Counting Down

This week has been nuts. (Is there ever a week in Kindergarten that isn't?) For some reason the fact that Thanksgiving and Christmas are so close seems to make the days go by slower than ever and the kids seem to "forget how to be Kindergartners" as I like to say. We finished up our first trimester last Friday and report cards were finalized this week and will be sent home tomorrow. So, that means the past two weeks were spent testing, grading, and entering while still trying to teach.

Since I haven't had time to be very creative and come up with my own activities, I have been relying on some amazing Kindergarten teachers to help me out and thought I would share a few things that I have used recently.

I am all about progress monitoring! I like to test the kids on their foundational skills at least every two weeks and send home results to their parents along with resources for them to either provide extra practice or challenge their child with something new. I used these easy Kindergarten Becnhmark Assessments from Rebecca at Darlin' Little Learners this time around to help me complete report cards and have something to give parents an update on their little one's progress since our last conferences.

I also used these freebies:

I made a copy of all of the assessments to keep for my records and will be sending the whole packet home with report cards on Friday.

In other news, Thanksgiving is less than a week away! Although I am feeling quite worn out after these past few weeks, I am really looking forward to a nice, relaxing (almost) week off with my best friend down in wine country to celebrate the Holiday and, of course, my birthday.

I got this perfect little Turkey book set by Steve Metzger in my last Scholastic order and found this fabulous freebie to go along with the stories. For each book there is a different activity that reviews plot, sequencing, retelling, predicting and more. Also, the books are kind of hilarious (at least to 4-6 year olds) and my students ate up every minute of them!

We have one and a half days of school next week which sounds so nice, but will be a struggle to get through when vacation is calling my name. Wish me luck!

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Parent Teacher Conferences

This week I am running around like a crazy person with a million things to do which isn't too different from any other week, but it feels like a lot - we've got student council stuff going on almost every day, I'm leaving my class with a sub so I can attend a conference for the first time this year, progress reports go home on Friday, and we have parent teacher conferences next week. Ok, that is more than usual so I guess I am justified in feeling a little bit stressed but I can't complain because I am really looking forward to getting a little bit of extra sleep on my "day off" and I am excited about the training that I will be attending!

About those conferences...

I usually keep all of my student's assessments that I use to monitor their progress in binders for each subject meaning all reading assessments go in the reading binder, math in the math binder, writing in the writing binder, etc... This way I can easily take out one binder at a time to give new tests, check out a students progress in a specific subject area, and enter grades for that subject. However, this is not the most convenient method when it comes to preparing for parent teacher conferences. I think it would look silly if I sat down with parents and had a stack of binders on the table that I had to flip through to find their student's information. So, instead, this year I will be using this three page progress report that you can pick up at my TPT store here.

  

What's Included?

1. A Reading Progress sheet: this can be used to test students on letter recognition, recognizing and producing rhymes, counting syllables, isolating beginning sounds, and identifying the parts of a book. 
2. A Math Progress sheet: this can be used to assess number recognition, ability to count to 20, one-to-one correspondence up to 20, ability to write numerals 0-20, recognition of basic shapes, and knowledge of the days of the week and months of the year.
3. A Checklist of important Kindergarten motor skills, work habits, and behavior for success!

This little packet is what I will use to let each parent know how their child is doing in Kindergarten so far, the areas of strength that I have already observed, and the skills or subject matter with which their child may be struggling. I will also show them writing samples from the first day of school and from this week so that they can see how much their child has already improved!

I hope you can put this to use and save yourself some time and stress while preparing for conferences!

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