I love RANDOM Posts.

Just wanted to share some pictures that I've been hoarding...

This is part of my current hall display.  Definitely nothing fancy, but I'm proud of all the work!  On the top row are posters that summarized events that we had been discussing in SS.  All the groups had different ideas for presenting the information and it worked out perfectly!  The second row are our chemical and physical change comic books that we created!  Again, I'm a proud teacher! :)

An example of of the groups poster. This was about the Watergate Scandal.  I loved how they decided to create a newspaper article!

Not much color on this poster, but this group illustrated the Camp David Accord!

Timeline of events that occurred during the 1950-1960's.  Students had to write a summary of the event and find the dates for the event then glue them on the timeline!

Another display that my students created were summaries of different decades.  They had the 1950's-2000's.  They had to tell us about the presidents, the government spending, the way America was dealing with foreign countries, and any other important events that may occurred.  Students also chose to include music and clothes because we listened to music from each decade we discussed!

And last, but not least... :)  

Motivational posters made from two different classes for my homeroom.  Yes, the green one has HEDGEHOGS on it!  If you don't know, I'm obsessed with hedgies!

A student gave this to me, she said it was a hedgehog that came from her kids meal. :) <3

Another teacher bought this for me, the same one that made the green poster! :) Love it!

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?

Hodge Podge of Items

All year long I've taken pictures and told myself, this is definitely "blog" worthy.  However, my intentions are good, but the follow through hasn't been.  I updated our classroom blog a LOT more than this one!  In fact, there are PLENTY of fun ideas over there that I promise will make their way to this blog! :)

Anyways, for now accept my apologies and this hodge podge of ideas for you!

This is just a picture of my SHOUT OUTS I did before I left on a Friday afternoon.  When students arrived on Monday morning they were excited to see their names on the board for EXCELLENT conduct grades!  I'm always amazed at how far little things like this will go!

I always get the best ideas from other teachers!  Upon entering Mrs. Harman's room last year I thought WOW, why didn't I think of that?  This is just a LARGE clothes pin that is by my door.  It catches papers that need to be passed out or needs to go to the office.  It is the go to place if I'm looking for an important piece of paper!  I bought this at Target from the Dollar Spot!

So I blogged before about my classroom management system.  The pictures were old and I've definitely updated the look since then.  You can find the blog here.  In a nut shell, the three classes are competing for links.  When their links touch the ground they receive a prize and the game starts BACK over.  Originally I kept it going and each class wasn't really competing with each other.  However, this is CHEAPER, plus the kids are excited to earn their links!  Unfortunately, this year my homeroom hasn't won the classroom competition yet!  Mrs. Walters class has won the most! We voted on the 5 classroom objectives at the beginning of the year.

Close up, laminated so that I can erase the expectations each year and write new ones if needed.

Paper clip, 2 index cards, and hot glue hold it all together.

My students LOVE when they walk in my classroom and see this spinner on the board!  You can turn ANYTHING into a review!  For this particular review students spun the spinner and then had to point to the cell parts on a larger diagram of plant and animal cells.  If they landed on the free, they could point and name any part they wanted.  Here is where you can purchase this spinner, plus two additional ones.  

Lastly,  my timeline is something that I'm proud of in my classroom.  More about the timeline can be found here.  With each unit we've added the important events to the timeline.  This kept up in check all year long!  The only thing that I would do differently next year is to make the cards smaller, not the words, but just trim off the extra color on the back.  It got a bit crowded on the timeline!  I also might be moving this up front!  

Slacker, I know...

I haven't posted since the beginning of the year, which seems like just the other day!  I don't know about you, but this school year has FLOWN by!  I keep telling my students that and they look at me like I'm crazy, but all my teacher friends seem to agree! :)

Anyways, we've been totally busy this year.  The group of kids that I have are great.  We have a few issues, but for the most part they are doing their best.  In my county students must take a test every 4 weeks.  In elementary school, this is for grades 3-5.  The PARS (as they are called) lets teachers know how the students understood the concept that was taught, plus gives us an idea as to how they will perform on our end of the year state testing, CRCT.

Over the course of the school year students will take 7 PARS, which is actually 28 tests (Reading, Math, Science, and Social Studies).  I think the idea of the PARS is great, but for me in Science and Social Studies I have difficulty with going back and reteaching those concepts that were missed.  If I take time and go back and work with students who struggled on a particular standard then that will take time away from the next concept.  Yes, that is right EVERY four weeks the PARS is on different topic!

Overall my students have done well.  There are a handful of students who consistently are on the border of passing or failing, you know the "BUBBLE" kids.

Do you have something similar in your county?  Do you have suggestions for helping those students that need the reteaching, but will also need the new information?  How would you handle this situation?

Our state testing will be in the middle of April, so I've decided to start reviewing now.  We are actually learning NEW topics up until the CRCT.  In fact, last year I didn't finish my Science unit!  We looked at our Earth Science Standards, but I wouldn't say that my students were 100% ready on that topic.

So here is my plan of action...

1. Send home scores of all the current PARS.  We've taken 5 so far.  This will give the parents information as to what students struggled with.

2. Start having daily quizzes with old CRCT questions over the units we've already covered.  So starting with the older topics.  Hopefully, students will see the need for studying, plus will give me an idea what to spend more time on right before the test.

