Tornadoes, Toddler, Testing, and so much more!

Okay so last week was a ridiculous blur! Starting the work week with conferences, yep Monday and Tuesday. Whoever thought that was such a great idea, seriously!?!? The rest of the week seemed to take FOREVER! To add to the craziness...let's throw in Dr. Seuss week, Benchmark testing (county mandated...again), and add tornado weather on the top. My daughter was not too thrilled with the weather so the sleeping or lets say the lack there of made for an exhausted weekend. Saturday she was up at 3AM and didn't nap until 1PM. I on the other hand was a walking zombie and absolutely worthless.

Now, I play catch up on a few things I wanted to share with you. We are in FULL March Madness mode in my room. Using the massive amounts of data we have and this AMAZING blog with tons of links (teasing you now, because I am wanting to add pictures and "close-ups" of my system)...we have begun the March to the CRCT (oooh I should so use that saying some how!).

The first thing I started in LA was reviewing our Greek and Latin. I have already introduced, taught, and quizzed them on most of our required prefixes, suffixes, and "root" words. So I am trying to make the review a little more interesting. BRING ON THE ORGANIZERS.

The first was for a prefix...the kids thought this was pretty neat.

 

As you can see we folded the paper "hot dog" (length wise), then folded it "hamburger" (width wise) twice. So if you opened the entire page you would have 8 boxes. We kept it folded in half length wise cutting one layer in order to make four flaps. the first flap we kept "normal" added our prefix and under the flap wrote the meaning. The other three flaps we folded up to make a crease marking the half way point of each flap. We then cut the one layer of the flap in half. Each student chose three words using that prefix. We wrote the words on the top flap (large), then cut the word at the break of the prefix and root word. Under the prefix they wrote the definition, then wrote the definition of the root/base word (I know I know those two are not interchangeable but I did it). Underneath the word they illustrated the word and wrote a sentence using the word (they were allowed to change the tense of the word. I am thinking you can only use this organizer for prefixes and suffixes. It seems complicated, but the kids really got it...connected with it, and understood it all better. 

Now that I have baffled your mind...here is the simple one:

Pretty simple...in the middle they drew a picture. I did have a student example, but it ended up weathered. :)

Next, a little find that I fell in LOVE with and just had to have them. Saw them in the Kirkland magazine and picked them up immediately (just so happen to pass one on the way home from work). They were even cuter in person!!

I will hopefully blog a little more this week and have a few links and ideas to break up that March Madness you have going on in your classroom!

~Jessica

Oh THANKS so much for the award, hopefully I'll get on that one soon as well.