Differientation in Test Prep

It's state standardized test time at my school. It's kicks off tomorrow and will run for at least the next three weeks. Longer if we have a lot of make ups. As you can imagine, that means the past week, few weeks, month, whatever have been test prep time.

I refuse to do a lot of prep. Either I've taught these students well and prepared them as we've gone along, or it's too late to worry over it now. However, tests are their own genre of text and students need to know how to approach them. So, I've spent a bit of time working with them in the last week.

Tomorrow we take the math test, so that has been our focus. We've explored it by strand. For example, one day we looked at released questions from last year in the measurement and geometry section. I put each question up on the smartboard with the answers covered. I don't want their attention to be on which answer is correct. We sorted those twelve questions in a couple of different ways. First we determined if each question was focused on measurement or geometry. Then we tried to analyze it a bit more deeply. We found some area and perimeter questions, some questions about two-dimensional and three-dimensional shapes. We found a couple of questions that could need protractors. I just wanted the students to see the different sort of topics they would find on the test and recognize how much they already know about those topics.

After we did this as a class I gave them each a copy of those questions. I asked them to look over them (they didn't need to answer them but they could if they wanted to) and mark three or more questions they thought were a bit challenging for them and three or more questions they found to be really easy.

The next day I pulled small groups based on who found each question challenging and we brainstormed strategies for answering that sort of question. Sometimes I pulled the entire class because they all seemed to feel somewhat uncomfortable with the question, but that was rare. Typically I would have three or four students looking at a question. Some concepts (especially fractions and decimals) give more kids trouble and I might have nine or ten gathered to talk about it. Today I made sure there was a little bit of time for students to bring any final concerns to me after we had discussed the final bits. I had four students with some different areas in which they still did not feel completely confident.

This way our test prep is differentiated. When they weren't meeting in small groups with me they were playing math games. Some kids would come up for questions they didn't mark as challenging because they just wanted to double check their thinking. I don't think I overloaded them or made them more stressed about the test. Hopefully, our time on this increased their confidence and answered some last minute questions they may not even have realized they had.

I don't expect them all to earn perfect scores on tomorrow's test. I do expect that they walk in feeling comfortable with the questions they will see and feeling capable of doing their best. What more could I possibly ask?

State Alternative Assessment

I have issues with standardized tests. Not a shocking fact, but true. So, my state's alternative assessment should fill me with joy. It doesn't have the issues that bother me about multiple choice tests:

• A multiple choice test shows a student's ability in one, brief period. If his best friend is mad at him, her parent lost a job, she didn't get enough sleep last night, or he hasn't had a good meal in days, a student will not likely perform well regardless of how much they know and are able to do.
• Some people naturally do well on multiple choice tests and some struggle. I've watched brilliant students have trouble with multiple choice because they are able to justify more than one answer. They can talk themselves out of correct answers.
  
• It's very stressful to be tested on an entire year (or multiple years) of learning at once. Some students get sick because they are so concerned about the test.

So, a portfolio assessment should be a great improvement. In theory, it is. I create portfolios for my students throughout the year to help illustrate all they have learned. (I have to admit that mine don't address every single standard, but they do show progress.)

However, the reality of these portfolios has been absurd. We use this alternative assessment for our limited English speakers in place of taking the reading test. We have to document each and every part of every reading standard. For example, standard 5.4 reads, "The student will read fiction and nonfiction with fluency and accuracy. Use context to clarify meaning of unfamiliar words. Use knowledge of root words, prefixes, and suffixes. Use dictionary, glossary, thesaurus, and other word-reference materials."

I think it's a good standard. I teach my students all of those things. To prove it for the portfolio, we must have documentation for each piece:

1. "Use context to clarify meaning of unfamiliar words."
2. "Use knowledge of root words,
3. prefixes,
4. and suffixes."
5. "Use dictionary,
6. glossary,
7. thesaurus,
8. and other word-reference materials."

For that one standard we need eight pieces of documentation. Fifth grade has four different reading standards, each of which requires about this many pieces of documentation. (Third grade has to document third grade standards and second grade standards.)

The sheer amount of documentation is daunting. That's my first frustration. I think it should be reasonable to think that we could prove a student's mastery of that standard with only three or four pieces of documentation (a multiple choice test would not hit every single one of those eight aspects).

