Teach-NOW Journey

Pre-Assessments Pre-Assessments for writing are more often than not writing samples, and I follow that trend.  It's near impossible to gauge how well a student can write from a multiple choice or fill-in the blank type of test.  Pulling your thoughts from your mind and transferring them to paper are complex tasks that need to be judged with authenticity--hence the writing sample. The Prompt and Evaluation Prior to beginning a narrative fiction unit, I would give my sixth grade students a prompt similar to this.  I often use a combination of word and picture prompts.  I feel that these are more than likely to capture the imagination of the greatest number of students. Once the students have completed the assessment, I review them based on grade level exemplars.  I have a few resources such as  www.writinga-z.com and www.k12.thoughtfullearning.com that I use.  The exemplars look like this: Groupings Using the exemplars, I am able to sc...

High Stakes Testing Since the advent of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, high stakes testing has been at the forefront of American public education.  The accolades for schools that perform well are many and the punishments for schools are even more numerous.   I'm in a pretty lucky situation at the school at which I work---our school has scored well on end-of-the-year standardized tests from it's inception.  The year the school opened was the last year for the STAR test, and California has now transitioned to the Smarter Balanced Assessment. Our school, The Heights Charter, outperforms the local elementary and middle schools and currently is ranked an 8 out of 10 when compared to schools of comparable size and populations in the state. There isn't a lot of pressure put on staff or students regarding state testing. The culture at our school is pretty much the opposite of the soul crushing, suicide inducing levels of South Korea.  But here's the question: a...