Testing, Testing, Testing...(Mini-Freebie!)

Ah the joys of testing! Achievement testing is actually one of my favorite times of the year. I love walking around the room noticing how smart my Owlets are. I get so excited when they get to answer questions that cover something that we recently worked on in class and see that light bulb of "I know this one" light up. I do have a couple of students who don't like testing at all and get pretty stressed out about it, so I try to make the moments in between testing as fun and stress-free as possible.

Because I teach a first/second split I have to vary who is being tested and who is being absolutely quiet. As you may know I'm in my second week of raising chicks. Four have found their permanent home. I made up a quick coloring page for my students to use when they weren't testing. I gave them no directions. I casually laid them on the table for students to use if they wanted. Every second grader picked one up and came up with some pretty amazing ideas. A couple wrote a narrative on how to hatch and take care of chickens. The rest wrote stories about their chicks. I must admit this is my favorite...

Guess what book this second grader just finished?! 

I could have told students to turn the chicken into their favorite book character, but what makes this chicken even better is that the kid came up with this idea on his own. "I wanted to make the robe scarlett," reports class famous reader, "but you said I couldn't get out of my seat during testing. I just used the tools I had available." I think this chicken is bound to catch the Golden Snitch and win the tournament for Chickendor!

Wanna see something really cute? I must first make this disclaimer...No animals were hurt during this photo shoot. My daughter wanted to introduce her cat to my chicks. On Sunday when I was in my classroom working, my daughter shows up at the door with the cat...

What caption would you add to these pictures?

Click HERE to get a copy of your own chicken to disguise!