Telling Time Printables: Now Updated!

Hi, friends!  I've updated my Telling Time Printables!  I've added 25 more pages, which includes several math journal prompts, and additional practice pages for each skill: telling time to the hour, to the half-hour, to the quarter-hour, and to five-minute intervals.  Go to Teachers Pay Teachers here to download my preview freebie!  Each page includes the Common Core standard(s) it addresses in the top right corner.  

(Any of these pages can be used in your students' math journals.  If you're using composition books, just print the page you want to use at 75% before copying, and it should fit perfectly!)  

Reading Fluency Resources

I don't know about you, but the reading program my school (Imagine It! by SRA) doesn't really have a good reading fluency assessment system that I like.  SO, I've been looking around the internet for other resources that I can use to track my firsties' fluency.  Now, I know they say you shouldn't test for fluency until at least the winter of first grade, but I start testing fluency from the first week of school.  I always have at least a handful of kids who can read when they enter first grade, and I like being able to track their growth over the first few months of school (instead of waiting until December or January).

Here's a link to the passages I'm using this year to test my kids' fluency:
http://rti.dadeschools.net/pdfs/ORF-OPM_grs1-5.pdf

Just download the pdf file, and then you have everything you need for grades first through fifth in one file.  (Very handy.)  Now that the whole class is reading (albeit at widely differing levels), I'm testing my students' fluency every other week.  It's a lot of work, but it really gives me a good quantitative measure of how they're improving, as well as giving me some hard data to use during conferences with parents who believe their first grader is ready to read Chaucer.  (I'm only slightly exaggerating.)  

I keep all my fluency assessment sheets in a two-inch binder, with numbered dividers to keep each student's assessments separated.  (If you haven't already assigned each student a number, I highly recommend doing so.)  Last year I only had 28 students, so I was able to buy the dividers with tabs numbered 1-31 (which presumably are meant to be used for the days of the month), but now I have 35 students, so kiddos 31-35 are just separated by paperclips.  I'm pretty sure Staples has dividers that are numbered through 50, but I just keep forgetting to stop on my way home from school -- and when I do happen to remember, I tell myself I'll stop in another day, because getting home and into sweatpants trumps any need I may have to organize this binder.  

Here are a few more links that have good resources for reading assessment:
https://dibels.uoregon.edu/market/assessment/materialdownload?agree=true

http://www.comprehensivereadingsolutions.com/category/grades-k-5/

http://www.louisianabelieves.com/resources/library/teacher-support-toolbox-library

Rubrics for Reading Fluency: 
http://books.heinemann.com/comprehending/pdfs/ScaleForAssessingFluency.pdf

http://www.cdl.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/Hasbrouck-Tindal-Table.jpg

It's a lot of work to get through 35 students every two weeks, but I use my guided reading time during literacy centers every other Monday morning. The worst is when a student is absent, and then I have to find time to make up their Running Records assessment.  But quite honestly, I often times leave their score blank for that week, and just test them in two more weeks with the rest of the class's next round of fluency testing. 

I'd love to hear about the systems you use to test and track your students' fluency! 

Substitute Teacher Binder - New Freebie!

I recently decided to make my substitute binder a freebie in my TPT store!  

Here are a few of the pages that are included:

 

Please leave feedback in my TPT store.  Enjoy!

I heart EngageNY Math

First Grade Common Core Writing Rubric

One of the things I've been working on this year is rubrics.  By the end of the summer, I'm hoping to have written rubrics for every Common Core-based assessment or project I plan on assigning next year.  I think this will make parent conferences easier, especially when I get the question, "Why is my child getting the grade Needs Improvement in Language?"  So far, I've written rubrics for narrative writing (CCSS W.1.3) and I'm working on a rubric persuasive/opinion writing (CCSS W.1.1) which should be posted soon!

Narrative Writing Rubric

California Science & Social Studies Units

I discovered these free science and social studies units last year, and they are great.  Published by the California Education and the Environment Initiative, each unit is centered within the context of the environment. They're aligned to the California State Standards for science and social studies, so you could use these instead of your textbook series at different points in the year for many of the standards. (I don't know about you, but I am not in love with my science textbook or my social studies textbook.)  And, the best part is that they've recently released Common Core Correlation Guides for each unit, making it totally easy to include the Common Core standards in your lesson plans.

The website to download these units is www.californiaeei.org

The website will ask you to register your email, etc. to get the password for downloading everything (at least you needed to do this last year), but the password is teacheei if you don't want to go through all that.