Last Bit of Writing Review

When your room looks like this...

 And your bulletin board looks like this...

AND your table is covered in pencils and notes to your students...

You KNOW it is testing time! 

I am done stressing, done cramming, and done worrying. Tomorrow is the day (one of two anyway) when my students get to show their stuff in writing. Do I wish I had more time? Always. Do I wish there was less testing? Absolutely. Will I do things differently next year? You bet. In the end though, all of this is out of my control for the time being. Instead, I tried to make today as interactive and fun as possible. 

Here is what we did...

We started off this morning with a pep rally where the teachers did a little performance and fortunately unfortunately there were no pictures taken. Sad, I know. I am weeping on my couch right now at the missed opportunity. 

From there we moved back to our classroom to practice some writing. What were you expecting?

Our first activity was turning a telling sentence into a showing paragraph. Each group was given a telling sentence, markers, and a piece of chart paper. The directions were to draw the scene at the top of the paper and turn their sentence into a showing paragraph at the bottom.  

Working hard on their scene. 

Look at that teamwork!

They turned, "My mom was nervous." into "My mom's lip shook and she wrung her hands as she looked out the kitchen window. Soon she saw me take my bike over the ramp and barely land."

Working on the sentence, "She was excited."

Next, we headed outside for a Writing Egg Hunt from The Science Penguin. This easy prep activity always gets my students excited! Yes, yes, I know it is a bit early for an egg hunt, but I will get them to write any way I can. 

Each of the twelve eggs has a short writing task inside for the student to complete on their recording sheet. 

Students find an egg, open the egg, complete the task inside, and return the task to the egg. Of course the weather had to make things difficult by blowing about 25 mph. Let's just say we got our exercise chasing down the tasks and the eggs. 

Opening up the task. 

Completing the task. 

When we were thoroughly wind blow we headed back inside to build up our self esteem with some compliment capes. Each student had a piece of paper taped to their back. Then we all walked around and wrote compliments on each other's papers. Finally, we read our compliments and hung up our papers. This way, if a student is having a tough moment during the test over the next couple of days they can look up at all their compliments and get a little boost. 

Well, Texas teachers and students. The inevitable is here, and just like my students, I know you are ready! 

See you on the other side!