NWEA MAP RIT Goal Setting Sheets

Does your school/district use MAP assessments to help monitor progress? Mine just recently went to this system. I love the immediate feedback that it gives. 

My students focus a lot on setting goals. I recently created these goal setting sheets as a simple way for my students to be tracking and setting goals in regards to taking their MAP assessments. 

People set goals in various ways. Some are more details than others. For my students' purposes, I created some simple sheets. These goal setting sheets are a great way for students to set personal goals when taking the MAP assessment by NWEA. I put these on TpT in case others could use them too! Teachers can print these out - 1 set per student. Students could either keep them in a binder or folder, or the teacher can shrink them down a little bit and have students cut/glue into a notebook (like a journal or goal setting notebook). Students will be (hopefully) motivated and kept accountable for their work by graphing, setting goals or action plans, and trying to track their progress. These goal setting sheets include both math and ELA.

Eventually, I'd love to break it down by area and have students track that too. Then students will know more specifically what areas they can celebrate and what areas they may need extra practice in. 

If you are interested in checking out my version, go to my TpT store, or feel free to use this idea in your own classroom. :-) Click below HERE or click the picture below to access the product. 

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"Pumpkin Smash" - a free 2nd grade sight word game

Holy moly. How is it already parent-teacher conference time??? This school year has flown by on the wings of crazy. Anyway, in honor of conferences and all that goes with this time of year (being too busy, having a million things on your mind, etc...), I have a freebie sight word game for you. This one is called "Pumpkin Smash", and my kiddos got a kick out of it.

To prepare this game, copy it on cardstock and/or laminate and cut apart. Each group will get a stack of cards.

Students will shuffle the cards and lay them out, facedown, on the table or ground in front of them. Students will then take turns to play. When it is a student’s turn, he/she will choose a card, and he/she will read the word aloud. That student will then continue to draw cards, reading each word, until he/she gets a pumpkin card. If a student picks a pumpkin card, he/she says, “PUMPKIN SMASH!” (some students seem to think this is hilarious - how little it takes to entertain a 7 year old...), and it is the end of his/her turn, and the next player will go. Play continues until all of the cards have been chosen. The person with the most cards is the winner! They seem to think it's pretty funny when a student will draw a pumpkin card right away. Dear me...

Hope your students enjoy this game as much as mine do. J This is a great game to use for word work during Daily 5 or guided reading, or students could practice it at home or play it together any other time.

Enjoy! To download, click HERE, or click the picture below.

 



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Sunday Freebies - Guided Reading Forms for Running Records

I just love Sundays... They are my "lazy" days. I love laying around with the hubby, watching football, napping/dozing off throughout the day, and just enjoying being home. :-)

 

Here are a couple freebies for you. One of my colleagues asked for a copy of one of these documents the other day, so I figured it may make a good freebie.

 

The first document is a running record form. How many of you get tired of counting words ahead of time and writing them out? I certainly did. It was NOT my favorite thing. So, I came up with this super simple, but very handy and effective, form. To use this form, all you have to do is keep recording while the student is reading, until you get to the bottom! There are 100 boxes, so once you reach the bottom, you're good to go. Hope this works for you as well as it has for me! To download, just click HERE or click the picture below.

 

The other freebie I have for you today is a data sheet I use to record running record scores for my students. I print a page for each student, and I keep it in my guided reading binder. Each time I give that student a running record, I record the info (including any observations or comments) on the form. This is then handy to have, because I can see a comparison of their scores on one page. I can also easily see/use this information when discussing students at PLC (professional learning communities) or when trying to figure out if a student needs an MTSS (RTI in other states) intervention. Hope you can use this form also! To download this form, click HERE, or click the picture below.

 

Wishing you all a wonderful week ahead. If you haven't already, stop by my new Facebook page and click "like". www.facebook.com/confessionsofaprimaryteacher

 

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Sight Word Toss/Read/Write

We're definitely in the full swing of things at school. :-) I hope you've all had a great start to the school year so far!

 

To play this game, students will take turns dropping or tossing a chip, cotton ball, counter, bean, or pom-pom onto the board. The student will read the word he/she landed on, and he/she will write the word on the recording sheet. This particular download includes 16 various 2nd grade sight words.

 

To download a copy, click HERE or click on any of the pictures below:

 



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Informal Daily Writing Checklist

I've finally created a daily writing checklist to use during writer's conference or for informal observation as I walk around during writing time. This would also be handy for Daily 5, Work on Writing. This will help me collect data that I can then use for both grade cards and for other student data purposes.

