My Erin Condren Planner and Dolch Sight Word Assessment Freebies

Look what was on my doorstep when I got home last Saturday night!!!

I AM IN LOVE!!!!!

I won this AMAZING planner from Katherine at Yay Third Grade! Thanks so much Katherine!!!!!

Last year I bought the life planner which is awesome but I think this planner is even better!  It has monthly calendar pages, lesson plan pages, a place for seating charts, a folder for loose papers, a small clear pouch that seals for small things like sticky notes and my VERY favorite....labels for just about every kind of meeting that there is!  It is organization at it's best!  And I got FREE COLORED PENS people!  You have no idea how much I LOVE color coding!  This will help to keep me organized for sure!

This week we are administering DIBELS assessments to our Kinders and First Graders and AIMSWEB oral reading fluency and math assessments to all of our students (Kindergarten through Fifth grade).  In addition, most classroom teachers are administering Dolch sight word assessments, curriculum based spelling tests, reading benchmark tests and taking writing samples.  Whew!  The list is exhaustive!  I'm sure all of you can relate!

In our school it is expected that first grade students will master all 220 Dolch words by the end of the year (yes really...lol).  For several years we have been administering this assessment using single lists of words (there are eleven lists, each containing 20 words).  We assess five times during the school year (once at the beginning, once at the end of each marking term and once at the end of the year).

This year I have several students who have orthographic processing difficulties (i.e., they have difficulty remembering symbols - letters and numbers).  I had these same students last year and I knew that they could identify some of these words but the list format was not working for them so I created a powerpoint presentation to assess their sight word recall.  Each slide is displayed for three seconds (the amount of time we allow a student to identify a word) before moving on to the next word. In addition, every 20th word slides down to signal to the examiner the end of "that particular list."  Clear as mud?  I found that this presentation was much more effective for my students!  It held their attention and they didn't have to manipulate the lists.  If you are interested in trying this out with your students please feel free to click on the pictures to download your own Dolch Word assessment presentation and recording sheet.  If you prefer, I have also included a copy of the lists in print format.  (I copy the lists on cardstock, laminate, cut and bind with a metal book ring).
I'd really LOVE to know what you think!