Vocabulary Reviews

I just found out that on edhelper.com, you can save word lists and they will create various word puzzles from them.  This can practice spelling, as well as definitions, etc.  I’m definitely going to use this for my Spanish student, but I wish I had figured this out earlier!  I would’ve had a wealth of Spelling practice puzzles for my Homework Helpers group in 3rd grade.  *Sigh* oh well…

Test Taking

It’s that time of year to start thinking about these things. The NYS tests are looming around us, and my kids have never used a bubble sheet before! Take 5 minutes out of your day in the beginning to teach them early on how to use a bubble sheet. Start using bubble sheets for other multiple choice tests so that they can practice and get the hang of it. Remember to give them tips: make sure to bubble all the way; make sure to erase all the way; make sure your answers match up with the answers in your booklet; make sure you didn’t skip any numbers; etc.

Taking it slow, and constant reminders, can go a long way in making sure they don’t practice bad habits!

Spelling words

Something that my co-teacher and I have found is that kids are having trouble studying the spelling words outside of class.  We give the words to them every Friday for the next week, and then on Monday we give them a pre-test.  Hopefully, they’ve studied the words over the weekend, and those that get a 100% on the pre-test don’t have to take the final test on Friday.  We thought it was incentive enough.  We thought.

When kids started getting almost 100% WRONG on the pre-tests, we knew we had to do something.  Luckily, the words we use are a part of our reading program – Reading Street.  Therefore, they usually have some phonics rule in common.  So we decided to make some time on Mondays before the pre-test to go over these phonics rules, hopefully internalizing the spelling rules for the kids and making it easier to apply these rules to their spelling test (hence getting a better grade).

This week was the first week that we implemented it, and (so far) vast improvements were shown!  We’ll see if it was really internalized when we take the final test on Friday.

Map Skills, Centers, and Organization!

I created a powerpoint for all the key vocabulary words that go along with Map Skills in third grade.  In the 15 minutes that I had to instruct it, I barely had time to explain what I wanted them to do, and pass out the papers that went with it.

In the future, either (a) give myself more time to do such things or (b) wait until it isn’t the 1st week of school and they still need CONSTANT reminders for EVERYTHING!

Centers are a must for the modern-day teacher.  Students learn to work independently AND can get things accomplished while you’re doing a million things at once.  However, in the beginning, you need to instruct them on how to properly behave in a center, what’s expected of them, and how to change centers without disrupting the space-time-continuum.  This can be taxing enough, let alone DEVELOPING the centers that they will be using.

A rule of thumb – teachers never throw away ANYTHING!  If you’re developing a center for one classroom, chances are you can modify that center to work in a different classroom down the road.  Also, ask the people around you.  If your fellow teachers are also using centers, see if they can help shoulder some of the work load of developing some new centers.  Everyone will be better off for it.

Lastly, ORGANIZATION!!  The best teachers never throw anything away, but also know exactly where to find said things when they need them.  Who knows when you’ll be getting yet another new student into the classroom.  Now aren’t you glad you didn’t throw away that extra folder the school gave you? (like you would really throw away a perfectly good folder!)