We can rail against standardized tests all we want, but our students will take them anyway. People opposed to the tests can work to get them changed, but until they are changed, it doesn't matter how much we complain. California students will take the Standardized Testing and Reporting test (STAR) whether we like the questions, format or not. It is a given.
We can think it is unfair that schools, districts, states, and individual teachers are compared based on standardized tests, but in this oh so imperfect world, it is being done. The state is mandated to report the results. The results are published. The press (and others) will use the statistics to support the position they hold. We can say that the standards are wrong, unfair, etc. but they are the standards. Until they are changed, this is what we are supposed to teach. Our children will be tested on these standards whether or not we teach them. I don't want to bat my head against the wall about things that I can't change. There is that prayer (AA, I think) that reflects this. In my situation, there are certain givens that I might not like, but that as a teacher in my district and state, I have to follow. I can work to change them, but until they are changed, I have to accept them. There are other things that are important to me professionally that I won't give up. I have to work to be able to combine the two. My opening day of school always begins with The Little Engine that Could. I tell my kids that if they say "I can't", they are absolutely right; they won't be able to do it. They can say "It's hard for me. I don't understand this. I'm working on this, etc. but not "I can't." That's my philosophy of teaching too. I have to use Houghton Mifflin. My children have to take the standardized tests. I children have to participate in AR. I think MOT, Strategies that Work, fluency, think-alouds, modeled, guided, and independent reading are essential for me as a teacher and for students. I believe in teaching to the individual, not to a certain group, which means that I assess each child to see his/her strengths and weaknesses and work with them individually, in small groups, or as a whole class to help them. These are some problems my students had and how I addressed them: I recognized that my students had problems with spelling in their writing My solution: I wrote my own dictionary of frequently used words (about 2,000) for students in grades 2-4 and showed my kids how to use this to check their spelling when writing and editing. Their spelling improved considerably. They were writing simple sentences so we worked on combining sentences and using more powerful words. I noticed that many of my second grade students were asking "thin" questions, so I modeled, modeled, modeled and we worked on this in guided practice, evaluated student-written questions and developed "stems" for thick questions. Eventually, the stems weren't needed. Some students were having problem with vocabulary and never brought up words they didn't know. In fact, they just read over the words, not even realizing that they lost comprehension because they didn't know the word. So, I asked students to preview the story and look for words that they thought would stump other students. The results were amazing. I found this wonderful book called The Power of Retelling and used many of the strategies in that. Marzano's books emphasized the importance of compare and contrast so I added this to my repertoire. We did many author studies. My students had problems with deciding whether something was fact or fiction so we worked on this. As a matter of fact, at the conclusion of this study, each child wrote their own book combining facts and fiction about dinosaurs. I typed up the stories into a class book and gave copies to every student. So were the parents. This became a favorite book for students to read. I put copies in our school library; the librarian told me that these books were frequently read by other students in the school too. I was amazed at the writing! Some students had problems because they had not mastered vowel sounds, and blends. I pulled those students aside and worked with them in class and in after-school tutoring sessions every week. We worked on decoding multi-syllable and nonsense words. None of this is unique; Most teachers do similar things to meet the needs of students in their classrooms. About Standardized tests: What could we do to improve LA test scores? Someone in this MOT group made a suggestion months ago about what they do in their school to help students prepare for standardized tests. It was a wonderful suggestion that we implemented at our grade. The states have to release sample questions for the standardized tests. This person suggested that teachers give these to students about 2 months before the actual test is given so that they can see the strengths and weaknesses of the students. CA's sample test is 64 questions. The actual test is 65 questions. We were shocked at the results (unpleasantly). Then, we looked at the data and decided to concentrate on two areas that our students were weakest in and that had the most questions: 22/65 questions were on word analysis and 14/65 were on written conventions. We formed focus groups and worked on things like vowel sounds, dividing words into syllables, rhyming, plurals, suffixes, multiple meaning words, rules for commas, question marks, and periods, sentence structure... (we totally ignored apostrophes). We looked at the standards and the sample questions when preparing the lessons. Our focus groups met for 30 minutes a day for 3 days a week for 4 weeks prior to the test. We didn't work on Reading Comprehension in these focus groups because we felt that teachers were doing this in their own classroom. We don't have the results of this year's test yet, but we think there will be a huge improvement because of this short-term study. Thank you to whoever made this suggestion! What could we do to improve Math test scores: Several months ago, I wrote an e-mail offering to provide copies of a daily math review that I wrote for the first semester of second grade. I had over 300 requests for this on-line and off-line. Many people wrote how helpful it was. Our teachers use this one (and the one I wrote for the second trimester too) as part of homework and daily review. It carefully follows the CA standards for second grade with lots of spiral review and emphasizes the critical standards. There are other