Adventures in Annual State Testing
Comprehensive summative assessment. End of year testing. High stakes testing. Annual state testing. ITBS. ISAT. ACT. SAT. PSAE. PARCC. The combination of alphabet soup names and education policy jargon all point to the same thing: it is that time of year when I put several things on hold so that my students can sit through hours of assessments meant to show, theoretically, how well I am teaching and how well they are learning.
Of course, the reality is that one test could not possibly demonstrate that. One test is not enough to tell anyone anything meaningful about a single individual or even a single class. However, that one test can give a picture of trends over time when looking at large data pools, such as every 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade student in over a dozen states.
All that being said, I actually find annual assessment of students valuable for what it does, but I definitely agree with many researchers that there are better ways to do it. This post, however, is not about the value or merits of annual high-stakes testing. At present, it is a part of my job as a fourth grade teacher and it is something I will do my best to help my students do their best by teaching them all I can to help them be successful.
Once we get in the testing environment, though, I am not allowed to do much more than say, “Just do your best!” That doesn’t mean that they don’t try getting help. Which is why the following scenarios have taken place over the past couple of days:
Teacher (in classroom): Remember, you will have 60 minutes to complete the unit, so take your time, check your work, and do your best! Once we go into the computer lab, I’ll have a script to read and then you will get started.
*class goes into computer lab*
Teacher (before test starts): You will have 60 minutes. I will tell you when you have 10 minutes remaining. You may begin.
*ten minutes later*
Student: Done!
Teacher: …
/scene
Student: I don’t know how to do this.
Teacher: I can’t help you; just do your best!
Student: But I need help!
Teacher: I can’t help you; just do your best!
Student: But I really don’t know what to do!
Teacher: I can’t help you; just do your best!
Student: Okay.
*five seconds later*
Student: I need help!
Teacher: …
/scene
Teacher: Do not hit “Exit Test” until I tell you to do so.
*three seconds later*
Student: Oops…
Teacher: …
/scene
Student: It won’t let me write my answer here!
Teacher: Read the directions again.
Student: Oh. I didn’t do that.
Teacher: …
/scene
What adventures await us tomorrow? Only time will tell!
Tests, Drills, and Alarms
Over the years, I have found myself reflecting on the nature of tests and what they are for. A common theme is that tests are a way to prepare for when the information, the skill, or the procedure is actually needed, when it is relevant. We have tests of the Emergency Alert System on the radio and television so that we will know what to do in the case of a real emergency. We have tests that we take before receiving certification or licensure so that we can demonstrate that we actually know what to do in the job or position. We test the severe weather sirens in this area on the first Tuesday of every month so that we are conditioned to know what to do when we hear the sound. We have fire drills in schools to get us ready for what to do in the case of an actual fire.
I have also found that my students often ask, when they hear an alarm go off, “Is this for real?” My response is always the same: “Yes, the alarm is really going off. It does not matter if there is an actual fire or not. What matters is that something has triggered the alarm and that means we need to immediately exit the building and wait for further instructions.”
Today we had a chance to put the practice into action. In the early afternoon, shortly after lunch and just as we were about to start our math lesson, I heard a buzzing coming from the hallway. I immediately recognised this as the fire alarm, as did all of my students. With little prompting, they quickly stood up, walked out the door, down the hall, exited the building, and walked down to the sidewalk. I grabbed my emergency attendance folder and made sure that all of my students were accounted for.
Then we waited.
It was cold and started to drizzle. But the alarms were still going off, and so we waited. The students were, for the most part, doing exactly what they should have been doing: they stayed closed, they huddled together to keep warm, and they waited.
We were finally given directions to go to one of the churches on the corner that serve as gathering places during emergencies. The students again knew exactly what to do and even made sure the three student teachers with us knew what to do, too. After getting to the church, they sat down and waited, grateful for the warmth. Once we were given the all clear, we returned to the building and took a couple of minutes to process what had happened.
I made sure that all of the students knew that they did exactly what they were supposed to do and understood that this is why we practice the way we do. The tests prepare them for when it is “for real,” but they only knew what to do because they took the tests seriously.
Next week we start PARCC testing in our building. It is just a test. It is not life or death. It won’t determine if they advance to the next grade, if they get into college, or what jobs they get. What it does do is help them think about what they know, what they don’t know, and what they need to know as they progress through school and become more active participants in our society.
Lofty ideas, for sure, but isn’t that what tests are all about, anyway?
So Much Going On
Wow. I know I have decreased my blogging frequency this year, but I just realised that it has been over two weeks since I last updated and that is pretty bad, even for me.
Sorry.
It has been a really busy two weeks. In addition to everything we have had going on in my classroom, I am in the final weeks of my master’s degree program (graduation is on May 14!) and I have been spending a lot of time after school working on collecting artifacts from my internship, writing reflections, and doing a massive online training module that is required for my principal’s endorsement. (Speaking of which, I am 99% certain I’ve mentioned this at least once in the past two years, but my master’s degree is going to be in educational administration and I will be receiving my principal’s endorsement so that I can one day move from the self-contained classroom to the principal’s office. I am not sure when that is actually going to happen, though.)
