The Beef on Assessments

My school uses a variety of standardized testing. In the first week of school, student take the CoGAT test which is similar to an IQ test. We have recently implemented MAP testing. This test is taken at the very beginning of the school year and then again at the end. Fifth graders take MAP tests in Math, Reading and Science. This test is helpful in measuring individual growth of students. And finally, we have the TAKS test administered like everyone else.

I teach only science to 5th graders. In the late fall, the students take a science benchmark test which is the most recent released TAKS test.This is the only benchmark we give in science, though I am under the impression that every subject area has a benchmark test.

Currently our school does not use portfolios. I could easily implement this in my classroom though, since I do not let the students throw anything away. At the end of each unit, I have the students clean out their folders. We make folders out of manila paper, and I keep these stored all year until open house. At open house, the parents have at lease 4 units of work that they can look through to see what we have been doing in science.

Project-based learning is beginning to happen more each year in the science department. One of the most favorite activities we do in my class is during our unit on electricity. The students demonstrate their knowledge of circuits, batteries, and wires by building houses and wiring them with lights and switches. This project takes about three weeks to complete. A few days before winter break we set up all of the houses in the hall, make street signs and have a complete town. Then we send out invitations to parents to come to our "Parade of Homes." Some children do commercial places like stores and movie theaters while others make residential homes.

Part of the reason I am taking this class is to learn how to use technology to assess. I occasionally use activotes but I use these more for review than to actually assess their learning. I look forward to learning different ways I can assess students using technology.

Our school subscribes to learning.com and this is the only curriculum I know if that our school has to teach students about technology. The administrators broke down all of the learning strands and assigned them to the different core classes. I found that this year, no one on my team directly taught any of the kids their assigned technology strands. I plan to implement this in my lessons in the upcoming year since my team is reluctant to embrace technology. At 45, I am the youngest on my team and the most willing to try new things.

A personal goal I have is to rewrite the major unit tests that my department gives. When I started teaching here 4 years ago, I was handed the curriculum, and being the new kid on the block, I questioned nothing and did what I was told. Each year my department does a fabulous job of tweaking the curriculum to dispose of ineffective lessons and adding new lessons and ideas, but we've never changed the tests. As the years have passed, and as I have learned more through my masters program, I can better understand just how poorly these tests are written.
I'd like to recreate these tests and add more performance assessments to the curriculum.

A second goal is to see my school make better use of the MAP testing that we spend so much time on. The program can only be effective if we utilize the information we obtain from it. I'd like to have more time to review the results, see where my students are, and create differentiated lesson plans for my students so that I can be a more effective teacher.

My third goal is to learn more about how I can integrate technology into my classroom on a more consistent basis and to learn how to use technology for assessment. I love using technology, but I do not have a creative bone in my body when it comes to integrating into my lessons and assessments.