Week before partial exams

Next week is our 1st partial exams. These are basically finals, except we have them four times a year. This has been a long stretch without a break for us. This is the longest partial (semester) with the fewest breaks. We will get Thanksgiving off at the end of November.

So this week we’ve been reviewing and preparing for the exams. It’s a little bit easier, because there isn’t much grading, and a lot of review can be done as games. But it’s more exhausting. When every class is a review game, I get tired! I’m also running out of ideas for how to review material. There are pros and cons.

We have had some successes or just funny things in the room lately.

Reviewing possessives (like laura’s computer or tony’s dog), I had every kid write the name of every other kid, and me, in their notebook. Then they had to go around the room and get every kid to show them something they brought to school and write it down as a possessive. Then when they were done, we wrote them on the board. It was really good practice for the apostrophe s, and I was pleased that I had just thought it up on my own! They loved asking me what I had, and I told each kid something different. They had fun with that.

Something pretty hilarious is happening in my room. I have a book box that I stock with my books or books from the library, that kids can read when they finish work early. Well, my friend Anna who was in the Philippines with me, sent me a care package with various reading material in it. One thing she sent me was the most random magazine she could find in the store (this is something we would do in the Peace Corps), and it happened to be Gold Prospector Magazine. Well, I stuck it in the book box and the kids LOVE it. They are constantly fighting over who gets to look at it. They love the pictures of cool rocks and minerals, and they ask me questions like ‘how much is $200 in Lempira?’ and ‘Miss Laura, do you have a mine in Colorado?’ It’s really funny.

I also had a good laugh today over an assignment. I was so tired after a morning of math baseball, reading jeopardy, phonics tic-tac-toe, and English races. So for science I wanted them do some kind of work in their seat, quietly. So I asked them to write a science test that I would have to take, over any of the stuff we’ve learned this year. Most of them did a pretty good job thinking of questions, and some just copied questions from their textbook, which isn’t that great, but I didn’t say they couldn’t. Diego’s test was the best though. He would sometimes come up and ask me stuff like how do you spell kangaroo? and I wasn’t sure what he was doing, because we have never talked about kangaroos in science. But his test was really as good as he could do, and I’m glad he worked hard on it. Here are some of the questions:

Is kangaroo in Australia? yes or no. Is butterfly in asia? yes or no. Is snake in Africa? yes or no. I like bear. Is bear in habitat?

My favorite is I like bear. Is that a true/false? I took his test, I hope I pass.

Then after science I had to teach art, which is not my best event. I had decided we would make Halloween pencil toppers, and though I had a vague idea how that would go, I wasn’t sure. But it turned out pretty well. I had the kids bring in craft foam, and we made jack o lanterns and stuck them on pipe cleaners that wrap around a pencil. It was a pretty good craft.

So I hope they are ready for their exams next week, cause I am tired of reviewing with them. The tests are really pretty easy, it shouldn’t be too bad.