So, what has been keeping us so busy over the past two weeks? Here are a few highlights: (more…)
Reflections on Testing
Way back in my first year of teaching here at Wiley, I found myself reflecting on the curious wording the Emergency Alert Broadcast System that used to conduct regular tests. I remember hearing the distinctive tone sound over the radio or see the test pattern and tone on the television as I was growing up, always followed by this message:
“This has been a test. This has only been a test of the Emergency Alert System. In the case of an actual emergency, you would be directed to tune in to your local news agency. Again, this has been a test.”
My students are in the midst of their annual state-mandated standardised testing cycle. Illinois, along with 17 other states, has partnered with the the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College or Careers (PARCC) to develop an end-of-the-year standardised test that sees how well students have mastered the rigorous content standards known as the Common Core State Standards.
Now, right away I know that there were two terms in that previous paragraph that set off alarm bells for my some of readers: PARCC and Common Core. It should not be a surprise to any of my regular readers (all 22 of you according to the WordPress statistics) that I am not opposed to either. I understand and see the value in broad-scope standardised assessment that can be used at a macro level (district, state, nation) to give a snapshot of student achievement. I don’t support the high-stakes component of such testing that requires every student in every class in every designated grade to take the test or see the school subjected to penalties or fines. And I don’t particularly think that the standardised assessments as we give them are the best way to assess students. (In fact, I am much more in favour of dynamic measures that get increasingly complex as students demonstrate mastery so that I know where my students are actually at instead of, as is often the case, where they are not.)
And you will never find me speaking ill of rigourous standards for learning, such as the Common Core State Standards, even if I believe that they have some flaws. Finally, let me remind you that standards do not dictate curricula and curricula do not dictate how I teach; standards tell me where my students should be, curricula provide a roadmap for getting there, but, ultimately, I am the one who makes the instructional decisions in my classroom.
So, with all of that said, I’ve noticed three typical approaches from my students as we have started this testing cycle: some students want to rush through and just be done with it. Some take every second possible to respond then check and re-check their work. Most students are somewhere in the middle. Some students want to do well because they care deeply about always doing everything well. Some honestly don’t care. Most want to do well because they know it is what their parents and teachers want.
Here’s the thing, though: it is only a test. Or, more specifically, it is only a test. One of the most common themes about testing I have heard in my school district since I started working here in 2011 is that we never define any of our students by one metric, one rubric, one test, one datum. We look at all of the data. We look at all of the students’ work. We look at students as a group and we look at their individual work. The Urbana School District #116 mission statement says, in part, that we will “ensure that all learners acquire knowledge, develop skills, and build character to achieve personal greatness.” I have been told that the last two words were coined by an Urbana High School student.
“Personal greatness.”
I don’t compare my students to each other. I don’t compare them to their siblings, older or younger. I don’t compare them to other students. I don’t compare them to their parents or other family members. I only compare them to themselves. I want to see each of my students achieve personal greatness by doing better tomorrow than they did yesterday. Each day a chance for learning, for improvement, for growth.
And the tests?
They are just tests. They just let me know where they are in that one small moment. The test scores help me plan instruction, they help me know how to help my students learn. They guide and inform, but they never define.
“This has been a test. This has only been a test of the Emergency Alert System. In the case of an actual emergency, you would be directed to tune in to your local news agency. Again, this has been a test.”
It Is Just One Test
As the instructional technology specialist in my building, I have taken it upon myself to try out a lot of different online learning tools over the past few years. One of the tools that I have used most frequently has been Front Row. (And no, I have not told them I am writing this post nor have I asked them for any kind of compensation for it.) I have written about Front Row a handful of times in the past, discussing some of the different features that are available.
One feature that was not available on the free teacher edition has been the assessment tool. This allows teachers to select specific standards or all of the standards and administer an online test of student knowledge. Due to a special promotion, I was able to gain access to this special feature between now and the end of the school year, so I decided to try it out. Because we are approaching the end of the third quarter, I wanted to get a wide-angle view of where my students are at in their progress toward our end of the year math goals, so I created an assessment that covered every single math standard.
I knew that the assessment was designed so that the students would be given one problem per standard, which meant that a lot of them would be scored on a pass/fail. I also knew that there were many standards I have not explicitly taught in my classroom yet, but I wanted to see what my students have picked up since they have been working on all five of the foundational domains in math all year long.
What I found was that many of them did not perform very well. In fact, the class average was 46%.
But this was also just one test. Just one assessment. Just one quick snapshot of what they were doing at that time. One test does not tell the whole story. It never has and it never will.
When I looked at the results, some of them were incorrect because the students did not mark every correct answer on problems that had more one. Sometimes it was a simple computational error. (I took the assessment myself and scored a 95% because I misread a few of the problems and had at least one computational error). Do such poor results mean that my students have not been learning? Do the results indicate that I have been failing to do my job as a teacher? Do they mean that my school is underperforming? To all three of these questions, I respond with a resounding no, of course not!
What it means is that this was just one test taken the day after an unexpected day off that came as the result of a severe snowstorm that itself had come on the heels of a weekend in February during which the temperature reached close to 70° F! It also means that I now have a better sense of where I need to focus my energies over the next several weeks.
