Hello friends!
Thanks for stopping by my new blog! It's not exactly the prettiest blog yet - I hope you'll bear with me as I get this thing up and running. After three years in Kindergarten out in California I decided to move back East to be near family and am now teaching 5th grade in Virginia. I am loving the switch so far, and have been meaning to start up a blog all year to share what we've been up to, but I have just been so busy! Now that we are on vacation I finally have time so I am going to do my best to tell you all about this year so far!
This is my first year in public school and my first year dealing with the pressure of quarterly standardized tests as well as an end of year SOL. At first I was frustrated and overwhelmed by the testing. I would look at questions from old tests and practice them with my students and they just didn't get it (and to be honest - neither did I). But, I finally figured out a way to tackle the testing language as well as the skills needed to pass and somehow incorporate them into my teaching in a way that is actually helping my students to become better readers rather than just better test-takers. Thus came about the name of the blog and the products that I have been making this year!
We are really lacking in good resources at my school, so when planning a new unit I start with old test questions and see how the skill or strategy has been assessed in the past. Then, I create a set of task cards that I will have them practice once they seem to understand the new skill. The questions on the task cards are always modeled after the questions on the tests. For example, they need to be able to identify the main idea...sounds simple right? Well, the test questions will give them notes that someone took while reading a passage and ask them to identify what was most likely the main idea of the passage based on the notes. So, I incorporate those kinds of questions into our daily main idea classwork and make sure to include questions like that in my task cards:
I have seen a huge difference in their scores since then and have made sure to remind them that these skills are not just for the test! They are actually helping them to understand what they are reading better!
Before Thanksgiving, I spent a week teaching them all about context clues and I was so disappointed when I saw these scores on their Interactive Achievement practice tests: (I teach two classes so the first is my morning class and the second is my afternoon class)
SO, I got down to business and created my own context clues unit. I broke it down to basics - taught one type of clue each day and gave them plenty of practice with each one before putting them all together into one passage. Then, in my reading groups I made sure to point out context clues every single time I found the opportunity. (You can see one of the posters and one page of task cards below).
After using this unit for just one week I had them take another context clues practice test through our Interactive Achievement assessment program and was thrilled with the results!!
If you want to try out my context clues unit (which includes the task cards) click on the picture below!
No comments