This week was the first week the teachers at my school were back in their classrooms, setting them up and getting ready for the students to come on September 6th. Since, I teach kindergarten, I like to begin getting my room set up a little early and spend this week trying to assess some of my incoming students. It is much easier to do it this week, than to try to do it with a classroom full of students. My favorite was the child that I would ask if he knew the letter. He would whisper to me, "Tell me the word." I would whisper the letter to him, for example, "B". And he would say, (pretty loudly) "Oh yeah! Its "B". I knew that." He cracked me up.
I use the Houghton-Mifflin reading program and the assessment. (I only assess upper and lower case letters and concepts of print. I only expect them to maybe know a few letters from their names. But since I have students who know more, I like to do this quick assessment.) This year, I made the assessment easier for me to use. I set it up in a table form, so I have a space to check or make a note for the beginning of the year and at the end of each quarter. Here is a link for the assessment:(I thought someone else might be able to use it.)
A side note: I didn't find out my daughter made the JV volleyball team and had a tournament on Monday, until after I had scheduled 10 assessments for Monday. So I had to miss her 1st tournament. What guilt!!! To all of the other teacher moms, please know you aren't the only ones trying to juggle 2 very difficult jobs. If someone has some advice about how to do it without all of the guilt, please share.
Good Luck to everyone who is preparing their classrooms this week,
Posts