I use a lot of different tools to assess my students’ knowledge of our fourth grade math standards. I appreciate being able to try out this tool that Front Row has available and am looking forward to using it in different ways in the coming weeks and months. (For example, I am going to be creating new math groups soon and I will be able to have differentiated assessments for each group to monitor their progress.) I just hope that my students remember that, when it comes to testing, it is just one test. One test never tells the whole story.
What online assessment tools have you found to be useful?
Meaningful Assessments
Teachers do a lot of assessing. Some will argue that we do too much assessing, while others still argue that we don’t do enough. I find myself, as usual, somewhere in the middle. I think that we do too much assessing on criteria that aren’t particularly useful and not enough that will meaningfully impact our instructional decisions. I have been trying to change this in my own classroom and work my schedule in such a way that I can quickly grab snapshots of what my students can do (assessing them) without it taking away from instructional time. This kind of formative assessment is useful when done well and just a waste of time when done poorly.
I’d like to think that I conduct formative assessments well more times than not.
One of the types of formative assessment I have been trying to use more consistently is the oral reading record, also known as the running record or the reading record. The process is fairly straightforward: students are given a reading passage that is at their current instructional level and they are directed to read it aloud. As they read, the teacher makes notes of errors, self-corrections, and repetitions while also timing how long it takes to read. The goal in fourth grade is for students to read 120 or more words per minute with 98% or better accuracy. After the student is done reading, the teacher may ask a few comprehension questions to determine how well the student understood the text. This information is then recorded and tracked over time. The goal is to see students increasing their oral reading fluency, accuracy, and comprehension while also reading more complex texts.
The challenge is that all of this takes time. Teachers can’t assess multiple students at once, so that they have to be able to set aside the time to let each student read individually. Students who are not reading with the teacher need to be engaged in tasks that are meaningful (positively impact their learning) and worthwhile (valuable to them as learners).
I tried something new today that I felt worked pretty well. All week, students have been reading a short text in their guided reading groups. After discussing plot elements such as characters, setting, genre, and the key events of the story. Today I had each student read a brief passage from the text to me. I meet with each of my five reading groups for 15 minutes a day. Each group has between four and seven students. Because the passages were only about 100 words in length, I was able to have all of my students read aloud to me when they came to me during their group’s assigned times. When not reading aloud, the students worked on a vocabulary sheet that connected to the text. After everyone in the group had read, we were able to go over the worksheet together. The students then took the worksheets with them and added the vocabulary words to their working document they are making with Google Slides that helps them keep track of new vocabulary words.
The key to these assessments, however, and what will make them formative, or, as my superintendent and my district director of curriculum, instruction, and assessment like to call them, informative, is that I will be sharing the results with my students on Monday when I meet with their groups again and introduce new texts. Students need to know how they did, what the goals are, and what they need to do better. Otherwise, we are just assessing to assess, and that is neither worthwhile nor meaningful.
How have you made the assessment process, whether formal or informal, more meaningful for you and those you assess, whether they are students, employees, employers, or other?
Jumping Right In
Apologies for not writing anything last Friday. As soon as I got done working with students for the day I was asked to set up Chromebook carts for three teachers in our building. Then I had to leave for a wedding rehearsal and dinner (my wife’s best friend got married on Saturday). By the time we got home it was late and I was exhausted and I simply collapsed in my bed. I fully expected to get a post written on Saturday but the aforementioned wedding took up the whole day, then we went to Indianapolis on Sunday. So if you are an avid reader, my sincerest apologies. I promise I was doing things that were valuable and worthwhile!
Today was our first Monday, which means it was the start of the first full week of school. After three days of setting expectations, establishing norms, and rehearsing procedures, we were ready to just jump right into things! We started the day with our traditional journal writing, followed by a morning meeting in which students got to share with one another what they did over the weekend.
Then it was time for a Big Thing: our first Major Assessment of the Year. I am planning on using a workshop model for math this year with lots of small group instruction instead of the traditional whole-class lecture format. In order to organise my students into groups, however, I need to know what they know! So I used a useful assessment tool I found a couple of years ago. It is a fourth grade baseline assessment. It starts off with a review of third grade standards, such as basic addition, subtraction, and multiplication facts, and then transitions to more and more difficult concepts, including dividing with and without remainders and adding and subtracting money. It is not an assessment of all fourth grade learning standards, however. It is simply a tool to establish where students are at. My wonderful aide, Ms.K, helped me grade all of them so that I can look over the data this evening and create my first math groups.
I’m excited to try this new format for teaching math this year and I hope that my students find it worthwhile, too!
Determining What’s Important
Several years ago, I helped some friends of mine load a trailer they were using when they moved across the country. They were using a relatively small U-Haul trailer that they hooked to the hitch of their minivan. In preparing to move, they packed their belongings and put them into three categories: things that they had to take, things that they would have liked to take, and things that they would be forced to leave behind. I was in charging of loading the trailer and, using my excellent moving skills, was able to load all of their “must haves,” all of their “nice to haves” and half of their “too bad we can’t haves.” (I have helped dozens of friends move over the years and have gotten really good at loading moving trucks, trailers, and vans.)