I plan to put this sheet on a clipboard, write the date at the top, come up with how I want my coding system to be (letter grade, 3/2/1, +/-, etc), and quickly and easily mark what I observe for each student on their daily writing/work. The categories covered/included are capitalization, punctuation, and complete sentences. I won't use this every single day, but maybe a couple times a week. This then keeps all of my informal observation data in one place, or I can easily transfer it to my gradebook.

I am going to include a free copy of it in case you'd like to use it also in your classroom!

Enjoy, and I hope you can use this! I've included both a student numbered version (if you use student numbers in your classroom for confidentiality purposes) and a blank one for you to write in the students' names.

 

To download, either click HERE, or click on the picture below.

 



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Back to School/Get to Know You Glyph

Well, I found out today that, apparently, when I speak in Spanish, I sound like Dora the Explorer.... :-/ My kids (I have quite a few Hispanic/Latino students) told me today that my Spanish sounds like Dora, but my English sounds normal. Haha! I was like, wow, I sound like a 7 year old, or however old she is! :-) Oh dear me...

Anyway, we all know that teachers do much more than teach academics. We teachers play many roles in the classroom, and one of those roles is to teach and reinforce life skills and social skills. I teach at a Title I school, and many of my sweet darlings need some practice on social skills at school. My teammates and I are spending the first couple weeks teaching basic social skills, based on the format described in the Boys Town social skill curriculum. I've made posters to go with each skill, and I have the posters hung up in my room to refer to all year long. Two of the very first skills we taught, were listening and following directions. After we taught, very specifically, the steps for how to listen and follow instructions, the students then got to practice those skills. For listening, the students played a Get to Know You Fan n' Pick game, and for following instructions, we thought it would be fun to have the students make a glyph. The students had to listen to the directions, and they had to follow the correct instructions for each part/detail of the glyph.

If you wanted to use these in your classroom, you could say the categories and directions out loud, or you could put the directions on the SmartBoard if you wanted.The learning statement goes out in the hallway with the glyphs! :-)

These glyphs turned out super cute, and the kids had a great time while practicing some social skills that they will need in just about every situation in school, home, and life! :-)

To get a free copy of the directions and the hallway learning statement, click HERE, or click on the picture below to download.


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Bucket Filler Slips

We are a Bucket Filling classroom! If you haven't read "Have You Filled a Bucket Today?" by Carol McCloud, you must! You can find the book at most bookstores, including the one below.

There are so many awesome Bucket Filling resources on the web and with fellow educators right now, and it is really neat to see how different people implement it in different ways. The key to bucket filling is that we all have a secret, invisible bucket (I teach that it is in our hearts). When you do kind things, you are filling people's buckets and your own. When you do things that are not kind, you are dipping into other people's buckets. We all want to be bucket fillers, not bucket dippers. I have seen some super cool classrooms that have actual buckets for each child. In our class (keeping things a little more simplified), we have a single bucket - the compliment jar (see my earlier post from last year). Students can write thank you notes to others for filling their bucket, or they can fill someone else's bucket by writing compliments. Then, at our class meeting or during sponge times, I will read a few of the slips aloud and then give it to the corresponding student to keep. We always talk about who maybe needs their bucket filled at our class meetings, and that way no one is left out. My students love filling our compliment jar, and really enjoy giving and receiving their slips. They are allowed to write during writer's workshop or during the writing portion of Daily 5. The bucket filler concept is one that I feel students can really understand and visualize. Here are some free slips for you to use in your classroom if you like! :-) Just click the link HERE or click on the picture below to download.

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Freebie: Class Information Sheet and Parent Communication Log

We all know that teaching is not just about the time spent in the classroom. :-) There are a lot of other components to teaching, and one of those is components includes making frequent contact with parents (including those "good" phone calls and notes). Here are two documents to help you with keeping the information together and recording it.

The first document is the Class Information Sheet. This is a very simple document that keeps your students' information all together in one place. While this seems like a super minimal document, it has proven quite handy for me throughout the year! I always fill it out at the beginning of the school year and post a copy by my classroom phone and put another copy in my plan binder behind the student information section. Once you've compiled it, it also makes a great resource for fieldtrips! To download it for free, go to this link HERE, or click on the picture below.

