5 for Festive Friday!

Happy 5 for Festive Friday!

Not only is it Friday, it's a HALF-DAY Friday for our school - students dismiss at 12:15 :)

I'm linking up with Kacey to share about the week:

It's NWEA MAP Testing time for our first graders - woohoo! 

A bit tough on our little guys, but they've been showing extra grit and being true rockstars. 

Every student takes two tests (Primary Math and Primary Reading) and each test is 57 questions. I administer the test individually and most times we get through about 10 questions before taking a break. We are about halfway done and so far EVERY student has grown an average of 10 points since September!

I created practice cards (400 of each subject!), not because my students weren't demonstrating mastery of the content, but because the LANGUAGE of the test still trips them up.

In example, here's a question about syllables:

When we first introduce syllables, we often stay pretty low on Bloom's Taxonomy by asking questions such as "how many syllables are in your name?" But as you can see with this question, students must first identify the amount of syllables and then understand that they need to find ALL the pictures that have the same amount (& what does the word "same" mean?). 

 My firsties will often choose one picture (snake) and then press "next," which of course would be wrong :(  And sometimes NWEA gets a bit trickier and includes pictures with the same beginning/ending sound, which my students will often fall for. 

I've made up "Quick Questions" for both math and reading for my students so that they can get used to language, because knowing the content isn't enough! We want them to be able to apply it.

I could go on and on ;)

If you already have the cards, please check back soon - I'll be adding more, especially as I'm observing my students falling for more language traps!

With all the testing, we haven't quite hit holiday mode yet. Yesterday I linked up with the fabulous Mrs. Lemon's 

for her Deck the Classroom linky:

I've also been drooling over all of these beautiful homes:

Seriously, this link comes with a warning - a hour will pass by before you know it as you're looking at all these wonderfully decorated homes! Just beautiful!

I'm also linking up with The Inspired Apple for a Christmas Conversation:

Thank you for reading & have a fantastic Friday!