I think about this experience often as the end of the year swiftly approaches. Teachers start looking at their standards, which serve as a roadmap to instruction, and think about what’s really important and what’s nice but not actually necessary. There are some things that I know I have to teach them because not teaching those skills and concepts will set them up for difficulty in future years. In our district, we refer to these as “safety net skills.” Then there are things that I would like to be able to teach my students because I believe it is useful. In considering these things, I’ve also been thinking a lot about the shifts in instruction when we adopted the Common Core State Standards many years ago.
Friends and family often ask me what I think about the Common Core. My answer is always that I am a strong advocate, even if there are aspects of the standards that I think need to be tweaked. I am also open about saying that while I value assessment, I don’t think the “high stakes” nature of standardised assessment is good practice and I think there are better ways to use standardised assessments to inform stakeholders of student growth.
Even though I have been teaching the Common Core State Standards since I started at Wiley, I am constantly evaluating and re-evaluating my curriculum and the resources I use to teach. And sometimes I come to a new, deeper understanding of the major shifts in focus under these standards. This process helps me continually refine what I consider to be important and what I consider to be simply nice to know.
As we have been working through our math unit on fractions, this has become particularly important to me. The Common Core standard for fourth grade that focuses on equivalent fractions says this: “Explain why a fraction a/b is equivalent to a fraction (n × a)/(n × b) by using visual fraction models, with attention to how the number and size of the parts differ even though the two fractions themselves are the same size. Use this principle to recognize and generate equivalent fractions.”
The gist of this standard is that students should be able to find equivalent fractions by multiplying the numerator and denominator by the same number or by dividing them by the same number. Students will use this knowledge to generalise their understanding of fraction equivalency.
What the standard does not say is that students must be able to simplify fractions and represent them in lowest form. In fact, this skill is not required at any grade level.
So why do we still teach it? Why is it attached to so many assessments? Why is it something that teachers spend days and weeks on, trying to get their students to grasp the concept?
I honestly don’t have a good answer. I know that my math book provides lessons on this skill and therefore many teachers present it because it is in the book. But that’s not a good reason to teach something. I also know that the learning standards do not tell me what to teach or even how to teach it. The standards are simply targets for the end of the year. The analogy I often use is that of driving a car. I have a destination in mind (the standards), but how I choose to get there, what vehicle I decide to drive, how fast I decide to go, and any stops I may make along the way, that is all up to me. So maybe I will teach my students to find a fraction in simplest form because it involves using other skills that I value.
But when it gets down to crunch time, I am going to be evaluating where we are, where we need to go, and what is really important. The standards aren’t going to tell me that information. That is something that comes from professional judgment, knowing my class, and understanding what is really important, what is nice to know, and what isn’t really all that important.
PARCC Testing – Day Four
As a test administrator for the PARCC exams, I have an obligation to actively monitor the testing environment throughout the exam period. That means that I need to move throughout the room and ensure that students are doing their own work, maintaining respect of others’ space, and not talking to others.
Because students are testing in the computer lab, I could just position myself at one spot in the back of the room and keep an eye on all of the students, but I have learned in my career that a part of actively monitoring is maintaining proximity. So instead of just sitting in one place, I have been walking throughout the computer lab. That means I have done a lot of walking this week!
I tried to use a pedometer yesterday to see how many steps I took, but I apparently selected the one pedometer in my classroom that was broken. It only recorded four steps for the 90 minutes the students were testing. Since I know it is more than 4 steps to cross from my room to the computer lab, I knew that numbers were not recorded.
So today I pulled out two different pedometers and used both of them while testing was going on. The students had 60 minutes to complete the first math section today. One pedometer logged 2,593 students. The other logged 3,821 steps. Averaging the two and then rounding, I can safely guess I walked something in the neighbourhood of 3,200 steps. Since each step I take is about 2.5 feet, I walked 8,000 feet or nearly 2,670 yards. That is more than twice the length of a football field. That is also about 1.5 miles, or the distance between my school and the Urbana Meijer.
That’s a lot of walking!
Assuming I do that much walking or more each day of testing, I can estimate that I will have logged over 7.5 miles in the computer lab this week!
One more test session this week!
PARCC Testing – Day Three
Today was the last English/Language Arts section of the PARCC Performance-Based Assessment. (The PBA is designed with an expectation that students have been exposed to approximately 75% of the curriculum at this point and is intended to assess their level of performance at this point. The End-of-Year assessment will be in May and will have a format and questions that are more like what we currently think of as annual high-stakes standardised testing.)
The third ELA unit focused on narrative writing. This is a skill that we have spent a lot of time on in my room, including an intensive writers’ workshop unit designed by Lucy Calkins that Mrs. DeHart helped introduce. Because of this, I wasn’t too worried about how my students would do with writing narratives. However, I did remind them, before we started testing, that they should always go back and read their stories again to see if they make sense and to check for any additional details that could be added.
While they were testing, I was doing what I’ve been doing for three days now: walking around the computer lab, monitoring individual students and ensuring that nobody was talking or otherwise disrupting the testing environment. (Even though I repeatedly tell my students that PARCC is not the end-all, be-all of their educational careers, I still want them to take it seriously and avoid distractions.) I decided to use a pedometer while circulating the lab today, so that I could see how many steps I actually took. I reset my pedometer, and started circulating. After about 20 minutes I decided to check it.