The next document is the Parent Communication Log. This document is so handy for tracking all those times that you make contact with a student's parent(s). Just keep a copy in the front of each of your student's file folders in your drawer, and fill it out each time you make contact. This information can come in extremely handy for various situations, including filling out referral paperwork. If you need more copies, just make extra copies of the 2nd page, and staple or paperclip them to the back of the 1st page. Included is an area for student and parent contact information. That way, you are only having to reference 1 document when you call, e-mail, write a note, or have a conference with a child's parent(s). Hopefully you can use this! :-) To download the Parent Communication Log, go HERE, or click on either of the pictures below to download.



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Pick-a-Partner Cards for Random Student Pairing

I created some cards as a resource for letting student pick partners in class. These cards can be used much the same way as you would use cards in the Kagan cooperative learning structure, Mix-n-Match. There are 50 cards. Just laminate and cut apart. You can store them on a ring or keep them rubber banded in a safe spot for easy access. I am having a sale on these cards on TpT - you can get them for $1 until Wednesday 7/25/12 at 11:59pm. See the last paragraph of this post for some other ideas on how you could use this same idea with general classroom objects you might already have in your classroom! If you'd like to see these cards, click HERE to go to my TpT store and purchase them. You can also click the preview picture(s) below.

You could just pass these cards out to the students and have them find their match. However, I have students use these like they would in the Kagan cooperative learning structure “Mix-and-Match”. This allows students to not only choose a partner randomly, but it also allows them to get up and move around (very important in the primary classroom)! To use, pass one card to each student (if there is an uneven number, place the extra card in the “unmatched area”). Have the students spread out in the room. Then, play some music or say a chant or something as a class. While the music is playing, have students walk around and trade cards (I always go over my expectations when it comes to this – students are to be constantly moving and constantly trading). When the music stops, students freeze. When you say, “Go!”, the students will try to find their match. When students find their match, you can either have them sit knee-to-knee, hand up/pair up, or stand back to back. They can then go do whatever it is you want them to do as a pair! If you have an odd number of students, and a player’s match is in the “unmatched area”, you can then just have him/her join a group or be your helper/checker.

I created these cards just to have something fun for the kiddos, but you certainly do not have to have set cards. In the past, I've used a regular deck of playing cards (partners have to find a number or symbol matching their number or symbol), colored puff ball (partners find their same color), pattern blocks, regular number cards (like we use in math), unifix cubes, or even sight word cards (you just need a double set and students match the sight word). You could also use rhyming word cards, vowel cards, addition/subtraction flash cards (same sums or differences), etc... This activity can be fun, educational, or both, and it allows students to interact in a positive manner that makes finding a partner an easy thing.  I hope your kiddos have as much fun with this as mine do! :-)

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Back to School Checklist Pack

Here is a helpful document I created for TpT. This Back to School Checklist Pack has everything you will need to help you get the year started off with a bang. The beginning of the school year can be such a fun, but busy, time, and these 3 checklists will keep you on track. Checklists included are:

- Back to School Checklist: Planning for the Beginning of the Year
- Beginning of Year Procedures Checklist: Ideas for Procedures to Plan for
- First Days of School Checklist: Things to Remember for the First Few Days

It's normally priced at $1.99, but I'm running a 1 day sale on it that will go until 11:59pm Saturday, 7/14/12. Come get it now for $1.00!!!

Let me know if you have any questions. To view and download, click HERE to go to my TpT store. You can also click the pictures below.

Cover Page

Preview of Procedures Checklist Page 1

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The Yellow Pages - Activity for the Beginning of the School Year to Identify Student Experts in the Primary Classroom

Have you ever heard the phrase, "Ask 3 Before Me"? Well, I for one teach little kids... Even though I loop with my students, it's always a shocker to go from end of the year 2nd graders down to beginning of the year 1st graders. I always think to myself, "They're such babies!!!" The 1 thing that really gets me, EVERY YEAR, is the shoe tying.... Boy howdy, that just really wears me down. So, I finally came up with a system for identifying students who are GREAT at shoe tying to relieve me of my duties. :-)

Here is a great way to organize and implement that philosophy. This document is called, "The Yellow Pages", and it is a free printable to help you organize the various student experts in your classroom (including Shoe Tying, Super Spellers, Roaring Readers, Math Minds, Good Listeners, Artists and Craftsmen, and Caring Friends).


After having a short class meeting or minilesson on how (and when) to ask other students for help, you would display these pages (first print the pages on yellow card stock and laminate) up front for the students to see. Start by discussing what a phone book is and how to use it. Show students pictures of phone books on the screen, or bring real phone books for students to see.


