Last Six Weeks

So the count down has begun and so has the first grade "itis" is there such a thing?  I know my senior has senioritis so why can't a first grade student? Well my students started thinking that first grade is over and they are ready to move on to second grade. 

Since my curtain partner and I are departmentalizing this semester, I do get some time away an opportunity to teach my partners students.  I love teaching this way, I guess that comes from my middle school days, but I love the fact that I plan for one subject and get to teach my favorite subject in the whole wide world, math.  I have to admit though that I do find myself teaching ELA and hearing my little ones read, so when I get a chance I still call students to my table and have them read to me.  I just love to see this little ones grow up.  I have had most of these kiddos since Kindergarten.  I was able to loop up with them this year, so I have seen the improvement since day 1 on most of my students.  I am going to miss them next year, but I was glad that my first year in first grade was with a group that I knew and knew my expectations well, in fact they pretty much trained my newbies. 

Anyhoo, our school is STAAR testing this week and we are locked in our classrooms till the testing is all done (we aren't really, but it feels like that to the kids and the teacher at times).  I have taken this time to begin my end of year testing also.  Did I mention I love to see progress it just makes my heart swell with pride in these kids. 

Well with our 3rd graders testing this week, we wanted to send best wishes to our counterparts in 3rd grade, so we made them some STAAR Wars Best Wishes cards and attached a blow pop to it.  I found the clipart from Dorky Prints over at etsy.com to go with our STAAR Wars theme.  Also since this is the last week and like I mentioned before we are having a little trouble keeping kids to stay with me the last six weeks my curtain partner and I have started a little table wars game with our classes.  The winner earns extra recess on Friday while the other students sit and work on AR and earning points towards our end of year Book Bonanza Celebration (more on that later).  I have included the cute boxes I made for each table for you today. 

 Sorry about the side ways picture, I thought I straightened it out...

Oh yes and a link to my Table Wars cards.

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Table-Wars

If you grab a copy of my Table War cards, please leave a comment.  Let me know what you are doing to keep you kids focused this last six weeks. 

Looking to Next Year

Today is the last day of my intersession.  I work at a year around school and we do 6 weeks on 1 week off.  With the last 6 weeks quickly approaching us, I find myself, like I do every year, looking forward to the next year and thinking of items that I need to get started this summer for next year. Now because I do work at a year around school, our summer is built into the school year so this means that our summers are a w-h-o-l-e 6 weeks long.  Then if that was not short enough, I decided this summer to begin classes for my principal certification.  So the hubby is asking if I plan on leaving teaching to become an adminstrator.  NOT!  I just think that if I ever wanted to, I was 9 months closer to it than if I did not start the program.  Does that make sense?  Of course it does...

With all this going on my 2nd oldest graduates from high school and moves 5 hours away this summer {sigh}.  My oldest one (who graduated last year) stayed close to home {so close that he didn't leave} he stayed locally, so even though he is my second oldest and many think oh you have already gone through this well I haven't...I am trying to be a big girl and keep the tears back and get him everything he needs to have before he moves away, but it's getting closer guys.  YIKES!!! I AM NOT READY!!!  It feels like I was just walking him to Pre-K... Ok let's get off this topic and back to DENIAL. 

So tell me what's on your mind right now? End of year testing? Next year's class? Summer vacation?

QR Codes & Research

It's been a while, but I am really excited about a research paper my enrichment class worked on this past 6 weeks.  It was an interesting process, I normally work with the struggling students, which I love to work with, so this semester when I was given the higher level enrichment group, I was really excited to try a research paper with my firsties.  Oh man was this interesting!!  We recently took a fieldtrip to the aquarium so I thought what  great way to bring in the fieldtrip, some research and writing into the class. 

So this is how it went.  I had 4 groups.  In each group I had 3-4 kids, 2 iPads, and 1 research packet.  For my research packet, I did a little research myself.  I looked through the web and found some other research papers and read through the questions and picked and modified some questions that I thought would work for this project.  Next, I looked for websites that I wanted the kids to use during their research.  I read through each website and made sure that 1. It had language that they understood.  2. It did not have material I did not want them to use.  3. It contained answers to one or more of the questions on the research paper.  If they followed all of the above, I then added the websites to the home screen and the docked them.  Students were only allowed to use the pages and apps that were on the iPad dock; however, I still had problems, students were finding this too overwhelming.  They were not sure which website answered which questions, etc.  I normally sat down with one group per day, but found the other groups getting very little done when I did not sit down with them.  I decided to change it up a bit, but still did not have any success, so I began to think how can I help my firsties and make it to where I was available to all the groups at once? Then it came to me, QR codes.  I love them and I have been wanting to use them more in the classroom.  So I went in did a little more research and found the answers to the questions and then created a QR code for each question(s) that had the answer in that website.  Students then scanned the QR code, found their answer and then wrote them down.

This worked and the students were so excited in scanning the QR codes to find the answers.  You can see samples of two of the sheets in the photos above.  This was so much more efficient for my firsties.  They really enjoyed using the QR code scanners and it did not take very long to train them on how to use the QR codes and the scanners. 

I used QR Stuff (www.qrstuff.com) to create the codes.  I love this website, it is very easy to use and you can create different color QR codes, which made it easy for me when I saved the QR codes after creating them.  I color coded the QR codes so I knew which ones belonged to which topic.  I saved the QR code pictures using the topic of the question that could be answered using that code.  On our iPads, I use the QR Reader for iPad.  I love this one, it is VERY easy to use. 

Like I mentioned before I LOVE QR codes.  I am trying to use them on my books on CD (a Pinterest find).  I want to upload the CDs to my iTunes accounts and create a QR code to place on the book and then scan it to get to the audio portion of the book.  I love this idea for my struggling readers.  This is for sure a summer project.  Leave me a comment on how you use QR codes in your classroom.