FORWARD!
Well, this week is our week for Forward testing (our state assessments), and tomorrow we wrap it up with our 2nd math session. I have to give kudos to my kids-they have really worked hard and put a lot of effort into their tests. There are a few of them who still need to work on following directions and not clicking the start button before being instructed...but when I consider the students in question, I can't say I'm overly surprised!
We began our testing with the writing portion, and I'll be honest, I was a little worried about this one. I wasn't sure what to expect when it came to how much the students would write to answer the question given to them. We discussed the expectations that the test would require paragraphs to fully answer the question, not just a sentence. I explained the importance of fully showing your thinking and using examples from the stories they had to read. And, I am happy to report, the students blew me away! I didn't have a single student try to answer with just one sentence! I was so proud of the effort they showed. Some students wrote so much they didn't have time to get to the second session of the day, which dealt with language arts skills, but we will get that caught up.
Our second day of testing was a listening test and a reading test. The listening portion had the students listen to a 2 minute recording and then answer questions. The nice thing is that the students can replay the recording as much as they need to, and students took advantage of that fact. The reading test was a bit more time consuming, as the students had to read longer portions of text (3-4 pages) and then answer questions. I was a bit disappointed with one of my students who finished rather quickly considering the amount of questions.
Our math test this morning brought some tears. I have a student who has a strong case of test anxiety when it comes to math. Knowing this from our regular classroom math tests, I have been encouraging her leading up to today and reminding her of some of the calming strategies she can use. She seemed like she was going to be ready to go this morning when I checked in with her before school, but once math class hit it was like a switch flipped and tears began. Luckily our test wasn't for another couple hours, so I had some time to work with her. We talked again during recess about her worries, reviewed her strategies, and I had her pick out a stuffed animal that she could keep in her lap during the test. The test rolled around and she did fine :-) We have our test tomorrow as well, so I'm hoping now that she has one in her belt already she will be good to go, but we will see what tomorrow brings. Either way, we will be ready!
Mindfulness thought for the week-Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards. --Soren Kierkegaard
We began our testing with the writing portion, and I'll be honest, I was a little worried about this one. I wasn't sure what to expect when it came to how much the students would write to answer the question given to them. We discussed the expectations that the test would require paragraphs to fully answer the question, not just a sentence. I explained the importance of fully showing your thinking and using examples from the stories they had to read. And, I am happy to report, the students blew me away! I didn't have a single student try to answer with just one sentence! I was so proud of the effort they showed. Some students wrote so much they didn't have time to get to the second session of the day, which dealt with language arts skills, but we will get that caught up.
Our second day of testing was a listening test and a reading test. The listening portion had the students listen to a 2 minute recording and then answer questions. The nice thing is that the students can replay the recording as much as they need to, and students took advantage of that fact. The reading test was a bit more time consuming, as the students had to read longer portions of text (3-4 pages) and then answer questions. I was a bit disappointed with one of my students who finished rather quickly considering the amount of questions.
Our math test this morning brought some tears. I have a student who has a strong case of test anxiety when it comes to math. Knowing this from our regular classroom math tests, I have been encouraging her leading up to today and reminding her of some of the calming strategies she can use. She seemed like she was going to be ready to go this morning when I checked in with her before school, but once math class hit it was like a switch flipped and tears began. Luckily our test wasn't for another couple hours, so I had some time to work with her. We talked again during recess about her worries, reviewed her strategies, and I had her pick out a stuffed animal that she could keep in her lap during the test. The test rolled around and she did fine :-) We have our test tomorrow as well, so I'm hoping now that she has one in her belt already she will be good to go, but we will see what tomorrow brings. Either way, we will be ready!
Mindfulness thought for the week-Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards. --Soren Kierkegaard
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