commercially prepared programs too, one being Math4Today and other being Star Voyager. When our students took the test, they commented that the test was easier than the booklet I prepared. I'm sure what I am doing is similar to what other teachers are doing too. Probably, many are doing more than I am. I'm not trying to be critical of anyone. I'm not judging anyone else either. I try to focus on what I can do - not getting stuck in what I can't do. In fact, the person I am critical of is me because I constantly analyze my teaching and try to figure out what I can do more. Summer is a reflective time for me. I re-read books I read before, re-think what I have done, and try to figure out what I can do to overcome some problems I had the previous year. This summer, I am thinking about two things: How can I help my students who don't use the strategies even though they "know" them. Secondly, I want to strengthen my writing program. I'm not sure what will happen next year because we are going to have to much more closely adhere to HM than we have in the past. I'll do the best I can. It is not a Lake Wobegon world. I don't have a magic wand that can make everything perfect. ----- Original Message ----- From: Renee Sent: Saturday, July 21, 2007 6:25 PM To: Mosaic: A Reading Comprehension Strategies Email Group Subject: Re: [MOSAIC] Students who don't learn to read On Jul 21, 2007, at 9:43 AM, Joan Matuga wrote: > Renee, I agree with you that the test scores are given an overblown > importance in the media and elsewhere. > > I responded to Kristin's message about the test. The test CA > students take (STAR) is not a norm-referenced test. It is the % the > children got correct. So, theoretically, in an all-perfect world, > every child could get 100%. (A few grades take the CAT 6 test in > addition to the STAR test.) I was only talking about the STAR test. This is not a perfect world, children are not all the same, and anyone who expects 100% proficiency has been listening to Lake Woebegon a bit too much. I disagree that theoretically every child could get 100%. Even in a perfect world. > > However, there is a problem with reading in our country. The evidence > shows up outside the tests in real life situations. It seems that I read somewhere that the overall literacy in the United States today is much higher than it was.... say..... a couple of decades ago. And more. I don't have numbers to back this up, but it seems to be swimming around there in the back of my mind. Does anyone else know about this? > > > I'm not blaming anyone -- certainly not teachers. I think, however, > we have to admit there is a problem. We are not meeting the needs of > too many children. I agree that we are not meeting the needs of many children, but I don't think we will find out what they need by looking at test data, because the tests are flawed. They may be based on the standards, but when 2nd graders have to read a two-page excerpt of something rather obscure and answer tedious questions about it, or interpret poetry, or answer math questions that are read aloud to them, the resulting test scores are just not valid. My personal favorites are the "writing" questions that have nothing to do with writing and everything to do with proofreading, and then are confusing. > > I'm looking to my own teaching -- not casting stones at anyone else. > What can I do to help the students in my class who are not proficient > readers? When I looked at the test results for my class, I pretty > much agreed with the results. I knew which students were the best > readers in my class and they did the best. I knew which students were > struggling, and the STAR tests confirmed my data. If you knew which were the best readers in your class and they had the best scores, what is the point of the test? Seems like a waste of time to me. We don't need no stinkin' standardised tests that use up a lot of classroom time and resource money to tell us what we know just by being there. > > I don't think that blindly following the HM teachers manual is the > answer In fact, I don't think there in any one correct answer. I absolutely agree. > > However, I don't want to stick my head in the dirt and ignore the fact > that there is a problem. I want to help all my students become > successful readers. I also don't want to pat myself on the back as > say, "Wow, my kids did so much better than most students in the state > and district." and just forget about those 6 students who didn't do as > well as the other 14. > I don't think it's useful to compare kids with kids from other districts, other states, other countries, other classrooms, or even the same classroom. Plus, there is the problem that because the tests don't have *lots and lots* of questions, missing one item can plunk a child several percentage points down the ladder. In all honesty, I don't have a *huge* problem with standardized tests as one kind of measure. But increasingly they are being used to make high stakes decisions for children because the resulting numbers and being boxed into narrow ranges that label children as proficient or not proficient and I think that's wrong, especially when every teacher I have ever talked to agrees that the standards (I'm talking about California) are too tedious, too nit-picky, and being pushed down to lower grades in some kind of strange idea that more and faster delivery of information will somehow result in more learning. Quite the opposite seems to be true, since there is a decided quantity of skimming across curriculum instead of really studying the content and engaging in the process. Who decided that it's important for kindergartners to read? For second graders to know their multiplication tables? For third graders to be able to write a five-paragraph essay? For fifth graders to know about the Periodic Table of the Elements? These are inappropriate, arbitrary standards that have nothing to do with true learning. I agree that many students have trouble reading. But many of them simply need more time and do not happen to conform to time lines and grade levels that are not only arbitrary, but punitive. I say let's let kids be kids and learn on their own time and stop worrying if they don't' know how to use an apostrophe when they are seven years old. Renee Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new. ~ Albert Einstein _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive. _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive.
