Skip to main content

The Weeks AFTER State Testing

Our state testing is a week earlier this year leaving us with four full weeks to remain academically engaged after our state testing (or as one teacher pointed out this morning - only four more Mondays!)

Some teachers teach mini units that they weren't able to get to during the year (I know one teacher is teaching a unit about Pirates...in the context of Social Studies and ELA...and another is doing a science mystery unit where students have to lift fingerprints, test ink...in the context of scientific inquiry)

I personally liked to do four weeks of projects where children can work at their own pace (as long as at the end of the month they completed the projects). I did it while I was in the classroom and enjoyed the self paced atmosphere of the classroom and the fact that everyone knew what they had to do. I basically served as a facilitator and occasional "task master." I usually played my Kidz Bop CD's while they worked and on Friday I declared it "educational TV" day where students could bring in snacks and drinks and we would watch "Plant Earth" videos, "World's Best" videos (on Streamline), or I would tape something interesting on Animal Planet and we would watch it.

All students started with the first project together (ABC book within their notebook) then they moved through the others (at their own pace). The projects can be anything you want them to be (finished people can work in pairs with some of the other projects):

- Design and put up a hallway display depicting one of the units we studied
- Using magazines create a science collage on the front of your notebook
- Create a unit review using one of the online game review sites
- Design an interactive poster depicting a scene in history
- Rewrite a popular song with educational lyrics, film it, and edit it using Movie Maker Live
- Using recycled materials create an animal and make a museum display box for it with an informational card.

It is nice to give students a choice board so that they can pick what kind of project they want to do. As the tech coach I am working with a fifth grade class who will be doing something similar after their state test. As children work through their projects they will come to me in the computer lab and create an Animoto of a person they had to do research on (sample Animoto can be found above). The main teacher will stay in the classroom and supervise the students who are not at the computer stage while I take the students who are ready to move on.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Weathering, Erosion, and Deposition Activity

I saw this activity at a science conference years ago and haven't had a chance to use it in a classroom until this week (mainly because I didn't teach weathering, erosion, and deposition). It is a great way to reinforce the definition of the weathering, erosion, and deposition in a highly kinesthetic manner. Basically you break the students up into groups of three. One group is "Weathering" another group is "Erosion" and the third group is "Deposition". Add tape to the back because you are going to stick them to the forehead of the children in each group. The "weathering" students get a sheet of paper that is their "rock" they will be breaking down. At the start of the activity the "weathering" students will start ripping tiny pieces of their "rock" and handing it to the "erosion" students. The "erosion" students will be running their tiny piece of "rock&

Picture of the Day - Activity

I attended a training class and a science coach shared an activity that he does with his students to help them differentiate between observations, inferences, and predictions. He puts a picture on the interactive white board as a warm up (he gets the pictures from a variety of sources but uses National Geographic's Picture of the Day a lot). The picture above is from the National Geographic site. He has the students make five observations. Then he makes the students make five inferences. Finally he has the students make five predictions. He does this every day and it really drives home the difference between those three key inquiry vocabulary terms. I've done this activity with both my sixth and fourth grade science classes and the students really got into it and became proficient at telling me the difference between those terms.

Rock Cycle Activity

Today I got to spend the day with a 3rd grade science teacher doing a rock cycle activity. She had asked for help a couple of weekends ago to find some engaging rock cycle activities for her students. I quickly did a Pinterest search and came up with a link to a middle school blog where they featured a fun looking rock cycle station activity. That website took me to the originating activity site - Illinois State Museum Geology Online and their Ride the Rock Cycle activity . I read through it and felt it was doable for third graders (although I was a little nervous about the cartooning). I offered my help and we put together the activity. The kids did it WONDERFULLY. It was one of those lesson you wish was observed (but of course never is :) They are on an alternating science schedule so she only had two of the four classes today but it was a good sampling of children. She had one class that had a high portion of struggling learners and the second class had a high