I am so excited that we are back in school, but I am so ready for some normalcy with my schedule already. Our first day back was Monday after having two weeks off for winter break. Don't get me wrong, the two weeks was fabulous and I was able to really take some me time. I will be the first to admit, I read four books over the break. It was so nice to finally read books that I wanted to read and not all of my textbooks from grad school.
I am just ready for a normal week. Monday was spent retraining my 6th grade friends because it seems that they magically forgot several of our classroom rules and procedures. Today was spent in the library. On my campus we go every three weeks. This just happened to be the 6th grade week. I was actually supposed to go on Monday too, but I thought that was not such a good idea. Tomorrow will be spent taking our district benchmark, and Thursday happens to be an early release for our County Stock Show. Did I mention we do not have school on Friday either because of the stock show? Only in small town Texas.
I am ready for a normal week because both my kids and I need it. It is amazing to me at what a crazy week does to all of us.
I was also curious as to how district benchmarks work in your district. Are these something that are pre-created for you through your curriculum, do you have to create them yourselves, or does someone in your district create them for you? I am going to be working with our instructional coach over the next few weeks to write a common assessment for my grade level. I am hoping that the process ends up not being too difficult and that it ends up being something that becomes easy for me.
Happy almost Wednesday!
We have district committees that teachers volunteer to be on to give their input for district tests. The committees recommend to the district and then we get the tests to use. The tests are based off of the different standards and use some of the released test questions from the state tests.
ReplyDeleteIt's sort of a combination. We worked in curricular teams to create them, but now that we are working towards CCSS implementation, we are working with our staff developers at the TC Reading & Writing Project to adopt their performance assessments. Right now we're in this weird middle place where we need to sort of align them to our state test, while we simultaneously work towards understanding how to assess the new standards and determine where our kids are in relation to them for curricular planning purposes.
ReplyDeleteI know exactly what you mean by a normal, routine week!
I work in a charter school, so we only have one building to worry about. Our Department Heads make all of our unit tests to align with the state standardized test, and we give them as common assessments. They use multiple state websites to get questions. We also take practice state tests twice a year, which come from released questions.
ReplyDeleteI typically also do my own assessments because I feel the standardized tests aren't the best measure of my students' knowledge. I already know my students read below grade level, and it's impossible form them to score well on these tests if they can't comprehend the reading. So, I prefer to assess them with leveled reading passages so I can measure their mastery of each GLE rather than just their reading comprehension.
Our tiny Florida district does not have any district level people to work on assessmentsso they are created through a consortium we belong to. We have no input at this point. Florida also has online assessments based on the benchmarks that are helpful for preparation or as mini-assessments. I've just come back to the clssroom after 6 years as a high school Reading coach and am thrilled to be there tending just to the needs of my 7th graders. Keep on blogging--- I enjoy reading what you post!
ReplyDeleteUp until this point we have had to create our own assessments. We just got a district made pre-assessment that we have to give prior to teaching our next unit. The process of making the assessments hasn't gone well, so I am hoping we will be able to actually look at our data now.
ReplyDeleteI am anxious to read how this all pans out. I am in a small district in Texas and we are starting to implement a tutorial program after school to help the kids prepare for standardized state testing. However..... seeing as the information from the state about the pass rate is incomplete I sort of feel like we are shooting into the dark. Boooooo
ReplyDeleteI hear you about being in a "normal" school schedule---esp the part about being out of school for stock shows! Only in Texas!!!!!!
I have really enjoyed your blog. I have taught sixth grade for 9 years. The first 7 I did 50 minute periods and now I have 2 different groups of kids. :)
ReplyDeleteOne thing I love that is unrealated to teaching is selling Thirty-One Gifts. It is AWESOME!! Everyone LOVES bags and it is great extra money that comes in handy when being a teacher. If you know anyone who is interested in making some extra cash let me know. If they tell me they saw this on your blog, I'll send you $50 if they join my team! :)
I love 6th grade too...all the ups and downs!! :)
Kristen
krichardson31gifts@gmail.com or
krichardsoncm@c3bb.com
I also teach at a small town school in Texas. I am the head reading teacher of the 5th grade. We actually have a test every 6 weeks to test what we have covered so far that year.
ReplyDeleteI have put the tests together so far this year and I have been pulling alot from the Study Island program. I have also found some STAAR aligned books that I bought and put together tests from them. This year has been a little rough and stressful to get all of the tests and benchmarks together, but I figure I'll have them for the future.
I will definitely be sending positive thoughts your way through the process though!
I have created a Blog Log for Middle School Teachers. Click here if you might want to join or find out more info. http://www.2peasandadog.blogspot.ca/p/middle-school-blog-log.html
ReplyDeleteHappy Blogging
Hey Katie,
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if this is what you're referring to or not, but in Rice Lake, WI, grades K-8, we use the Fountas and Pinnell Benchmark Assessment system. The kit comes with a fiction and a non-fiction book for reading levels A-Z (There are actually 2 different kits. One is A-K and the other is L-Z, or something close to that). Every book comes with a running record where the teacher records everything that the student does while reading (errors, substitutions, repeats, rereads, self-corrects, sounds it out, etc.). You literally record everything the student does. The student reads half of the book out loud to you and then the rest of the book they read silently. While the student is reading silently you tally up their errors, self-corrects, the self-correction ratio, and give them a fluency rating. After they finish reading silently, you have a conversation with them asking within the text, beyond the text, and about the text questions. The student now how an accuracy percentage from their oral reading and a comprehension score out of 10. This lines up on a chart to tell you if the text is at their independent reading level, instructional reading level, or "hard" reading level. We move up and down levels until we find the students' highest instructional level, which is where we work with them at during guided reading. The benchmark assessment test is really nice because it is not just your basic standardized test, it gives you A LOT of information about each of your students as far as their fluency, their reading habits, if they self-correct their reading for meaning, and a breakdown of their comprehension. We've found at our school (and our state test data supports this finding) that our students are great at answering within the text questions but there is a huge break down when we start answering beyond and about the text questions. This allows us to set individual goals for students based off of the benchmark test and work on those goals during guided reading with texts at their highest instructional level. Hope this helps a little! :) Hope you have a great weekend and a "normal" week next week!