Busy!

I am thrilled to get back to school in our routine after a long two weeks. It was difficult being away last week for sure. I look forward to returning to room a smiling and eager faces--what a treat.

This week we will spend some time going through a practice ERB assessment. The purpose of the practice is to help the students feel more comfortable with the format of the test. We talk about filling out bubbles to understanding directions to working within a timed format. Mostly, though, we talk about how while students should take the tests seriously and do their best work, they need to work to avoid becoming over focused on the test. They should understand that because of the nature of the ERB, students should expect to encounter some questions for which they do not know the answers! While the test gives us important feedback on how we are doing as a school, we work diligently to keep the test--as one tool of many--in perspective.

We test each morning next week, finishing about 10:00 a.m. each day. During the week, we will not assign homework, so students should be able to easily get to be on time each night! We will also not have any other assessments over the course of the week. Hopefully that will help make the week less worrisome for the students.

We look forward to entertaining you all at our author celebration on Friday at 8:30 in our room. Each student is thrilled to be sharing one of the fictional narratives on which s/he has been working during this genre study. Listen for engaging leads, endings that make sense and tie back to beginnings, as well as characters who give evidence of change throughout the story. We hope to see you Friday morning!

Upcoming important events:
April 27: Author Celebration, 8:30 a.m.
April 30 - May 4: ERB testing
May 11: MD visit, 8:45 a.m. (students only)
May 16: Battle of the Books (attend in MD)
May 21: Lowry Park Zoo field trip (I am looking for one volunteer for this trip!)
May 25: Moving Up ceremony, 8:45 a.m.; Italian ice party, 2:00 p.m.
May 28: no school
May 30: last day of school (noon dismissal)