It would appear my pedometer is broken. It didn’t record a single step! I was disappointed, but I am going to try to find a new one tomorrow so I can see how many steps I take. I don’t know if I will cross 10.000, but I am hoping to at least exceed 5,000 steps!
Happy Wednesday! We are officially more than halfway through our testing week!
PARCC Testing – Day One
Concern about the latest incarnation of high-stakes standardised testing has been at a frenzy over the past several months. The same type of testing that has existed (albeit without the high stakes) in our nation since at least the mid-1930s. The same type of testing that has been a major part of our national educational conscience since the late 1980s when the Reagan administration released A Nation at Risk and then the first Bush administration released America 2000 followed by the Clinton administration’s Goals 2000 before we finally settled on the second Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind.
The names of the tests have changed, the format and content have changed, but the test themselves have been around for a long time. Now that the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) have been fully adopted, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) has developed an assessment aligned to the CCSS that Illinois has, along with 17 other states, adopted as our high-stakes standardised test.
And because it is new and because of a hundred million reasons, it seems like everyone has been going crazy over the tests, talking about opting out, refusing to do it, the possible impact it will have on our schools and our students, and whether or not we are ready.
Some schools have devoted weeks, even months to test preparation. Some districts have paid large sums of money for test prep kits and modules. There are some states that are tying students exam results to teacher evaluation and student promotion. These are all decisions with which I disagree.
What did we do in my tiny fourth grade classroom on the edge of east central Illinois? We looked at the math and English/Language Arts (ELA) modules available on the PARCC website and we did a tutorial on how to use the online tools.
That’s all.
Otherwise, our days have gone as usual. Math at the start of the morning, social studies or science in the middle of the morning, literacy at the end of the morning. Lunch then a read aloud before fine arts. Ending the day with writing. Other tasks and activities sprinkled liberally throughout the day. Just doing what we do every day, some of it very productively and some of it needed to be revised before trying it again.
And then the day of testing arrived.
My class was the first one scheduled to start the day, with the students doing the first ELA section. (There are three ELA sections and two mathematics sections.) We had a breakfast snack in the morning and I made sure every student had a chance to use the restroom. Then we headed across the hall to the computer lab. My principal was there. And my librarian. And my reading interventionist. And my instructional coach. And my superintendent. Wow. No pressure, right?
The students came in quietly, took their seats, and followed my directions. We got them logged in, and then they get started. There were no disruptions, no distractions, and no problems. My students know how to use technology. They know how to navigate websites. They know how to access digital tools that are made available.
Was the test itself easy for every? No, not really.
Am I worried about the test results? No, not really.
Do I think that high-stakes standardised testing of all students is necessary? No, not really.
Do I think this is something that teachers, administrators, parents, or students should be anxious about? No, not really.
I keep thinking about the letter about PARCC testing that my superintendent recently distributed to all families in the district and shared on our district web site. Specifically, I am thinking about this line:
“We do not allow one assessment to define our students, our teachers, or our schools.”
And at the end of the day, as I sit in my empty classroom and think about what the rest of this week will bring, I keep reminding myself of one simple truth: My students did their best. How can I possibly expect them to do anything more than that?
Math Test
We took a math test this afternoon and because I didn’t have an answer key readily available, I include myself in the “we” at the start of this sentence. (I was the first one done, incidentally.) When I looked at the original test, I realised that nearly half of it included very text-heavy word problems. I did not like that because the assessment was of my students’ ability to perform addition and subtraction with greater numbers. It was a math computation test, not a reading test.
So I just cut out the first page of the test. That left them with two word problems, several computation problems, a handful of place value questions, and a few items looking at rounding and comparing numbers. The last problem was a more complex one, asking the students to determine if the equation was correct or not. It involved addition multiple sets of numbers with different grouping. I told the class that it would be worth up to five extra credit points. This was the problem:
9,278 + (847 + 766) = (9,278 + 766) + 847
I was curious to know if anyone student could identify the specific reasons for the statement being true (1 pt) namely that the associative property of addition tells us that we can change groups (2 pts) and the commutative property tells us that we can change the order of the addends (2 pts). I had quite a few students who identified one property or another and several others who knew it was true but weren’t able to quite capture the vocabulary (they earned 2 pts total).
The most important thing, for me, though, was whether or not they understood place value and the algorithms for adding and subtracting large numbers. I learned that several students still struggle with the subtraction algorithm, so I will work with them in small groups while others are using FrontRow and XtraMath for independent practice.
I am always glad when a math test actually gives me useful data! Sometimes I use a test that, as I look through the results, turns out to have been rather unhelpful. This was not such a test. And having the technological resources to assist in reteaching and supplementing are absolutely helping!
Have a great weekend!
Assessmentpalooza
For all the negative press that assessment in school gets, and for all the heated rhetoric used, I, as an educator, cannot avoid this one very simple point: there is simply no way I can teach without assessing. If I don’t know what my students know, how will I know what to teach in the first place? If I don’t know what they have learned, how will I know if they are ready to move on to new topics? If I don’t know how well they can do something, how will I be able to give them appropriately challenging material?
