It’s August. Here in the Northern climes it is smoking hot, and if the actual fires weren’t enough, BACK TO SCHOOL IS HERE!
You can procrastinate, but it will come. Make your life easier this year and set a goal of cutting paperwork.
With Boom Learning you can find self-grading, paperless resources for your back-to-school reviews and assessments.
If you can’t find what you want you can DIY or ask the hive to make it. Today’s focus: secondary science and elementary reading. Stay tuned for mathematics and school rules.
Simplify Secondary Science
For secondary, create more time to focus on project based learning by using self-grading Boom Cards to handle the pre-tests and equipment checks. It is important to launch the year by making sure students are well grounded in the basics. Use these decks to find out who is ready to proceed, and who needs support. To encourage self-directed learning, offer homework passes or other incentives for students who achieve a number of Gems (mastered concepts) that you set.
FREE from The Lab this set of Boom Cards evaluates student mastery of basic lab equipment with 20 self-grading multi-choice questions.
For 300 points, you can add The Scientific Method by Amy Brown Science to your classroom library. With 40 cards, ranging from easy to advanced, this deck not only evaluates basic knowledge, it also determines if students understand how to use their problem-solving and critical-thinking skills to apply that knowledge. Amy Brown also offers Parts of the Microscope and Their Functions to evaluate whether students are ready to for units involving microscopes.
Elementary Readers
The beginning of the year is a great time to use self-teaching materials to find out what students know and don’t know about reading.
For the youngest students, decks with sound let you know if they can match sounds to letters. Try Find the Letter – Scarecrow Fun from Della Larson’s Class for your PreK to 1st students (300 points).
FREE YOUR HEART offers games for practicing beginning sounds and beginning words. Multiple choice and drag and drop games let students learn without needing to know how to type. Try her Building CVC Words Bundle: Kindergarten Word Work with Magnetic Letters for 750 points or her Alphabet Beginning Sounds Game (Space Theme) Phonics Activities for 400 points.
Is there ever enough vocabulary practice for students? Overlearning is critical to reading fluency.
Teachers Features offers an 8 deck Boom Cards Phonics Bundle for grades 1-2 to practice digraphs, vowel teams and silent E. At 1000 points, this set will serve class after class in mastering these foundational reading skills. For 2-3 graders, try her BOOM Cards: Reading Bundle (950 points). With 131 cards for grades 1-3, students develop understanding of text structure, author’s purpose, genre, and text features.
Vocabulary matters. Marcia Murphy has decks for younger students to practice their back to school vocabulary while learning syllables and noun and verb identification (200 points each) skills.
These decks are timeless and time-saving additions to your classroom resources.
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