Talk about how each student in the class is an "expert" helper, and discuss what that word "expert" means. Talk about how every child is different, and that not all students will be an expert in the same area. Also discuss that even though you may think you are an expert in lots of areas, you could choose 1 or 2 areas to really excel.


Then, come up with a system for having students sign up on 1 or 2 expert pages. Read through the different expert areas first, and then discuss what each expert does. Have students decide where they would excel. You could even have them think-pair-share before deciding. You could also use your professional judgement as far as guiding students on what they might be experts in..... ;-) I have my students take an overhead or dry-erase marker and just come up a few at a time to sign their names. When they're done, they sit right back down. When everyone has signed up on the sheets, go over them together as a class so students can see who they can go to in each event.


This is not only a great activity to do for having students ask each other for help, but this activity lends itself so well to teambuilding at the beginning of the year. Students will get to know each other in a positive way, and it's really cute to see them encouraging each other, cheering for each other, and eventually, throughout the year, going to each other for help after "looking each other up" in the "phonebook." You could easily incorporate and introduce fun cheers after going over each expert area. In addition, this is a great activity for students to practice recognizing and reading each others' names.


After students have signed up, bind the pages together (you can put them together however you like, but if you are older, you could put them in abc order like the phonebook), and then post The Yellow Pages book somewhere in the room that is accessible to the students (hanging on a hook, posted on the white board, or perhaps bound and placed in the class library in the student-made book section). Have the students then refer to it whenever they need help with something in the classroom! Enjoy, and please let me know if you have any questions! Sorry I don't have any pictures of the students signing up, but here are some pictures below of the document (I don't know what happened to the Super Speller page, but when you download the document it looks fine). To download free from my TPT store, click HERE, or click on any of the pictures below.

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Beginning of Year - Classroom Procedures Tic-Tac-Toe

As promised, I'm back to blogging (or at least starting up again)! I made a free printable for all my loyal fans who were checking on my page during my absence. :-) Here is an activity for the beginning of the school year, after you've taught some of your basic classroom procedures. After downloading this game, copy on cardstock or paper and have students play in partners. To play, students will use red/yellow chips (or something comparable). Students will take turns reading a box, answering the question, and placing a chip on the box. The partner should then agree or disagree with the student, and the pair can discuss the procedure in question together. The first person to get 3 in a row first is the winner! Please let me know if you have any questions at all. To download, please go to my TPT store HERE and download for free (just click the highlighted link or click the picture below)!

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Summer Lovin' Find Someone Who

Anyone else feeling the end of year crunch? :-) It will be a short post today. Here is a fun end of year activity for your whole class to enjoy. Find Someone Who (FSW) is an easy, engaging, cooperative learning activity for the whole class, and the structure can be used for a variety of subject areas and concepts.

To use this activity, download/print the sheet out and give each student a copy. Students then walk around the classroom and ask their classmates if they will be doing one of the summer activities that are listed in the boxes. If so, the classmate signs his/her name/initials in the box. Students continue until all of the boxes on their page are filled!

Enjoy this team builder/end of year activity. Please let me know if you have any questions. :-) Click the picture below to download, or, you can go to my TPT store HERE to download for free.

 

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Dice Match Game with 10-Frames

Happy Thursday! I'm ready for the week to be over. :-) We are in the middle of our graphing unit at school, and this morning students got to graph jelly beans at 9:00am. Needless to say, the sugar got to my kiddos, and they were bouncing off the walls. Holy cow! Anyway, here is a new 10-frame activity for you. The Dice Match Game with 10-Frames is a game I created to help students learn to recognize numbers on a 10-Frame. To play, pairs divide 10-frame cards evenly between themselves. Students will take turns rolling two dice and adding them together. Whoever has the 10-frame card that matches the dice roll sum will record the dot and 10-frame patterns on his/her recording sheet. The first person to fill his/her recording sheet is the winner! If a student rolls an 11 or 12, he/she just rolls again. To find other 10-frame games/activities, and to get this game with the 10-frame cards, please visit HERE for a full version of the 10-Frame Math Pack. In the meantime, enjoy this free download of the recording sheet! To download the recording sheet, you can either click one of the pictures below, or you can click to go to my TpT store.

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Telling Time to the Hour and Half Hour - Ladybug Partner Bingo

My students have been practicing and learning all about how to tell time to the hour and half hour. We started our unit with a little anchor chart.

