Follow the Trail Product Swap Giveaway

Are you up for an adventure this week?  A number of fellow intermediate teacher-bloggers have joined to provide you with blog-hopping fun this last week of January.  Perhaps snow covers the ground outside where you are reading this from, making a real outdoor hike out of the question...so we thought we would offer you a trail to "hike along" from the comfort of your couch!

Back in December, I was partnered with Meg from The Teacher Studio! Meg and I checked out the resources available at one another's TpT stores, and then picked one that we wanted to use in our classroom in January.  (How fun is that?!)  I was so excited to find her Entrance and Exit Slips to Guide Instruction resource.

As a teacher, do you often find yourself asking, "Did they get anything out of the lesson today?"  or "Do they remember anything from yesterday?"  Using formative assessments to see what the students took away from the lesson, misconceptions, what they retained, etc. is a great way to guide instruction.  Meg's pack offers a variety of "learning checks" to use to help teachers and students track learning and progress.  The possibilities for using these in the classroom are absolutely ENDLESS, but I will show you how I used these in my ELA class and in Science.

In Science class, we have just started a unit on weathering and erosion.  I wanted to see what the students remembered from the previous day's instruction, so I started the class with an entrance slip from Meg's pack.  I asked the students to make a bulleted list of what they remembered about weathering and erosion from the day before.  This was great because I could quickly see who had misconceptions, who was on target, and what I needed to review before starting the next lesson.

In Reading class, we have been studying nonfiction text structures.  One of the ways I used Meg's entrance slips in this class was by posting questions on the board as a bell ringer.  The students had to read four to five paragraphs and determine the text structure of each.  One day the bell ringers were passages with multiple choice options. Another day they were fill in the blank. Here are some examples of those.

I used Meg's exit slips to end class as well.  One day, I had the students choose a text structure and sketch an organizer that would represent the text structure.  Then the students were to write what the text structure was and key words that were often used with their chosen text structure.  As you can see, not every student chose the same text structure.  It was interesting to see what stuck with each student.  

I think my favorite form that I used was one of her student reflection assessments.  This entrance slip gave the students an opportunity to reflect on their learning and to tell me what concepts they felt they needed additional help with.  I LOVED reading the students' reflections because they were SO honest!  They really helped the students take ownership for their learning and provide me with information to guide future individual instruction.  

Honestly, I could go on and on about how great these are!  They can be used with ANY subject and have endless possibilities for implementation.  Another bonus is that there are two formative assessments on each page so they save paper.  Always a plus!  :)   

Now, to help with your exercise for the day, here's what you need to know about our hike and giveaway!

Hiking Tips 

-Start anywhere along the trail!

-Along the way, stop by each blog and read about the resources swapped between bloggers.

-Enter to win the resource that is featured at each blog in the raffle below (the same raffle is at each blog, so you can just add to your entries as you go!). While you are at each blog, if you’re not a blog follower already, sign on to follow! (You can earn bonus entries for following all blogs once you unlock the additional entries.)

-The raffle is open until midnight on January 31, so feel free to take a break from your hike, rest up, and finish it later! 

One winner will receive the entire set of resources being featured by all 14 collaborating bloggers AND a $25 TpT gift certificate! 

Here’s the list of blogs to "hike" to: 

Swap Stop A

Swap Stop B 

Swap Stop C 

Swap Stop D 

Swap Stop E 

Swap Stop F 

Swap Stop G 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 Well, friends, settle in on your couch and grab the granola. It's time to get your hike on! :)