Teaching Procedures

No matter how many times your undergrad education professors may tell you to "explicitly teach and review simple classroom procedures throughout the entire school year", every teacher ends up learning this lesson the hard way.  I know it may not make a difference, but to any of you NEW teachers out there - here is a great checklist of things you may not think of TEACHING to your students.  But even kids in the upper grades don't remember the simple "how-to"s of going to school sometimes.

It's important that you know the answers to all these questions before kids walk in your door. And EQUALLY important that you go over all of your classroom procedures frequently.  As annoying and time consuming it seems to you as the teacher, I've seen the negative outcomes of letting things fall by the wayside.  Trust me - you'll be glad you spent all of September with these come April...

 

 CLICK HERE for the Procedure Check List (credit to Katie Jones)

CLICK HERE for ANOTHER Procedure Check List to cross reference (credit to Rachel Lynette)

Buddy Test Prep

Is it just me, or did end-of-year testing come WAY too early this year? Since when is May 3rd the end of the year? And if it is ... what am I supposed to do for four more weeks? 

When I received the news - I immediately went into panic mode trying to squeeze the rest of my required math curriculum into my schedule. Through some miracle - I had FOUR DAYS left for review.

Two days were set aside for the MATHEMATICAL DECATHLON and I chose to spend the other two days with a practice test.  I used UTIPS to create a practice test with problems that would be similar to those found on the end-of-the-year Sixth Grade CRT Test.

CLICK HERE to download a copy of the 6th Grade Practice Test.

I used the BUDDY TEST PREP system that I downloaded from TpT online to make the Practice Test seem a little more interesting.  I don't know what it is, but kids seem more excited when crayons or markers are involved...


Here's how it works: (credits to Laura Candler)

1. Students take a multiple choice test (any subject will work!) on their own.  They check their answers and circle their answers in BLUE. 
2. Students meet with a partner to review their answers.  Students can use notes and references and tutor each other.  If a student wants to change his answer, he can - as long as marks his changes in PURPLE.
3. As a class and directed by the teacher, students check their own papers.  They use GREEN to mark correct answers and RED to mark incorrect answers.  
4. Students review their tests in terms of how many items they were able to answer correctly ON THEIR OWN, WITH HELP, and how many items they answered incorrectly. 

CLICK HERE to download the Buddy Test Prep documents.

This worked fabulously because my students took responsibility over their own learning without the discouragement or pressure of answering incorrectly.  Most of my students only missed three or four out of 45 questions - but most of them changed answers after meeting with a partner.