Week 29- April 11-15

Week one of STAAR review. Oh, how I've been dreading this. Fortunately for us all, it went well. A lot better than anticipated.

I cannot share pictures of my journal, as I'm using a product I paid for on TPT.  Here is the bundle I purchased. I'm running through them mostly in order.

Here is how my class is now structured.

1. Warmup- I'm using the Science Penguin's warmup bundle. I'm picking through them to find ones that are directly related to what we're covering in class. The topic every day comes from the previous day's topic.

2. Notes/Review- We go through the notes page in the Review bundle above. We box in, underline, circle, and star Key Words. The kids then do the accompanying activity that comes with each notes page. We go over it.

3. The kids each have a packet at their desk with 10 questions. I used the TEKS resource system to make these. If someone knows how to share, please let me know. I just went through the 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade TEKS and found questions that went with each day's topic.

Every desk has a slip sleeve (sheet protector). They place their packet in the slip sleeve and use a dry erase marker to work the HAPPIER method. I put a basket on each desk to hold their glue, dry erase marker, wipe cloths (that I sewed myself, fleece), and red pens. I made sure to put wacky 70's duck tape around my pens and markers so no one makes off with them.

The kids spend the rest of the class doing the HAPPIER method on these questions. I leave about 7 minutes at the end of class to go through them and then pack up. The kids also have a bubble answer sheet (with 10 questions for each day of the week) that stays at their desk as well. We needed to practice bubbling, as that is one major issue from the practice test.

So far, I have already seen a dramatic improvement! The kids are getting more right than wrong, and I have a good chunk of them that either get 9 or 10 right every day! This makes me hopeful that we're all improving.

Here are the topics we covered this week:
Monday- Physical Properties of Matter (they did OK)
Tuesday- Mixtures and Solutions (they struggle with this)
Wednesday- Properties of Water (great job)
Thursday- Energy (they did amazing)
Friday- Circuits (good job)

I also changed up their homework. I've been pulling two half-sheet warmups from the Region 4 warmup book, and combining them for each day's homework. The kids are taking their sweet time getting used to them. They have multiple questions per page and usually an "Explain" component. I hope they'll do better this week.

3 more weeks until STAAR!

~Ms. Kat

Week 28- April 4-8

It's not often I miss teaching 7th graders. There were a few times this week when that happened.

Monday and Tuesday- I gave my kids the 2015 Released test as a benchmark. Very few didn't finish within these 2 days and had to continue working during study skills.

Wednesday and Thursday- We went over the test. Every question. Not in as much excruciating detail as I would have liked, but as much as I could with the 2 days I had budgeted.

When all was said and done, I had a 32% pass rate (by the new standard progression passing % put into place this year). This percentage doesn't take into account the 13 (yes, 13!) special ed kids who, despite my greatest hopes, are not likely to pass.

It's alarming, yes. But it's something to go on. When calculated using last year's passing standard, 55% passed. Yes, that's 23% of my students who are within 3 questions of passing. Crazy.

Friday- Fresh off of my feelings of inadequacy and absolute defeat, I pulled out my best acronym creating game. I wanted the kids to have a useful, easy to remember strategy to have them approach these questions like a scientist. Here's what I came up with.

H- Highlight the question (and underline/circle/star key words)
A- read your Answer choices (all of them!, even if they don't yet make sense)
P- read the Paragraph (STAAR is fond of their paragraphs)
P- Paraphrase the question
I- Illustrate (or read over the pictures they give you)
E- Eliminate bad answer choices (opinion words, always, all , never, none)
R- Re-Read the question (and plug your answer back in to verify, kind of like in math)

I spent Friday doing practice problems with this method, and they LOVED IT. They felt so much better having a game plan, and I could see improvement already. I'm now excited to move forward and see them (hopefully) flourish.

Fingers crossed for a smooth 4-week review.

~Ms. Kat

Week 27- March 28-April 1

What a week. The first round of 5th grade tests left us battered and broken, but we survived.

Monday- I brought the kids to the computer lab (for the first time this year). They had to select and research an animal of their choosing. I linked them to Animal Diversity Web, which allowed them to browse a plethora of organisms.

They had a research sheet that they had to fill out.

Animal Name_________________________
Environment___________________________

3 Inherited Traits (often found under Description or Physical Description)
3 Learned Traits or Behaviors
3 Adaptations (could be physical or behavioral)

They had to locate and print 2 pictures as well. One to go on their research sheet, and one for their poster (2 independent grades)

The goal of the project is to create a poster using this information.

Tuesday + Wednesday STAAR
We were very lucky to be considered Elementary even though we're on the junior high campus. The moment all 5th graders were finished testing (sometime after noon on each day) we took the kids outside and let them have recess/free time for the rest of the day.

Thursday- We continued researching in the lab. This was plenty of time for 99% of my students to finish. I had a few who just sat there wasting time, so they forfeited those two grades.

Friday- We spent the day in the classroom working on posters. Two of my classes did so poorly behavior-wise in the lab that they did bookwork instead (we never use the books except in the event of craziness that warrants a day of equally silent time).

8 weeks of school left.
We're going to need every inch of sanity we can get.

~Ms. Kat