Go For Gold

Five more days of school. That's it. That's all we have. Except it's not...

There are five more school days until my kiddos take the STAAR test. The STAAR test is necessary, but it's not the only thing that we should be working towards. The thought just hit me that we have way more than five days of school left. The year doesn't end after the STAAR. The kids will still come back the next day, and we will get back to work until the real last day of school. There's so much emphasis (maybe not so much at our school) on STAAR that it can feel like all were working towards is the STAAR. What happens after that? We just sit around and play with our thumbs? No. We have to go back to work because there's unfinished business. 

The school year doesn't end after the STAAR test. Don't forget that. 

The real reason I wanted to blog today was because I'm so excited for what this upcoming week holds. There is five more days to review and prepare for the test. This past week the kiddos worked like crazy people. They worked so hard, and I'm very proud of them. Each day they got a new review packet over a different topic. I'm sure I wasn't there favorite person last week. Well this week will make it better. 

I wanted to have a less stressful week before the actual thing. I got the idea from a fellow teacher on my team because they're doing something very similar this week for ELA. She kind of rocks as a teacher. I don't have much of a following, but y'all should really check her out. With Love From Texas.

This week we are doing STAAR Olympics. I'm so excited for it. There's not much more that I love than competition, and this week is packed full of it. For each rotation, I'm putting the kids into teams of four. They're going to come up with their own team or country name. It can be anything that they want, and they will create a flag to represent their team. This will hopefully give them a sense of pride and excitement towards the objective. Each day they will be competing in a different event. I'll go into more details of the events on a different post. After each event, though, the teams will be rewarded points based on their place in each event. For example, first place will get 10 points. I'll keep track of all the points for the week's events, and I'll have a first place winner for each rotation. I even bought cheap little trophies to hand out to each winning group!

I'm pumped about this. We have events that utilize technology, going out side and running around, and even trash can basketball. I'm doing every thing I can to get them excited about math this week. However, we're still going to be reviewing the material. It's just going to be trapped inside a vortex of fun! I'm picking the topics that they still may need a little work on and encompassing them in different events. I think (and hope) that it's going to be awesome. If there's one thing I've learned this year, you have to adjust on the fly if something isn't working out, and this week will be no exception. I'm ready for the week to start, and I'm ready for the competition to begin.