Visually Watching Their Progress

We know that we want our students to make improvements. How to you encourage them to do better? How do you let them know where they are and where they should be?

I want to share with you a couple of the ways we do it in our building.

We use the Accelerated Reader program to enhance our reading. We reward them with books and a few other prizes at the 10 point intervals. I like to make a graph of their progress and display it in our room.

This one shows the number of points they have earned so far. In our building we ask them to keep an 80% average. On this chart if the student is in the high 70's their bar is colored yellow. If they are below that their color is red. This encourages them to read more carefully and take their time with their tests.

After they take their test, they are allowed to sign the charts to show their scores. I think it's great to get 100%, but I also think it's great to get an 80 or 90% too. Once these pages are filled up, then we get a new one. . . That's it! We don't do anything else special with them. And that is just fine with my kids. They just want to be recognized for doing their best.

For March is Reading Month, we have set up another way for them to watch their progress just for this month.

Each student has this sign on their locker. We also use RAZ Kids from Reading A to Z. We want to encourage our kids to use this program in school and at home. So for this month we are charting the number of minutes they are on it. Each Friday we will get  a print out of the number of minutes they've accumulated for the week. We will also get a print out of the number of Accelerated Reader points they've earned (not counting their prior points before last week). The teachers will update the thermometers each week.Our students love to watch theirs grow and see how their friends are doing. 

With our Kinders, we are only tracking their minutes on RAZ Kids.

For March is Reading Month, each teacher has decorated their door with a character from a book who has good character!

I love Arthur, so it made sense for me to use him to showcase all of his good characteristics.

Each bulletin board in our school has a class set of kids reading books they enjoy. My kids decorated their covers so they look as much like the real book as they could. Then we took their picture and made them look like they were reading a book. So when posted on the bulletin board it might appear that they were really reading this paper back in front of them. I think they turned out pretty good! Plus they are 3D and that makes them POP!

If you're looking for an Easter activity to help your students learn more about plural nouns and verbs, then this just might be for you.

It's called Ir-EGG-ular Plural Nouns and Verbs. 

I have to give my sister credit for coming up with the Egg part of the name. 

Thanks Jackie!

Click on this picture above to go to it.

There is a free version right now, but it doesn't have as much as this one does. But you're welcome to grab the free one to see if you'd like it and then if you want more, come on back and grab the entire package.

Patty