Now, some may argue that all of the negativity about assessing is actually directed toward high-stakes, one-time standardised testing. I can accept that there are probably better ways to collect large-scale data than what has been used for many years, but I also recognise that large-scale data is important for informing education policy. I am excited about the upcoming changes that are on the horizon, as I believe they will begin to provide better options for such assessment.
Because I understand the need for appropriate assessment so that I can better plan my teaching, I know that there will be times during the year when I will have to more assessment than other times. Today was one of those times. It was the last day of the third quarter, which means we have just a couple of months left before the end of school. I worked with my grade-level partner to develop some math and literacy assessments that we wanted to use with both of our classes to give an idea of where our students are at and where we need to go during the last quarter.
My students took the literacy assessment on Tuesday while I was serving as an election judge. They had to read a couple of short passages and answer questions to show comprehension, understanding of main idea, sentence structure, and grammatical elements. I had them take the math assessment today. It covered the wide range of math concepts and skills expected of fourth graders, such as operations, base-ten, fractions, decimals, measurement, data, and geometry. On top of these broad-range assessments, we also finished a unit on division of multi-digit whole numbers by a single-digit divisor, so I gave my students a quiz on this skill in the morning.
The results of these assessments will be used as I plan for the fourth quarter over the coming week. As the quarter gets underway, I will continue to monitor my students’ progress, assess them at appropriate intervals, and find as many ways as possible for them to demonstrate their understanding. Assessments are not the purpose of teaching, nor are they the final word in determining where a student is in their learning, but they are important tools to guide planning and provide snapshots of what the students are doing, both as a whole and as an individual.
While I am planning for the fourth quarter, I hope everyone takes time to enjoy the warm weather during Spring Break! I will certainly be doing more than lesson planning! I hope to get out of doors as often as possible and encourage everyone else to do the same!
How I Prepared for ISATs
This is my third year at Wiley and therefore my third year administering the Illinois Standards Achievement Tests, also known as ISATs. This is also going to be my final year administering the ISATs, due to the implementation of the Common Core State Standards and the associated Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) tests that we will be switching to next year.
In previous years, I have blogged about my students experiences during the four days of ISAT testing. But since I’ve done that twice already and the format hasn’t really changed all that much, I thought I’d focus on what I am doing as a teacher during these tests, instead. (If you are interested in what the students are doing, you can check my archive of ISAT posts here. And yes, I did think we were going to be doing PARCC this year. Sorry to any of my former fourth graders who read my posts a year ago and thought they wouldn’t be doing ISATs this year!)
While my students were taking their Reading I and Mathematics I tests today, I found myself thinking about how I prepared for the exams. Obviously, I am not taking them personally, so I didn’t need to study or prepare for testing. No, I needed to prepare for four days of doing the exact opposite of what I am used to doing as a teacher: sharing, listening, discussing, explaining, responding, guiding, prompting, scaffolding, and answering. I still have to explain, but I am limited by the script that is provided for test administrators. I can prompt, but only in basic terms. I can answer, but often the answer is simply, “I’m sorry, I can’t tell you that. Just read the directions/question again and do your best.” So I had to mentally prepare myself for holding back and letting my students do it entirely on their own.
Even though I am not spending seven hours a day on my feet and talking to students, I still need to eat breakfast and keep up my energy. It may seem weird, but, quite honestly, it is exhausting to monitor students during a test! You have to be ever vigilant in making sure that they are following testing protocols, keep an eye out for students marking answers in the wrong spot or skipping a single line and not realising it until several questions later, and making sure nobody gets out of their seat until the test is totally done. So just like my students, I make sure I get plenty of rest the night before and eat a healthy breakfast. (And a huge thank you to our amazing PTA that provides morning snacks!)
I also prepare what I am going to wear for the week. Yes, I know it sounds weird, but it is one of those things that I started doing three years ago and just keep on doing. The first year, I decided to wear college hoodies all week, in honour of March Madness. I wore shirts with inspirational messages last year to motivate the students to keep their morale up throughout the week. I decided to do the same thing this year. I started this year with my hoodie from the Illinois Teen Institute that I got a few years back that just says “positive” on the front. Simple but important: during testing, I want my students to maintain a positive attitude and I need me to maintain one, too! I’ll be wearing clothing with similar messages all week, so no ties, no cardigans, and no vests. (I know, crazy, right?!)
I’ll also be getting some professional reading done during the week. I have gotten fairly proficient at reading an article or book and keeping an eye on students at the same time. I decided to get to some of the books I got around Christmas time, and am starting Todd Whitaker’s What Great Teachers Do Differently.” If I am able to finish this week (it is a fairly short text, after all), I will try to tackle some other books, too, like Lost at School and Teach Like a Champion.
So that’s how I’ve prepared myself. I don’t know if other teachers do similar things or completely different things, but it works for me!
Reading Closely and Writing Extensively
We are getting down to the wire before ISAT week is upon us! Just four more days of school, a regular two-day weekend, and then we are starting! As I told my class this morning, we are definitely doing prep work for the test, but not in the traditional way. I am not giving my students practice tests, we aren’t honing our bubble sheet skills, and we aren’t stopping the regular sequence of classroom instruction to get ready for the exams. Instead, we are using this time to practice skills that are part of our learning targets anyway but will be helpful on the ISATs.
