New Birds & Test Prep

We returned from spring break (which was wonderful) to find that a Killdeer had laid eggs right outside my classroom, and it's been a neat little learning experience for my students and me.  We quickly learned that these birds are very protective of their eggs.  If anyone gets near the female, she starts acting like she has a broken wing to lure you away from the eggs.  The male is much more aggressive-if he's around watch out, because he'll swoop in and actually try to peck you!  Needless to say, we've kept students away from the nest and placed a barrier over the eggs, so that the birds can come and go, but students will know to stay away. 

I did find a little video on youtube of the broken wing act that you can see here.

Testing Tips Posters

I don't know the requirements for different states and/or districts, but at my school we can't have anything academic on our walls for testing.  We either have to cover them up or take it all down.  These means all of my word walls, anchor charts, maps, standards-everything!   I took everything down right before spring break, but I can't take all of the bare walls.  We are allowed to have testing tips posted, so I've made some test tip posters to display on my former standards based bulletin board.  I thought they turned out pretty cute, so I thought I'd share.  There are 10 different posters that you can use, and hopefully they'll help jazz up my bare walls!  You can click here for your posters:)

You can visit No More Monkey Business for even more test prep tips with a new linky party for test prep!