Reading Centers and Tracking Our Math Progress

With the dust of Open House settling, we are now back to a bit of normalcy.  (In an end of school year kinda way! HA!) Here's a little peek at what we've been up to with reading centers this week.   We have been working on the Dive Right In and Investigate the Ocean centers from Swimming Into Second Grade.  (By the way, I'm sot sure if I've mentioned lately how much I love the amazing network of teacher bloggers out there.  They inspire me daily!  In fact they sparked me to start this sweet little blog.  A heartfelt thank you to teacher bloggers everywhere.  You fill my sails!)
Back to our reading center time... :)
We have been working on 9 different centers.  Here are the ones a managed to snap a picture of:

Octopus Antonyms

Shark Facts and Opinions

Sea Turtle Synonyms

Crabby Adjectives

These Ocean Centers have been so perfect!  They kept the students working and engaged which allowed me to complete all of my end of year assessments.  Phew!  Quite a feat if I do say so myself! Each student has made so much growth this year and I am so very very proud of their accomplishments.  Look out third grade here we come!

We have also been working so hard completing all of our end of year Common Core math assessments.  (Also a gem of a resource created by Clutter-Free Classroom) This was definitely a process!  Each morning for a little over a week the students took a few assessments that covered the Common Core math standards.  Then, I quickly graded their work and returned them either that very day, or the following morning.  (The reward was worth working through lunch -for sure!) The reason I was so speedy to return the assessments was because the students graphed their results for each math standards.  This was SUCH a POWERFUL learning experience!  To hear my little BIG :) second graders discussing what concepts they had mastered and which ones they needed to practice was priceless.  It also upped the motivation level to put forth best effort on the assessments each day.  Each assessment had 10 points possible, if they scored 70% or above they showed mastery, 60% or below meant we needed to practice a little bit and try again.  Since we covered all the standards throughout the year most just needed a quick refresher or explanation of what the problem was asking since it was a different format from our usual Saxon math pages.   I have been busy pulling small groups all week to answer questions and reteach where needed, but my most favorite part of this reteaching process was when the students taught each other.  They each self reflected to see what area they needed to practice or what area they could teach to a peer, then we got busy!  SO POWERFUL!  I am 100% sold on the value of student-centered assessments.  They took such ownership of their learning.  I could go on and on about this process because, well, it was extremely effective. :)  I hope you got the gist.  Please look out for your child to bring home their math assessments.