Tried It Tuesday - Smile, It's Testing Time!

Hi Everyone!

Today I'm linking up with Holly over at Fourth Grade Flipper to share something I've done recently.  

What did I do... other than test prep???

More test prep and then some fun stuff that went along with test prep.

Every year I sharpen the hundreds of  numerous amounts of pencils in preparation for the big test.  This year I got smart and yesterday gave each student their own special pencil.  I told them that they needed to sharpen it themselves, but that we were going to make it special by adding stickers to the tops of them.  I pulled out my basket of stickers and they acted like I was royalty or something.  It's all about the power of the sticker.

Then after more test prep... I turned on this video from School Tube... and then I sang along with it.  Once again they were in awe of my singing abilities as I belted out this version of the Dynamite song.  

Not my own picture - but you get the idea :)

At the end of the day, after lunch, in the last 15 minutes of the day... I gave each child a piece of sidewalk chalk and we headed outside.  They wrote encouragement notes all over the pathway in front of our 4th grade portables.  They said it was awesome and they were excited to "Rock the Test".  I'm excited that they are excited.  :)

I picked up the encouragement notes from Tara, they are sitting at school ready along with a big batch of Red Vines.  The red vines are for after the test.  :)

4 days of testing - here... we... go!   

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Test Prep Thursday - UGH!

Testing begins in 3 days and this week we have been hitting it pretty hard doing final review.

Here's some of what we have been doing in Math and ELA.

Those Homework Printables have been a God-send.  The one I bought is the math set.  When I picked it up during the sale I was thinking of next year when we are in full swing Common Core - to use with parents, etc... but then on Monday I had brought  the stack to school, and I started thinking of using them for centers for review.  So I laminated all 50+ pages of it on Monday, made a hole punch in the top, and put them into the 5 main standard groups using a binder ring.  This week as we are going through the different units, I am pulling those specific sheets from the rings to use with the kids that had a hard time on the benchmark tests throughout the year.  It's been pretty easy to do.  I have also been switching up the task card & partner stations and putting these in as well since there is an answer key for the kiddos to check things out.    

In addition to all of this we have been reviewing test prep strategies using Dots-n-Spots Rock the Test set.  We started out by drawing a video game controller ( ____ takes control of the test) and then we used her strategies - labeling the video game controller's buttons with the different labels.

I'm SOOO tired, ready for testing to be over... of course then it will be onto Earth Day, Open House, Gold Rush Day, Carnival, Field Trip, and End of School activities.  

How do you review?  

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