Standardized Testing

We started our Standardized testing this week. My school is trying not to overwhelm the children so we are only testing for an hour a day, 3 days a week. It will take us 8 days total to finish.
Several years ago, I gave this same test to my 1st graders. But, my county decided not to give it anymore due to the cost. Now, it will be a big part of our Evaluation, so they chose this as the test we will be evaluated on.
It is hard during the test since I can only say things they way they are worded in the Direction booklet. I know that if I could reword some of the directions, they would really understand what to do.
Throughout this school year, I have pulled in some test practice that I have found online. There are some wonderful resources for our test (Stanford 10) on Teachers Pay Teachers- although not a lot of them. I also bought a used Scoring High booklet to see what types of questions would be on the test.
So far, I am proud of how hard my students worked on the test. I could tell halfway through the third day, several were already burned out. Hopefully with the days in between, they will do their best next week.

Teacher Appreciation Week Sale at Teachers Notebook.com!

I wanted to let you know about a wonderful Teacher Appreciation Week Sale that will take place at TeachersNotebook.com. All of my products will be on sale for 60% off- I marked them 50% off and TeachersNotebook.com is knocking another 10% off of the prices. The sale will be from May 4th-10th. If you haven't checked out Teachers Notebook yet, I encourage you to have a look. It has a lot of great resources.

Here is a link directly to my Teachers Notebook shop "Celebrate First Grade".


I am busy working on the next Language units to fit all of the Common Core Standards. My school is giving our standardized test this week and I really see how the students can benefit from more practice in the Language Standards.

Common Core Language Standards

I have searched for a while to try and find Language Activities to provide my students a spiral review throughout the year. I tend to focus on Math, since I love Math, so I used some of those activities as an inspiration to create some Language Arts reviews to use in my classroom.
     I have started going through the Common Core Language Standards more closely. I made a Language Common Core Activity Packet Set 1 that has card/word sorts and worksheets to help teach the first 4 sections of the Language Arts Standards- through types of Nouns. I have also made 8 (so far) Common Core Language Mini-books for students to do throughout the year as a spiral review which will incorporate all of the Standards throughout the year when I am finished. I plan to use 1 book a week, so 8 books would last me 2 months.
     I did some of the Proper Noun Activities as a review today and my students did half of the first Common Core Mini-book as a review for our standardized test. They did very well and I was able to see quickly who needed a minilesson on a skill.
     If you are interested, you can find these activities posted on Teachers Pay Teachers and Teachers Notebook.

     I will be working on making more of the big units. (It looks like it will take 3 units to cover all of the Language Standards). There will also be about 10 sets of the Language Mini-books. I want to have enough books for my class so that we can spiral review the skills all year long and not forget them. I hope you find these helpful.