Making a Mother's Day Gift That's Also Educational

It's almost Mother's Day (May 8th!) and with that being said, it's time to plan a great classroom Mother's Day gift! My favorite gift involves some educational activities too!

Truffula Trees from The Lorax!

If you're doing gifts, why not tie in Earth Day and Mother's Day? I love to read The Lorax and then plant "Truffula Seeds" for the moms (or grandmas or dads!) You can read more about what I've done in the past, here. It's a great time to discuss our impact on the environment and what we can do to be better to our Mother Nature.

We plant some seeds in order to get more plants and flowers into the world! Some fast growing seeds include sunflowers, daisies, or zinnias. They typically sprout within 5-7 days (!!!!). I buy cheap pots, some acrylic paint, seeds, and soil to prepare. Then, I spend a day decorating and painting the pots with my students. The next day we plant our seeds in their pots using the soil and whichever seeds I've chosen!

Using my Plant Power lesson plans, students track the growth of their plant. From there we'll spend a few weeks measuring the growth, and the mean, median, and mode of the plant's height. It always helps my kiddos get more comfortable with these important math ideas and it's fun! Be sure to order your supplies (via Amazon Prime) this week in order to have flowers by Mother's Day!

Sparking Student Motivation- State Tests

I was inspired by Joanne over at Head Over Heels for Teaching with her state test motivation!  This year am I am loving the fact that I don't  have to administer a test in Spain- but I easily remember the prep, worry, and fear that goes into it.  Last year was my first year administering the test to 5th graders.  Wooh- it was a doozy.  However, me and my fab co-teacher did everything in our power to motivate our learners.  We decorated our room in a fun (walls-completely-covered) way, we bribed students to continue working the entire testing time, and we passed out pounds and pounds of mints, decorated #2 pencils, and encouraging notes. 

To administer the test in Colorado, everything in our classroom must be taken down or covered.  Taking everything down is so much more work than just covering it all.  So Ms. co-teacher and I had a little fun decorating everything with a Dr. You Know Who theme! 

Before- Posters and learning everywhere!

 Aaand, after!

 So sad and covered... but our class was so excited by the decorations when they walked in that they were okay with all of our learning being covered for a little while. 

We also stocked up on tons and tons of mints.  We passed them out during the test and pretty much let them have as many as they wanted.  Who knows if mints really help increase their short term memory- but if they believe it does, then that's all that matters! We also had their families write letters to them to pass out the first day.  Grab an editable copy of the letters <here>!  To keep them motivated we passed out letters from us half way through the testing weeks.

We also got a ton of tickets... like the type you get at a carnival!  Halfway through the test every day, we passed a ticket out to anyone who was still working.  Then, 10 minutes before the test ended, we passed out another set of tickets to anyone still actively working. At the end of each day we drew two tickets and the winners could choose from all sorts of prizes. At the end of the entire testing period {three weeks worth!} we had a party and did a huge drawing- with one grand prize of a Kindle!!  Students who finished early would spend their time looking over their tests just to get more tickets.  It worked really well and I plan on doing it again in the future. 

Motivating students to do well on a test they never see again can be hard.  I'm not normally a huge fan of external motivation- but for this instance I think it's helpful and important!  What are some other ways you motivate your learners?  I look forward to hearing some other things people do!

Stop by Head Over Heels for Teaching to link up!! 

Preparing Your Writers for the State Test

Deep breaths upper elementary teachers-  it's getting closer and closer to that time of year... state testing.  Blah.  It seems to always sneak up on you.  Different states handle testing differently, but it seems to be growing in importance everywhere

In order to help prep those lovely learners of yours, I have created a writing unit full of all sorts of Writing on Demand goodness.  4 weeks, 20 lesson plans, classroom management pages, interactive notebook pages, rubrics, "I can" statements, and Common Core checklists.  Anything and everything you could possibly need!  Plus, it's for 4th, 5th, and 6th graders!

And you don't need any of the other units to implement this one in your classroom!

Rubrics, management forms, samples, and anything you could possibly need in writing!

Be sure to stop by my store and check them out!  How do you prepare your learners for the test?  What types of activities do you!? 

Testing, parents, conferences...

Eeeeeee!!  Happy Hour at Sonic is helping me make it through this insanity of a week!

Loving every minute of being busy, but soooo looking forward to Spring Break!!  Holla!  T-minus 14 days.

Deck the Halls!

Well Blogger friends,

It's that time of year again- State Test Taking Season.  It never ceases to come too fast... Like, really?  It's already March?  Whhhhatttt?  I swear it was just August...  Really! 

But here it is.  Today was our first day of testing and we have all kinds of craziness in our schedule.  In order to keep things light and fun, I was all inspired on Pinterest and found some CUTE wall coverings (Mr. Seuss Inspired!!).  It's always hard for me to cover up our beautiful anchor charts and learning, so Mrs. Co Teacher and I spent last Tuesday covering our walls a little differently than normal.  It took nearly 3 hours, but the final result was completely worth it!

Before....

We had already taken down most of that large bulletin board

AND (drum roll puhleaseeee)...
After!!

The Lorax! (I love his moustache!)

Check out those Truffela Trees :)

It's fun walking into a room that's a little brighter and decorative instead of bland and boring so this was a GREAT alternative for us.  We're also doing some fun things to keep our learners motivated during this crazy time of the year.  More to come about that later this week!  It's time for this teaching friend to go to bed- I'm beat!!