The year is winding down but WBT goes on....This is the last week for our students and they've already displayed some antsy behaviors.

Thank goodness for the Super Improvers Wall! The SIW continues to hold its magic charm as students stay on task and attend to lessons  despite their clear awareness that they are nearing the end of the school year.  Several more students have made it to the Alpha level and find that climb onto the initial rung a worthwhile goal to work towards.  This past week marked the first student climb to the Beta rung.  (It was, in fact, the first student to make it onto the SIW.)  It's great to hear my learners celebrate each other for their achievements and take note of what steps they need to take to make their own progress.

It's time for our end of year evaluations and I'm including use of the SIW, Teach! OK!, The Scoreboard, and Mind Soccer as 'evidence' of meeting my instructional goals for "Establishing a culture of learning" and "Managing Student Behavior".

Two other saving graces that keep the learning going while offering outlets for energy are the Electronic Super Speed 100 and Crazy Reading Professor programs. Each has been useful in meeting my learners' kinesthetic needs while they exercise the little gray cells building sight word proficiency and, simultaneously, strengthen their reading and language skills.

This coming school year both these programs will be built into our routines right from the beginning of the year.  I'll be moving to second grade after teaching 3rd grade for six years.  I'm really looking forward to spreading WBT a little further in our building.

One of the things I'll be giving a lot of thought to this summer will be the best way to track and document the academic practices such as Yes! No Way! and QT.  (With a much firmer grasp of the State Test Prep process I'll "begin with the end in mind" and build my assessments using the process.) Yes! No Way! and QT are noted in the evaluation section of my lesson plans along with questions, of course, but I do need to try to note the outcomes more consistently in order to track student progress.

As my colleagues and I set out on the road to implementing Common Core, I feel so much more prepared now that I am making WBT the foundation of my instructional practice.