We've spent time in both math and instructional focus, honing our awesome time telling skills! The students have worked so hard, and they are really getting good at this skill, even if only so they can practice telling time so they know when recess and specials are. :-) I created a game, Ladybug Partner Bingo, to help the kiddos continue to practice telling time to the hour and half hour. To play, each student gets a game board and some game markers. Cards should be shuffled and divided between the partners. Students take turns drawing a card and reading the time. If the student has the corresponding digital time on his/her board, he/she puts a game marker on the ladybug spot. If not, the card gets put in a separate pile. When all the cards have been gone through, students will take the separate pile of cards and reshuffle them to continue play. Students will keep going trying to fill their ladybug spots. If a student gets the card that says FREE SPOT, he/she may choose to place a game marker on any spot on his/her ladybug. The student who fills his/her ladybug first is the winner! You may want to laminate the game cards and boards first (at least if you're anything like I am and don't like things getting "torn up" ha). Enjoy if you can use it! You can download by clicking any of the pictures below, or you can go to my TpT store to download - HERE.

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2 Dice Adding and Graphing Game

We just started our graphig unit with EnVision this week, and I created a game that students can use for practice (I threw in some addition practice as well, because goodness knows they can always improve). This does print on big 11 x 17 paper. To play, each student gets a gameboard and recording sheet. Students take turns rolling 2 dice. They will then record the addition sentence for the dice rolled below the correct sum on the graph below (2 + 2 under the 4, etc). Students continue until one of their columns is full. Whoever can reach the finish line, or the bottom of one of the columns first, is the winner! Students then work on graphing their results and answering questions about their graph. Enjoy if you can use this activity! Just click on either picture below, or you can click HERE to download from TpT. Happy Hump Day! I'm feeling a little bit of spring fever with this beautiful weather we're having, and it took everything in me today to not stare longingly out the window all afternoon. :-)

 

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1st Grade Story Elements

We are working on story elements for instructional focus this week. For the tutorial group (our sweethearts who just need an extra boost and support), we started out by making and going over our anchor chart (you will notice we aren't focusing on plot or story events just yet for this week - we hit that more in sequencing or during shared reading/guided reading).

 Next, we split up into 2 small groups, and we went over this fairy tale sorting activity as a small group (just the characters, problem, and solution for this activity). We took some popular fairy tales the kids knew, and I read the cards aloud and had the students help me sort them into the correct column. This was a nice introductory activity where we could kind of work all together. If you'd like a copy of this activity, just either picture, and it will direct you to where you can download it, or you can click HERE. To prepare, all you have to do is download, copy, paste the boards on large construction paper, laminate, and cut out the cards. For older kids I would let them do this sorting activity in pairs, trios, or small groups, but for the younger kids or kids who need extra help, you can just do it all together.

 

Look for more story element activities later this week! :-)

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Spin-a-Sight-Word Game

Here is a new sight word game I've created for partners to use. I'll be putting this in my sight word center, so if you can use it, enjoy! To play this game, each pair of students gets a game board. Each student chooses 1 side of the game board (left or right) and gets 6 counters or game markers. Students take
turns spinning the spinner (on top of the recording sheets). If they spin one of the shapes,
they must then read a sight word on their side of the game board that is on a
corresponding shape. They can then cover that word/shape with one of their game
markers. If a student spins the “You Pick” option, he/she may choose any of his/her
words to read and mark. If all of the shapes are already marked when a student spins
it, he/she just loses his/her turn. Students may also fill out their recording sheets by
writing the name of the shape they spun and the sight word they read (any chance to combine math and ELA is always a plus)! :-) 

Instructions are also included, and you can either click either one of the pictures below to download, or you can download from my TpT store for free HERE

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Fluency Mini-Cards for Guided Reading (or anytime)

Fluency is so important for readers to learn and practice. Fluency is one of the many keys to comprehension. A student should be able to read with meaning, and being fluent aids that. I created these mini-cards to use during guided reading, but of course they could be used anytime. They are just little reminders of what it means to read fluently. We've discussed with our students many times, but these will maybe just be that extra support they need to remember what to focus on. Reading for fluency gives our students some purpose to rereads, and while there are obviously other reasons to reread a story, students want to know that what they are doing is relevant and purposeful. Click the picture to download or go to my TpT store to download for free! :-) Enjoy! To use, just copy on card stock, laminate, and cut apart!

 or download from TpT HERE

 

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