Have you heard of this website? A friend told me about it a few weeks ago, but I didn’t take the time to check it out. I heard about it again at a workshop I attended today, and I CAN’T WAIT TO TRY THIS WITH MY 6TH GRADERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Heads up: It requires flash player so you will have to use it on your PC.
Go Noodle is a brain break PARTY!
It’s FREE. There are A LOT of brain break choices. It’s FREE. 🙂
We will be trying this out next week ASAP!
Here we are with another chance to share wonderful books with each other thanks to Jen and Kellee over at Teach Mentor Texts and Sheila over at Book Journey who both sponsor this great meme each week for young adult/children and adult respectively!
This is what has occupied my reading time for the last month or so:
The Left Behind series. This is the 1st one in the series. I’m on Book 5 now.
If you are looking for a wonderfully written book like what Jodi Picoult can do with words- this is not it.
If you are looking for a book that will lead you closer to Jesus- this is it. 🙂
What have you been reading lately???
I have seen so many things lately about standardized testing-most are negative- and feel sorry for the states or the districts that are placing SO MUCH emphasis on the state testing.
I have to say that our state super, Dr. Tommy Bice, is leading our state (Alabama) in an AWESOME direction.
Will we have standardized tests? Yes. Will we stop instruction and practice for the test? No. Will we get stressed out about the tests? No. Will we try our best on the tests? Yes. Will we spend 2 weeks testing? No.
Do you see why I’m happy? 🙂
My 6th graders will only be taking tests for TWO days at the end of this month. 1 hour on each day.
Happy dance…………..
Now there’s always going to be something to question. Like why it might take until September 1st to get our results back. Or will we REALLY use the data for our instruction. And is my evaluation going to be tied to the student test SCORES or student GROWTH.
BUT overall I’m happy at this point.
Does that mean I’m not nervous? Well, yeah I’m nervous about how my 6th graders are going to perform on this test-the ACT Aspire. Why? Because they are aligned to the new standards, and the new standards are RIGOROUS and TOUGH. My kids aren’t used to this level of thinking. I’ve tried this year, I really have. And they are a great bunch of kids, and have made lots of progress with their thinking. But the reality is that it just sort of got dumped on them mid-way through their school career. And it’s been difficult.
Have I taught everything exactly like I was supposed to? Probably not. Have I tried? Definitely. Will I improve? Most certainly. Will they improve? Without a doubt.
It’s nice to know that even thought the test scores that come back from this test will say a lot about the kids, and they will say a lot about me, but they won’t DEFINE us forever. They will just give us a starting point, a baseline to work with.
And that’s what we all want. Right? Data to help drive what we do.
I can’t wait to get behind the steering wheel next year……………….. 🙂
i run read teach 