Motivation!

Linking up today!

Last week I spoke about how my kiddos had our standardized testing happening.  I'm sure it was about the same for schools all over the place.  I mentioned in the post how I kind of feel bad for the kids.  They are sick of testing (at least in my school) by the time they get to the big one.

I wanted my guys to have just a little bit of extra steam to get them through the testing and to do their best so I decided to make them something special for each day of testing:

That Time of Year

It's that time of year again.  Everywhere I look teachers are frantically hoping that they've done all they can.  Parents are wondering why their students look like zombies.  Students are wondering why their teacher hates them.  Administrators are wondering if their school will make the cut.

It's time for standardized testing.

New School Year....Finally

As I had mentioned before, I started at a new school this year!  I think that is partially why I've been a bit MIA the last little while.  I finally have a moment to sit down and get caught up on some personal hobbies IE Blogging!

Here are some pictures of my classroom and some things I'm doing this year.  They are about a month old, so I promise they're bigger and better now.  Enjoy anyway :)

I have done this in the past, but decided to modify a little bit.  Whenever my students earn an 'A' on a quiz they get a post-it note to decorate and hang up.  When they earn an 'A' on a test they get a whole index card to decorate and hang up.  They love it because not only are they personalizing our classroom, they get to show off a little bit; what kid doesn't like to boast?!

This year I'm requiring all of my students to have a composition book to keep all of their math notes in.  I'm not doing a 100% interactive math journal, but I have them do quite a few things in there.  Composition books seem to be the easiest way to keep things together.  For the front of their books, I had them decorate a sheet of construction paper with their first name and numbers that have meaning in their lives.

It is important to tell the students what is going to be required for them each day.  Usually teacher will post the standards that students will be learning.  I post 'I Can' statements.  I know it's not unique nor new, but the students like it.  It helps them take ownership over their learning.

This is the start of my stations wall.  I put each student's name on a mini popsicle stick that has a magnet on the back (color coded by grade).  Each station has been numbered and the students go to whichever station they are assigned.  Now that we've been going at it a few weeks, I have it a lot more organized.  I'll post something separate on that later.

Finally, my Sumdog wall!  This is the wall all of my students LIVE to check out.  It keeps tabs of all of their ranks on Sumdog.  I've written about this program before....and I cannot reiterate how much I LOVE this site.  If you want your students to show marked improvement in their math skills, please check it out.  And it's my favorite price FREE!

Monday Made It - Index Card Calendar

Pretty excited to be actually participating in this week's Monday Made it with 4th Grade Frolics!  Since I hadn't been able to get into my classroom until last week, I'd been Pinteresting-around (naturally) and decided to actually make one of the pins!