
31. One thing I like about Miss Lazenby is her cool experiments.
32. You are an awesome science teacher.
33. Everything about you!
34. Everything!! (BFF)
25. What I like about you is that you are the best teacher.
38. I like that you giave me a chance to be good. And that you took the time with me. I'll miss you the most of the teachers!
39. One thing I like about you is that you teach me science.
40. I like your smile and laugh, but most of all I like that me and you like pink!
41. I like your teaching.
42. I like that you always make us laughing.
43. One thing I like about Mrs. Lazenby is her funny, nice personality.
44. You're sweet.
45. You are the nicest teacher!
46. I like the way she makes us laugh
47. You are the best teacher in the world and funny!
48. That she does fun stuff to motivate us.
49. I like about her is she is funny and sings lovely.
50. Mrs. Lazenby is a very beautiful teacher
51. I like your signing, dancing, teaching, and clothes.
52. You ar ethe funniest teacher on the planet! Rock and "role"
53. The awesome teacher in the world
54. YOu are the fun teacher in the school
55. I like you, you are beautiful.


Unfortunately not all of our students were present the last week of school, but this was still a fun activity!!

Light

After the CRCT students thought that they were done, but we still had light and sound to talk about. I knew that I needed to keep on with doing things hands on to keep them interested. So here we are doing an experiment about reflection.

I gave students a mirror and asked them to draw a shape on a piece of paper. We then talked about the line of symmetry and how to find it. When students found it on their shapes they drew a small circle inside. We knew that only one side had a circle, so if we were seeing the circle in the mirror it was a reflection. We talked about how the reflection appeared, which was backwards.

I then found this really neat sheet from United Streaming online and gave it to each student. It was a maze, but you had to complete it only by looking in the mirror.

Here are students completing the mirror maze. They thought this was SOO FUN!




We finished up our light and sound unit by making a book about them. Students tried to draw mirror images inside, which again they thought was fun!

I'm glad we ended our science lessons on a high note!

Next week we will finish our KWL chart that we did the first day of class...
K: What we KNEW already about Science
W: What we WANT to learn!
And the L will of course be what we LEARNED!

We will also write letters to upcoming fourth grade students about Mrs. Lazenby's class.

Can't wait...

End of the Year!

I cannot believe that this is the LAST week of my FIRST year of teaching! It has been an experience, that is for sure! However, with the bad came the good! I cannot imagine things being any different. Next year I will know what to expect! This summer I will plan, plan, and plan!!!

Besides I am WAY PROUD OF MY LITTLE BOOGERS!!! On Friday we got the results back from our CRCT. My Scientist did AWESOME! 75% of them PASSED!! The 25% was made up of 17 students, 3 of them are SPED and 3 of them missed a passing grade by ONE QUESTION!!!

It didn't hit me until we went into a meeting on Friday afternoon and was given this graph. I cried!

(First column all students, second is third grade, third is fourth grade, and last is 5th grade.)

My students did NOT get to have a science review because I was helping the reading teacher for three weeks. And we only spent ONE day talking about Light and Sound! However, we were still able to accomplish this!

Another proud moment was when I found out one my kids only missed ONE question on the entire science section of the CRCT. I am making a special reward for him now. However, I was wondering what others do for students that passed state testing?

Our honor's day is on Wednesday and I have lots of goodies for the students. One is a class picture for each student, our school does not take them. I did this for EACH fourth grade class. I also got these AWESOME candy bar wrappers made!


My friend Mandy makes these and are very reasonably priced! If you are interested just leave me a message and I can send you her information! She is currently making them to raise money for a mission trip she is going on in June. I was happy to help her, and LOVED what I received in return! ;)

(I just wrapped all 70 of these tonight and this is the outcome!)

As a class we also voted on classroom awards for each student, which I printed and laminated those certificates. Students will be receiving them after the school honor's day. I sent this invitation home to parents, I HOPE THAT SOME COME!!!


What are some things that teachers do for OLDER students at the end of the year?

Yearbook

My school doesn't have a yearbook, so I was wanting to do something for the kids to still remember their fourth grade year. I saw on another blog (and I'm sorry I don't remember which one) she had created one for her second graders. I attempted tonight to do a similar type thing. I hope this link works!


What do you think? The mascot for our school is a bee, which is the same clip art you see throughout the book.