Five for Friday and Friday Flashback (gearing up for Te..te...te...testing!)

What a week coming right off a two week spring break!  

Back to back weeks of six days of testing is starting next week.  

Talk about jumping right in!  

The students were SO tired Monday and Tuesday!  

Seriously, it is like they had just came off of summer vacay.  

Just a wee bit panicked...

I am linking up tonight with Doodle Bugs Teaching and Amanda from Teaching Maddeness to share some randomness of my week.

1.  We finally finished our electricity unit and final assessment.  

Here is page one of the quick assessment.  

Page two of the assessment (performance test).

Supplies getting bagged up and ready to ship!

2.  We are (still) studying the American Revolution and made this great visual for the Boston Tea Party.  The ship is attached with a brass fastener so that it "rocks" on the waves and the brown stuff is real tea poured on glue.  Some students have never seen what real "tea" looks like!

This resource comes from American Revolution History Pockets by Evan Moor.

I love to show clips from Liberty Kids video series when I have the time.  Sadly, we have only watched 12 minutes of the clips this year because we have been so crunched for time due to changes in teaching Intervention Services.  If you do have time, I highly recommend them.  The kids love it!  Here is the link for the clip of the Boston Tea Party on youtube.

3.  We have been cranking out and reviewing skills at a swift rate in math to have the concepts as "fresh as can be" in their minds for the big math test the week of April 22nd.

Here the students are working on classifying triangles by their angle size and side lengths.  

I love the easy to read organizer for sorting triangles by Collaboration Cuties.   

It is part of their Geometry Pack which includes 75 pages of resources for Geometry aligned with the Common Core!

4.  It is no secret that I love using task cards (see my recent Tried It Tuesday post here).  

To gear up for the ELA test next week, we have been in full skills work this week.

What better way to review than with a game of SCOOT?

The students love it and always say how fast time flies!  

It really keeps them on task while reviewing important skills too.

This week I tried SCOOT with two different sets of task cards by Rachel Lynette.

I used the Cause & Effect task cards alternating with the Theme task cards.

We played a little of the game each day for three days until we had made 23 scoots:)

Since they didn't complete all the task cards for each set, they are keeping their recording sheets to use at a Daily 5 center in the near future.

This is a picture of the class right after I said, "Scoot!".

I love it because it captures how efficiently they move to a new seat and are already looking at the task card and reading before they sit down!

 They move quietly and are working so hard!

5.  Another concept we worked with quite a bit this week was voice.  I found this great lesson with practice questions on ReadWorks.org.  Also, I just happened to have the poetry book they suggested to use for their examples.  Yay! 

The students had a very difficult time determining the author's voice of this poem:

When All the World Is Full of Snow

~ N. M. Bodecker

I never know 

just where to go, 

when all the world 

is full of snow. 

I do not want 

to make a track, 

not even 

to the shed and back. 

I only want 

to watch and wait, 

while snow moths settle 

on the gate, 

and swarming frost flakes 

fill the trees 

with billions 

of albino bees. 

I only want 

myself to be 

as silent as 

a winter tree, 

to hear the swirling 

stillness grow, 

when all the world 

is full of snow.

 The author's voice is supposed to be "quiet" (or another synonym) but at least half my class wrote "sad".  They love to use "happy" and "sad" as their adjectives even though we have discussed using other adjectives.  They had to make a chart listing text details that support the author's voice and after discussion, they seemed to catch on and realize that the author really is not "sad". 

At least that is what I am telling myself...

Be sure to check out Jivey's 300 Follower Giveaway at Ideas by Jivey!  
There are about 45 prizes up for grabs!!  Yay!

Have a great weekend everyone:)