3. Extra homework.  Currently my homework isn't difficult at all.  Here is a video about my CURRENT homework.

You can also read more here, http://lazenbyclass.blogspot.com/2013/09/homework.html and here, http://lazenbyclass.blogspot.com/p/homework.html

The extra homework that I will assign will come from the CRCT Test Practice books for Social Studies.  If there is time, then we will utilize our Science one, too.  Students will be assigned so many questions a night. We will review them in class on Friday and students can keep the books to study with!

At the moment this is all I have.  Now once we are done with our lessons then we will utilize games that I've created for each unit and study.  What do you do to help students get ready for their big test?

One door closed... Another one opens!

Hey y'all.

What marks your "Oh boy, I'm getting ready to go back to school?"

Every years (4th year now) my friend Lora and I head up to Conyers, Ga to visit The School Box teacher supply store.  It is a fun ladies get away, plus we get to shop for our classroom! :)  It also marks for us, that "Hey, you need to get things together."

This year was no different, so Lora and I left yesterday morning and drove 1 hour and 30 minutes to get our shop on!!

(Click the picture to go to their Facebook Fan Page)

However, when we walked in the door we noticed something was different.  This normally gigantic store had half the store blocked off.  The items that they had available were about 1/3 the items they typically sell.  Plus, the normally friendly staff seemed aggravated.   Lora found out that they were moving down the sidewalk, but that part wasn't open yet.  Another teacher that was shopping around heard Lora tell them how far we had driven to shop, so she told us of another store!

We bought a few items and loaded up the car.  I glanced over at the "new" store and saw that it was about half the size of this one.  I didn't think anything else of it though.  I put in the next teacher store in my GPS and found out it was in Macon, which was another hour and 30 minutes away.  We decided to head over there.

When we pulled up, we saw the sign that said open to the public.  We both said out loud, "that's good."  I asked Lora what we would have done if they were closed and we couldn't go in and drove that far!  We both laughed, but lucky for us they were open.

(Click the picture to go to GA School Supply Facebook Fan Page)

Georgia School Supply was such a great find and worth the trip!  They have one of everything that you've every wanted for your classroom! ;)  They could actually use for a bigger store because with all us teachers in there plundering it did get a bit crowded.  However, the staff was friendly and would help you find WHATEVER you needed.

Once we checked out, the owner (?) of the store asked us if we had School Box punch cards.  We told him we did and then he asked if we had heard the news.  He then told us about the School Box filing for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy and he wasn't sure what was going to happen to them.  We told him about our experience and he figured they were downsizing, hence the smaller space they were moving to.

He told us that GA School Supply didn't plan on going anywhere, so they would love to have us.

So needless to say Lora and I will no longer be making the trip to Conyers every year.  Instead we will will be driving to Macon to visit the GA School Supply store! :)  **Side note, coming home we obviously went a different route and it only took 2 and 1/2 hours.

Oh duh, I forgot to tell you everything I bought! :)

Well, most importantly I decided on my classroom colors or themes.  The pink and green are for my two bulletin boards.  The blue is for a timeline that I am going to TRY and create in the classroom.  The  students will illustrate the timeline for different events that we talk about.

Then I bought...

The place cards will be put on each desk and will contain three names, one for each set of students that I will teach.  The notepad was free from my new favorite teacher store! ;)

Lastly, I bought...

I bought two Civil War books.  One is for the Key Battles and the other is all about Georgia!  The Key Battles is more stories and facts.  The Georgia book contains worksheets.  The name tags will be used on the timeline, as well as the pencils.  I'm just trying to decide exactly what I'm going to do. :)

Thanks for stopping by!!  Where do you like to get your classroom items?  Also, what marks the beginning of "OMG, it is almost time to go back!?"

Don't forget to enter my drawing!

Four Corners

Happy Saturday, y'all!

My goal today is to get this house nice and clean, but I'm here bloggin' instead! Please don't tell my hubby! ;)

I wanted to share with you all today a FUN game that my students enjoyed playing this year!  It is based on the rainy day recess game, "4 Corners."  One day during a regular play of this game, I thought- DUH!!!  **And that is how this game was created!

What you do is label each corner, A, B, C, and D.

You ask the students a question and then they move to the corner that they believe is the right answer.  The easiest way to do this, so you don't have to repeat yourself 100 times, is to create a slide show and project it on your Promethean Board (or whatever "smart" board you have), so that students can read them, too.

After a few minutes you make sure that ALL the students are in a corner and then you can use this time to discuss the incorrect answers.  Students that are in those corners will have a seat.  The students that were in the correct corner get to answer another question!!

Rules:
No running
No pushing
No moving to a different corner once I call "time."

Pros:
Interactive review game!!!
Use your state standardized testing questions (GA takes the CRCT, so I would create questions that are similar to those that could be found on a test, or used old ones found from the web)
Students have fun!  On rainy days my students ALWAYS wanted to play this 4 corners instead of the regular way.

Cons:
In each class the students have decided that one kid is "the smart kid" and they started following them around!  To stop this, I threw in trick questions.  I also would say, "Are y'all sure about that" and create the look of confusion on their faces!

Adaptations:
I changed up our 4 corners game in several different ways this year...
When we were studying the classification system (kingdom, phylum, class, order, genus, and species) I found two other open spots to create "6" corners.
When we were studying different historical figures, I would label each "4" corner with a name of a person we were learning about.  I would read different facts about a person and they would have to find the correct person!
Our all time favorite was for CRCT studying and I posted four different wars that we discussed in Social Studies.  I would read facts about the weapons, the reasons for the war, the places it was fought, etc.

How do you think you could use this game in your classroom?
*Can't wait to see those answers in the comments below!!