Today we started our week-long exploration of extended writing based on close reading of texts. We recently finished our fourth thematic unit in our reading series, and one of the wrap-up activities ties directly into this practice of reading closely and writing extensively. Before working independently, though, I reviewed some of the key concepts of these skills with the whole class.
We talked about the fact that nobody ever remembers every single detail from every single story they read, so it is important to read and then reread. We talked about marking important details related to the question while reading the first time and then skimming the text to find supporting details when reading a second or even third time. We focused on how important it is to write down or otherwise note the key details that related to the question.
Then I shared strategies for organising one’s thoughts. I pointed out that while I could give them printed graphic organisers now, I want them to think about ways they can make their own organisers on blank paper, whether Venn diagrams or T-charts or concept maps or just lists. And we also discussed how we can tie our own ideas and understanding to our responses as long as we can find evidence from the text to support them.
After reviewing all of the things we have talked about all year about writing in response to reading, it was time for the students to try it on their own. I gave them a full 45 minutes to review the stories, find evidence for their argument, plan, and write their responses. I gave notices of time as they worked and was really glad to see so many students pacing themselves appropriately. Some finished earlier than others, of course, but all took the writing task seriously. As papers were turned in, I looked over them and saw that most understood the task, some started but didn’t quite complete, and only a few need some more specific guidance on writing extensively on a topic. And though ISATs are less than a week away, we still have plenty of time before the end of the year to master this type of writing!
Expressing Mathematical Thinking
As much as I would like to wish that the regular course of classroom instruction will adequately prepare my students for the standardised testing administered during the first week of March, the reality of the situation is that my regular teaching methods only prepare them for the content. The format of standardised tests is typically considerably different than what we use in the classroom. The reason for this is simple: I believe in differentiated instruction (teaching that meets the needs of my students where they are at) and that means I also need to utilise differentiated assessment (determining their understanding through various strategies). Standardised tests, on the other hand, assess all students the same way at the same time. Testing in this format is useful for generating massive data across a broad spectrum and gives educators a large-scale view of student understanding at that moment. From a small-scale view, though, there are more useful tools for assessment.
All of this is why I find it worthwhile to take time during the couple of weeks leading up to our annual testing to prepare my students for format of the test. This isn’t such a bad thing, though. I believe it is useful for students to get used to the idea that different circumstances call for different responses. Just as we discuss that the language we use at home may be different from the language we use at school, or the way we dress for a wedding may be different from the way we dress for a day at the pool, we discuss that the way we do an assessment in the classroom for our own use is different than the way we do an assessment for that the state is using.
Of course, that doesn’t mean I am going to just stop what we are doing and do test prep that isn’t related to our learning goals. Instead, I incorporate the prep into our curriculum. In fact, I incorporate elements of this prep throughout the year but as we get closer, the incorporation becomes more explicit. Knowing that multi-step word problems are often a challenge for fourth graders, and knowing that they are a common feature of the state tests, I decided now was a great time to focus on them.
We started today with making T-charts to organise the steps for solving arithmetic problems. There are a lot of ways that T-charts can be used, but I like to use them for extended math responses because they let students keep track of what they are doing on one side of the paper and how or why they did it on the other side. Many of my students have used T-charts in the past, so it was fairly easy to introduce them as a tool for expressing their mathematical thinking. We have also been working on expressing mathematical thinking verbally for several months, but this is the first time we have really focused on writing those thoughts down. I had the class use the T-charts first with arithmetic problems. We will continue with them throughout the week as we work through one-step word problems before getting to the multi-step problems. We will also explore alternative strategies for solving the same problem. All of these are things that will help my students be stronger mathematical thinkers, but they will also help them be better prepared for the standardised tests in just a few weeks.
The Best-Laid Schemes
When it comes to poetry, I am becoming more and more a fan of the famous Scottish poet, Robert Burns. I once heard someone recite a poem by him in the Scottish accent that was contemporary to the author. It was fantastically wonderful! I admit that I am not well-versed in all of his works, but there is one poem, that is probably one of his most famous, that always captures my attention: To A Mouse, On Turning Her Up In Her Nest With The Plough. The stanza near the end is especially dear to me:
But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain;
The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley,
An’lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
I am reading a book by Christopher Paul Curtis, The Mighty Miss Malone, and the line about things going “aft agley” is a common theme. The main character of the story, Deza Malone, often wonders what it means for things to go “aft agley.” By the end of the story, though, she figures it out.
I see things go aft agley quite often as a teacher. Despite all of my best-laid schemes, things have a way of going completely askew without me really getting a chance to right them in advance. Today is just one example. I had planned on giving my students a math test this afternoon, as we have finished our mini-unit in geometry on quadrilaterals. I made copies of the exam early, had everything ready, made sure we had plenty of time, passed them out, and got my class started on the simple 10-question exam that we had reviewed for.
And then someone pointed out that the answers were visible on the paper.
