In the land of end of year assessments and 4052805 things to do before the end of the year...

I think I made 5 separate to do lists this morning. And then panicked. I have been complaining about still having 20-something days to go here, but OMG - I'm never going to get all of this stuff done! I'm in the heat of common assessments (our district mandated assessments) and that alone is giving me hives. Here's a peek at what that looks like for us...

They watch a video about lions and "jot" notes at certain stop points. They also turn and talk to a partner at each stop point.

Here we are jotting and chatting...

These are the district mandated anchor charts (2 out of 3) that we use during the assessment. The informational book one is one we also used during our non-fiction unit so that we had practice with it.

This is the video - it's a good one! The kids love this part. 

When we finish the video, we then have a read aloud where we also jot notes about wild cats (thinking about what headings could be on each page, what information we learned, key vocabulary and key details). When we finish the read aloud, we also have a read-to-self task using a level G-H-ish text, "Tigers", where the kids read independently and are asked to pull out important information on a "jot" page. It's a lot of work, especially when we first give it in the fall, but I can honestly say these kiddos rose to the occasion! Tomorrow, we put it all together, use all of our notes and new knowledge, organize our information and write an informational book about wild cats! Fingers crossed :) Do any of you have district assessments like this? This one comes from Teacher's College.

After we worked for what seemed like 3 days on the first 3 components of this 4 part assessment, we had time for a little dance party. I SO wish I could show you the adorable cha cha slide video I took of them today... Makes me happy to  watch when the kiddos are driving me batty! 

I've been eying these contraction kites on Pinterest for months, and we finally had an opportunity to do them today! They came out so cute, I hung them in our window. I thought I had a finished product shot, but it's on my work camera and not my phone :( The patterns I used are here.

In other news, I hit 100 followers last night! WOOOOOO! Check out my post here - there is a google doc there if you would like to contribute something to my 100 follower giveaway, which will be coming soon! :) So many awesome bloggers have already contributed... THANK YOU! You rock :)