My second frustration is on us. Instead of documenting students' learning in authentic ways; anecdotal records from reading groups and conferences, response letters students have written about their reading, literature discussion notes, etc., we're documenting mostly with worksheets. We rarely, rarely use worksheets at this school. I know this sort of documentation is a result of our inexperience with this. As we continue to use these portfolios we'll get better at using what we are naturally doing in the classroom for our documentation. Of course, that also assumes that the state will accept more authentic documentation.

Maybe I'm overreacting. Maybe I should be grateful the state allows us the option of an alternative assessment that is a portfolio. Maybe...but I think I'll still strive for an assessment that is authentic to the teaching and learning going on in our school.

Super Bowl - Quite a Test

The New England Patriots lost their first game all season last night. I know, that's not news to anyone. But it's got me thinking. After an almost perfect season, losing one game has meant that people have called the Patriots' performance disappointing or a failure. This one game, just a few hours, has changed many people's impressions of the team. Is that reasonable?

We seem to do the same thing to our students with standardized tests. One bad day, a few hours of sub-par performance, and a child can be labeled negatively for some time. Their scores on a test often are viewed as more accurate, exact, and important than anything their teachers might know about them. All the anecdotal notes, classroom tests, and other assessments carry less weight.

Our students, at their young ages, aren't ready for a Super Bowl of standardized tests.

Testing Hell

Right now I'm administering a practice SOL (Standards of Learning) test to one third grader alone. He's being given the test alone because he is autistic and very easily affected and distracted by others. I'm glad that we are able to offer him this accommodation to the testing. However, I don't believe that we are really going to learn anything about his achievement through this process.

A multiple choice test is very difficult for him because he is so literal. He has trouble analyzing the various answers. He completed the sample question and choose an incorrect answer. When I asked him about it, he was able to explain his thinking (which made sense in a convoluted way). I believe that if he were to answer questions about these short texts without multiple choices, he would do quite well.

He also is unable to work for an extended period of time. Just looking at the first passage, which is about a page long, stressed him out. He spent the morning yesterday taking the math practice test and is now spending the afternoon taking the reading test. He kept asking me why he has to take these tests. I had no good answer for him. According to his classroom teacher, he is able to read longer texts, but broken up over time. They are working on his stamina while reading or working, but he isn't there yet. Taking this test is torture for him.

He is an unusual example because he is autistic. For him, time spent taking this test is not helping him learn and for us, it is not giving us useful information about his learning. But, he will still spend four days this year taking practice SOL tests and five days taking the actual SOL tests. That is five percent of the school days in the year.

While he is an unusual example, I believe that there are many students for whom testing is hell and about whom we learn little from the results. We give the test on one day of the year and expect that it will tell us all about the student's abilities and achievement. Many students, even in third grade, have test anxiety, which also impacts the results.

I'm not against accountability. I'm happy to open my classroom to anyone who wants to come in and see what is happening. I'm happy to show the various ways my students can and have demonstrated their learning. I have nothing to hide. But I'm tired of spending my precious time with students taking multiple choice tests.

Test Strategies

To comply with the rules for administering our state standardized tests several weeks ago, I covered up or took down anything academic on our walls. When the students walked in on our first day of testing they remarked on how our room felt like a cave with all the walls covered with brown paper.

The day after our last test I was too lazy to take the paper down. Instead, I gave the students permission to "vandalize" the walls. They were able to write on the paper things they had done to be good test takers. Some of what they wrote were strategies we had taught them; eliminating stupid answers, rereading, underlining, and such. Other thoughts were purely their own.

I took pictures of all of their comments for a couple of reasons. They had a lot of good ideas and strategies that I want to remember to share with future groups. But mostly, their answers are so them. Looking at the pictures will immediately conjure up these students. Even for those comments that aren't signed, the authorship is obvious to me. Their personalities are so clear through these thoughts.

I can't stand the testing and I hate the complex procedures we go through to be sure the tests are secure and fair. I'm far from convinced that these tests are a valid assessment of my students' learning (and I say this as a GT teacher whose students will likely all pass all tests). No one-time, multiple choice test is going to even come close to fully showing a student's abilities, knowledge, and talents.

As a side note, these brown papers were used in another classroom before hanging on my walls and then used to create backgrounds for our wax museum project. We recycle every chance we get!