Week 31-33

I don't even have the words. The past 3 weeks have been so challenging.

I'll start by listing the topics we covered every day.

Week 31
M- Reflection/Refraction (toughie)
T- Fossil Fuels (another rough one)
W- Alternative Energy (not bad)
Th- Rock Cycle (not bad)
F- Soil (they hadn't been taught anything about soil in previous grades, so meh)

Week 32
M- Changes to the Earth's Surface (why can't they keep the landforms straight?)
T- Moon phases (did good with the moon phases song)
W- Day + Night (did OK, keep confusing rotation/revolution still)
Th- Water Cycle (did great)
F- Ecosystems (did great)

Week 33
M- Photosynthesis
T- Food Webs
W- Physical Adaptations
Th- Behavioral Adaptations
F- Metamorphosis

Our scores for Reading/Math came in. The news wasn't good. Because of this, the superintendent took it upon himself to declare all students failing a test were to attend remediation during study skills (we had 4 of our 6 teachers remediating every day), and had the option of staying after school.

Then, in a sudden twist of events, he declared, TWO DAYS before the re-test, that the failing students were to attend a 3 hour boot camp for each subject they failed. These kids were pulled out of class to do this on both Thursday and Friday of week 33.

Those kids who failed undoubtedly were at risk of failing my test as well. So why not take them out of Science and let them miss not only the 2 re-test days (which are the two days before my Science test) but also the two days before that.

Granted, there's not much I can do at this point anyway, but that felt like a slap in the face. We're all still reeling.

Fortunately, our principal denied the Superintendent's request to have us come in and remediate on SATURDAY (they day before Mother's day, btw). And he approved my plan to use the time AFTER the STAAR re-test on Monday and Tuesday of next week as Science boot camp. The kids are still going to rotate, but I'm handing out materials to all of the other 5th grade teachers, and I think we're all going to do the same thing for 5th, switch to a different activity for our 7th, and a third activity for our 8th. That way, they get the Science, 3 hours on 2 days, 6 different ways.

Let's all cross our fingers and hope for a miracle, folks. It's going to take one to have us all survive. That, or a 6-pack of straight jackets.

~Ms. Kat

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

Week 26- March 21-25

What a lazy, uneventful week.

Monday- The kids did a unit review using their science journals

Tuesday- We played Trashketball (I'm still surprised how some kids manage to lose their reviews in 24 hours, despite the emphasis I put on KEEPING IT SAFE)

Wednesday- They took their test on the Adaptations Unit

Thursday- We graded homework and then created a  bar graph using the inherited traits checklist from before spring break.

Thursday was an early release day (Thanks, Easter) so we had just enough time to take care of our grading and make these nifty graphs. I'm going to make a big poster board like I did last year for the 7th graders.

I can feel the STAAR test around the corner, like some monster in my closet. This year is going to be very different from last year. Not only do we have these stupid timekeeping tasks to complete (how am I supposed to actively monitor if I'm doing all that math on how long little johnny was in the restroom?) but the 5th graders also stop testing for lunch (since we eat at 10:30). We have a silent lunch, and we have to eat with our kiddos. INSANITY.

Anyhoo, I hope you all have a successful STAAR week.

~Ms. Kat

Week 26- March 7-11

Ah, Spring Break. It was glorious, if far too short. I painted the exterior of my house over the break. Well, most of it. 5 gallons into the job, and we're almost done. Stupid textured asbestos tile.

To recap what we did on the last week prior to spring break...

Monday- We took notes on biomes. I adapted an accordion foldable from this foldable bundle.
We then did a biome coloring map. The kids needed a bit of instruction (we labeled the countries together) and they found it challenging, but they did well in the end.

Tuesday- We talked about adaptations that organisms have to live on land. Just a brief overview, though we did talk about a few specific things (bird beaks or feet always seem to end up on the STAAR test).

Wednesday- We talked about adaptations that organisms have to live in water. Again, we made sure to talk about webbed feet because that's another big STAAR favorite.

Thursday- We learned about inherited traits, and then took class-wide polls to see how many of us had these traits. We'll be using this data to make a giant bar graph next week.

Friday- We learned about learned traits, and again, took class-wide polls.

Butterfly Update- All of our caterpillars went into their pupa stage before we left for spring break (except the one who was behind by a few days). I went to check on them Saturday and a few of them had hatched. I left them with their feeder and when I returned Monday, they had all hatched (again, save for Itty Bitty who is still in his pupa.) We released a few of them today during recess, and the kids were fascinated!

10 more weeks of school left. We have STAAR math and reading next week, then my benchmark, then a month of STAAR review. It's going to get crazy, folks.

Hope you enjoyed your spring break!
~Ms. Kat

Week 25- Feb 29-March 4

Wow, one more week until Spring Break. I can't believe I made it this far. My 28th birthday is right around the corner. For someone who didn't think she'd see 23, this is definitely a huge deal.

Small side note, because it's hilarious (though quite disturbing)
We had a female student bring a dildo to school today. Not only that, but she put it in her pants, sticking out of the zipper, and was bumping into people with it! Suffice to say, she's in alternative school. If anyone ever tells you Middle School is the easy years....

Monday- We did some notes on Complete metamorphosis (using the same Science Doodles set from last week) and another page of my own invention to practice the order of the stages.

Tuesday- We compared incomplete to complete (Science Doodles again) and spent a few moments to explore the life cycle of a plant

Wednesday- The kids took their Vocab quiz. I spent the end of class explaining tomorrow's assignment...


Thursday- I tasked the kids with coming up with a comic strip about metamorphosis. I gave them 4 organisms to choose from for both complete and incomplete, and put pictures of each life cycle on the board so they could draw the stages. Here's mine:

I had expected this to take 2 days, and for some it most likely would have, had I not made them finish in study skills to go out to recess = )

Friday- Since I had a day  budgeted for comic strips and we were all done. We watched Bill Nye's Locomotion, followed by part of a Magic Schoolbus on Bugs

Here's our Caterpillar progression for the week:

Hope you all have a peaceful last week before Spring Break!

~Ms. Kat