We've already conquered the ominous CSTs (California State Testing) as a school! Yeah for us! But now, with our spiffy new RtI intervention model, we are giving DIBELS, DRA, Words Their Way Spelling, and CORE Reading Vocabulary to the entire school. These reading assessments will help gauge student reading growth over this school year, and will help us to help us plan for the first round of interventions at the beginning of next year.
The teachers and students are eagerly awaiting vacation (it's a little disheartening that in bloglandia I keep hearing that folks are already out of school- what's up with that?). At least the weather is cold and unwelcoming, which makes it easier to focus on all the work that still needs to get done before school's out for summer.
I'm wondering, if you're a teacher, what kind of assessments does your school do every year? Is your list similar?
Our list felt long until I read your list! We finished our state mandated testing (the SOLs) a week ago for our upper grades. Our primary grades (K-2) give a district created and mandated math assessment. Our primary grades also do a spelling assessment. We do DRAs for the entire school. That's it for this point in the school year, I think.
ReplyDeleteWait so does every single student have to get all those assessments or is just for the "at-risk" identified kids?
ReplyDeleteIt has been too long for me to have finished grad school but not be working... your blog has helped remind me of that professional side of me somewhere in this stay-at-home-mom.
Jenny, And these our just the reading assessments! The DRAs are time consuming, as I'm sure you know (especially in the upper grades). And DIBELS takes about 13 minutes per child to administer. The other two are really quick and just require data entry. Sometimes it feel like too much! We use them to make our intervention placements. Many of our students our below grade level to some degree, so it helps us to identify exactly wht kind of support they need. Your school's list seems very reasonable to me! Thanks for stopping by!
ReplyDeleteTricia, Yes, all the students take these! Some are quick and easy to administer, while the DRA and Dibels are more time consuming. The at-risk kids, may get more assessments, but we're trying to limit any more assessments, because this is already plenty to give kids the right support and track progress, etc...and we want to make sure we have the most time for instruction as posiible!! Thanks for stopping by!
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