MiddleView

Our state testing is officially over today!  Well, not including make up administration but one can dream.  Tomorrow we are having a special event at our school.  It is in conjunction with The American Cancer Society.

Our school has been involved with The Relay For Life for the past three years.  At my previous school we had been involved for the past 6 or 7 years.  I am a true believer in teaching children the importance of giving back to those in need.  It is just the right thing to do. I also have a personal buy in to fighting cancer.  My wonderful mom lost her long battle against this horrible disease this Februrary. 

Our school is holding our Mini-Relay tomorrow afternoon.  It is a scaled down version of the actual Relay.  We participate in that one as well, but this gives all of our kids to participate.  We want them to experience it as well.  Each child is required to get at least $5 in donations to be able to attend.  This may sound like a lot from every kid, but we work with them and give them plenty of time to gather the donations.  Many teachers help support their students and everyone who wants to attend is allowed. 

We decorate our track with purple Relay balloons, informative signs from the ACS and anything else we can find.  We have food and drink tents (we give each child a soda and an ACS cup filled with popcorn (all donated).  This year we will have a dunking booth, snow cone machine and face painting.  We will charge $1 for these.  And yes, I WILL be in the dunking booth!!  Hey, it is to fight cancer!

I encourage any school to look into this type of event.  It teaches kids to give back and care about others in their community.  It helps them grow.  It helps your community.  You will even probably get a nice article in the paper!  It shows your community that your school cares and does wonderful things.  In addition to all of this, it provides donations for a worthy cause.  If this is something you might be interested in, I encourage you to email me or contact the ACS at www. cancer.org. 

Posted by Michael Waiksnis at 02:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

It has been a bit since I posted as we are all feeling the rush of the end of the school year happenings!  We received our numerous boxes of our state assessment materials today.  Our students will have the chance to show what they learned this year.  Our teachers have done a wonderful job this year in preparing our students.  We have focused on the data, although we will continue to refine this process in the future.  I previously posted on using data and I encourage you to check it out if you have not had a chance to read it.

At this point I just try to boost the kid's confidence.  I remind them daily of how much they have grown academically this year and now they will have the chance to prove it on paper.  I know most of my teachers will be reviewing the standards over the next few days, but it is impossible to cram at this point.  I think the reviews are a good idea but at this point I think a healthy dose of encouragement and confidence building are most effective.

Here are some of my specific strategies:

Talk up the upcoming test with the students, but be careful not to stress them out!  You can often hear me in the hallways reminding the kids and telling them how ready they are!

Meet with kids individually or in small groups.  This takes some time but it can be done formally or simply by pulling them aside on the way to lunch.  I use this time to talk about their year and how they feel about their academic performance. 

At my school we are going to use incentives for attendance.  I know there is a tremendous amount of debate on the merits of incentives, but it works for us at our school.

Make sure the teachers are preparing the students for the testing "conditions".  We actually do this all year as we feel the more experience they have in testing environments the more comfortable they will be on the big day!

Here are a few of the strategies I use for last minute preparation.  What are you doing at your school?

Posted by Michael Waiksnis at 03:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)