Yep! It's right around the corner for my kiddos!!! Like next Tuesday!!!!
We have been working so hard and if I am honest, I hate the fact that they have to be tested on their writing. Not fair in my opinion....just too much stress!!! But it is what it is and so we have been preparing for the "writing monster" for a while.
I was FREAKED last week when I fell and had to miss the rest of the week of school. If you follow me on Instagram I'm sure you're sick of seeing pics of my messed up knee...lol! Most recent pic. It is much better!
BUT I have an amazing team around me and our awesome lead teacher, who used to be my roomie, stepped in and taught writing to my kids for the days that I was out. So grateful for her!
So I wanted to share some of the things we have done to prepare for the test. Some of these I have blogged about before but wanted to try and put all the ideas in one place:)
One thing I have used is my Sharpen Your Writing interactive bulletin board.
It has been hard work to get my kiddos to amp up their writing with stronger and more descriptive words. Takes practice so we started this a while ago.
We have practiced our creativity skills....using similes, metaphors, onomatopoeias, and on and on:)
We also practiced "Show don't Tell"
You can read more about those
HERE.
One thing we started recently, and I TOTALLY love is using highlighters on our papers.
This idea was from another fab lead teacher in our district. I love this so much because it really gives the kids a visual. It's kinda eye opening:)
This highlighting we used mostly for our expository papers. The pink we used for transition phrases into each paragraph, pink links. The blue was for main ideas/reasons for each paragraph because if they don't have strong main ideas, the judges will be "blue":/ The yellow is for everything that is "right and bright":)
I have graded the kids papers after highlighting and it really is eye opening for them and me!
This paper has NO transitions and is weak with the "right and bright" skills.
Big difference between a stronger paper and weaker paper.
This has really been great for them because they THINK they are doing all the things they should be BUT then realize they aren't.
I'm not sure how I'm going to tackle the next few days since we only have a couple left:/ Lots of polishing!!!!
Also, because I don't want to tear down all my cute walls, I bought plastic table clothes to cover up the walls:) Dollar Tree :)
I made these little notes to give to my team to put on the desks of all our 4th grade kiddos the morning of the test. They are a freebie, just click on the pic if you would like to use them:)
I'm back to work tomorrow:) Miss my kiddos like crazy!!! Hope you all have a great rest of your week. I'd love to hear how you get your kiddos ready for the test:)