Happy Valentine's Day!

I hope you had a wonderful Valentine's Day filled with your loved ones!  We sure had fun in our classroom!  As a behavior reward, students were given a choice for how they wanted to celebrate together:  pajama day, movie, or food/craft.  I'll let the pictures do the talking for which choice was the winner!

You can't have Valentine's Day without sweets...

Then, we handed out our valentines to our classmates...

Finally, the best part:  opening the valentines!  I just have to say, I've never been prouder of a group of students as I was while they were opening cards.  The entire classroom was a chorus of thank yous as they opened each and every card.

(Did you notice those tables?  More on that soon!)



Partner Work

We are learning about African American history this month.  Last week, students dove into the history of slavery and visualized themselves in that role.  Partners were assigned a section of If You Lived... When There was Slavery in America by Anne Kamma and Pamela Johnson and taught their classmates about that section.  Take a look at our presentations!



Tuesday Tips and Tricks: AIMSweb

Your child's progress report is coming home this week, and along with it will be his or her AIMSweb scores for the winter benchmark.  AIMSweb is a benchmark test that is given three times per year:  at the beginning, in the middle, and near the end of the year.  This test is meant to assess student's progress throughout the year.  AIMSweb is a norm-referenced test.  Each child is rated as well above average, above average, average, below average, or well below average based on how his or her scores compare to the scores of other second grade students that participate in the AIMSweb test (state-, or even country-wide).

AIMSweb has both math and reading components.  At each testing round, students take 2 math assessments and 2 reading assessments.  The math assessments are Concepts and Applications and Computation.  Concepts and Applications tests students' knowledge and ability to do and apply grade-level math skills.  Computation assesses students' ability to add and subtract (and multiply and divide in the upper grades).  Students have 8 minutes to complete each of these tests.  The reading tests are Fluency and MAZE.  For the fluency test, students read a grade-level passage aloud for one minute.  Errors and words-per-minute are then calculated.  For the MAZE test, students are given a passage with missing words throughout.  Students have a choice of 3 words to put in the blank spots.  They are given 3 minutes for this test.

For more information about the testing process, visit AIMSweb.com.  If you have any additional questions about your child's AIMSweb scores, please e-mail or call me at school.

Happy 100th Day!