Today was the first day of standarized testing for our kiddos.  It was the reading portion.  I didn’t even take the test and I am exhasuted!   I am so proud of my kids- they tried so hard.  Now I have to anxiously nauseated calmly wait for the results.

Yesterday we could tell their brains were about to bubble out of their ears from all of the review.  We decided to take a break and make secret good luck cards.  I called kids into the hall and they drew a classmate’s name out of a bag.  The student’s jobs were to make good luck cards for their secret pal and we had an exchange at the end of the day.  The secret about killed some of them, but they LOVED it!   Some of the cards were SO sweet.  I have the kindest bunch of children this year.  I will definitely add this to my to do list every year.  Here are a few examples:

outside

Here is another one:

outside
inside

Aren’t they super cute?

I had mentioned in another blog post that I do a lesson on HOW to check your work.  Here is the simple, no frills anchor chart.  First, we took a mock practice test whole group as practice.  Then I modeled the incorrect and incorrect way to check your test as I thought aloud.  Students had to talk to a partner to determine which was the correct way and WHY it was correct.  They had some good talk going on!

I am off today to go ‘night-night” as my 18 month old says.  I am exhausted.