At our Oct. 13th Staff Development Day, all the elementary PE teachers came together to create more assessments. This time we focused on 4th and 5th grade and wrote formal, end-of-the-quarter tests for each grade and each quarter. I felt really good about these tests that day and felt we had a very successful day. However, a few days later when I preparing to give the tests, at the end of the quarter, I started to rethink these tests. All the test questions were short answers, where they either had to list three points or explain an idea. These types of tests are not very conducive to my ELs and my SPED students. They are also more challenging for a lot of the students. So my colleague and I decided the students would benefit from different types of tests. We decided it was best to ask the classroom teachers which types of tests are most successful with 4th and 5th graders. I think I need to remember to do this more. I don't need to reinvent the wheel, I should just turn to my colleagues who have experience in formal testing. We were able to get some great ideas and created a Venn diagram test for this quarter.
With the younger students, we are continuing to assess by utilizing the checklists that we created. At first, we were just checking off if the student could do the skill, or leaving it blank if the student could not. This was a good start but after reflecting and reviewing the assessments, I determined it would be nice to have more specific info. Now while assessing a skill, I either give the student an "A", a "S", or a "N". A= always execute skill properly, S= sometimes, and N=never. This way I can see the students that sometimes struggle with the skill or always struggle with the skill and then make sure to work with them more.
Overall, I've been very pleased with our progress in creating and executing assessments. It has made me more focused on the specifics of the skill which allows me to guide the students and give them more feedback. We'll just keep trying new assessments to see what is successful and what works best for us and our students!
Something to consider for your checklists to keep the feedback postitive - (taken from the assessments we do on our preschoolers)would be to substitute NY(not yet)instead of never. Our other categories are (P)roficient and (IP) In Process.
ReplyDeleteYou might even want to stick with the elementary grading scale for our report cards and do M (meets), P (progressing), and NP (not progressing). It might just make your lives easier to have everything in the same language.
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