You see, teachers’ editions of assessment materials have the answers printed on the page, often in light blue or pink, so that they don’t get copied by the machine. Unless, of course, the machine is super-sensitive and picks up everything. Which, apparently, our photocopier does. Well, I couldn’t just leave my class to make new copies, and I didn’t have a back-up plan for the period of time for the test, and I also didn’t want to just waste the time we had. So I asked my students to treat it as a practice test, do it on their own, and then use the faintly-printed answers to check their work.
The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley!
It all worked out in the end and we will be able to move onward, ever onward next week, but, you know, that is one of the secrets to teaching: you have to just go with the flow, adjust as needed, and always remember that tomorrow is another day!
Motivation
As we get closer and closer to the last day of school, I am finding that it is not always easy to motivate my students to keep working hard every single day. Most of them want to get work done, but when it is 80 degrees out, it is really hard to focus. I’ve found this is true even in the morning when it is still cool outside. I have to be honest: I’d rather be outside, too, but there are more important things to do.
My students have been working on mastering the fundamental concepts associated with fractions for the past few weeks. One of these concepts involves adding and subtracting fractions with like denominators. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, we have been repeating this mantra nearly every day:
When adding or subtracting fractions with like denominators, the denominator DOES NOT CHANGE!
I was talking to a retired teacher today who frequently subs in our building and I mentioned that I still had several students who were adding or subtracting the denominators, despite our oft-repeated mantra. She suggested an interesting way for motivating students to solve the problems the right way: give them a test ad tell them that if they change the denominators, they will get a homework sheet full of practice problems and then take another test the next. If necessary, repeat this process every day until the very last day of school. (This is, incidentally, a strategy that one of the first grade teachers has started using with her students.)
I had already planned on testing the students on this critical skill today, so before they started, I wrote the mantra on the board and then told them my plan. I then passed out the assessment and watched as the students got started!
It worked! Everyone followed the rule of adding or subtracting the numerators and leaving the denominators as they are. I was very pleased and now I am more hopeful that we will be able to wrap up fractions this week and get started with decimals next week!
Half-Day
We don’t have very many half-days of school these days. When I was younger, it seemed like it happened on a regular basis. As a district, we have monthly staff inservice meetings that go all day for the elementary grades, but the middle school has half-days. But at the grade schools? We just don’t do them that often.
Today, though, was a half-day. The students arrived at 8:10, classes started at 8:15, and then they were dismissed at 12:45, which was an hour after lunch for the primary grades and fifteen minutes after lunch for the intermediate grades. Despite having a much shorter day, we had a very busy day!
We started the day reviewing our week’s spelling/vocabulary words (all with suffixes -ful, -ness, and/or -less. Then we had our weekly spelling test. As soon as the spelling test was done, it was time for our monthly Coyote College assembly. The “Duct Tape Divas” shared a video about the upcoming students-vs-teachers kickball game at the end of the month, and the second grade classes did a fantastic dance that they learned with our music/dance/drama teacher.
Following the assembly, the students took a math test on equivalent fractions and comparing fractions. We have been working on these skills for a couple of weeks now, and I am glad that the class as a whole is making progress. After the test, we watched a science video about weather and climate, and then I read a few sections of Wonder until lunch. Unfortunately, we had to leave off at one of the saddest parts of the entire story, which is when the Pullmans’ dog, Daisy, dies.I felt really bad stopping at that point, but it was time for lunch.
The day ended with the students gathering their mail, cleaning up the room, and getting their things. At least, the day ended for the students. I, along with the other staff in the building, had an afternoon of inservice training on the Charlotte Danielson Framework for Teaching. I’ve been learning about the Danielson Framework for about a year now, but it was nice to sit down with my colleagues and discuss the domains and share ideas about what they look like in practice.
It was a wonderful day with quite a bit of work done by both students and teachers! Have a wonderful weekend!
Multi-Digit Arithmetic
One of the core math standards that fourth graders are expected to demonstrate mastery of is performing multi-digit arithmetic using the four basic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division). While we have been working on multi-digit arithmetic all year, we are getting down to the wire and that means it is time to kick the end-of-year assessments into high gear.
I am a very strong believer in the counsel that education guru Harry K. Wong offers: teachers should eagerly beg, borrow, and steal from one another, especially when it comes to assessment materials! Unfortunately, I was not able to find any good assessments that use all four operations.
So I did what any good teacher does: I made my own. I am going to be saving it as a pdf and posting it online later so that other teachers can find it. In the meantime, if you are interested, shoot me an email and I’ll send you what I made!
My multi-digit arithmetic assessment was simple but complete: five problems for each of the four basic operations, for a total of twenty problems. I gave the students 45 minutes to work, which was plenty of time for the vast majority of the class. (A few still needed more time, and I took advantage of our America Reads/America Counts tutors to let them finish after lunch.
As students turned in their assessments, I began checking the work. I was very happy to see that nearly everyone has mastery of addition and subtraction, most have mastery of multiplication, and many have mastery of division. I was able to group the quizzes in such a way that I can work with my students in targeted small group settings over the next few days. While there is much that needs to be taught to the entire class in order to help them all reach the same standards, differentiation is so key to successful education! I’m glad that I was able to put this simple assessment together. It gave me a great snapshot of my students’ progress so I have a better idea of what I need to teach over the last six full weeks of school!
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