It is February and my students have had a fantastic year. Our writing is truly remarkable, growth in reading comprehension and enjoyment is evident, and math….math is off the charts. We love math…there are days when the kids would keep doing math right on through lunch if I would let them. We just finished our unit test for area and as I reflected on the level of understanding required on the test, I was not surprised at the outstanding results. As each student went to work comparing their work to the answer document, I watched in utter awe at how my students, without me prompting, went right to work trying to find their errors, recalculating, refiguring, rethinking…and persevering in an effort to arrive at the correct answer. And this idea of arriving at the correct answer is at the center of our math learning and teaching in our class. As our inevitable scheduled days for PARCC testing get nearer, I have had some not so wonderful thoughts about what the makers of this test are asking 8 and 9 year old kids to do. And how little knowledge of my student’s effort I will ever know as a result of this test because I am strictly forbidden to look at any of the test problems and questions while a student is taking the test. How counterintuitive, because I looked at my student’s work on their area tests, and I can tell you who can find the area of a composite rectangle such as these…
And I can tell you who had trouble with finding an unknown side length, who made errors adding up the area of their rectangles, who could find the unknown side length…and so on, because I did look at their work…but I digress.
PARCC is a computerized test my students will be taking in 7 school days from today. Which means teacher trainings on the administration of the PARCC test have come and gone. At our training it was shared that we will want to give the students access to the PARCC practice items and tools tutorials so that our students will be able to navigate their way through the testing with ease and confidence. The snapshot from the test administration manual below says more about this…
First…I am thankful that the for profit company, PEARSON, has provided sample items, practice tests, and tutorials to familiarize student with the computer-based testing tools and processes. At our training, I kept hearing that word “tools” and I admit that I have spent more than a little bit of time looking online over and over at the practice tests, sample items and tutorials for these “tools.” I have to also admit, at this point in the training, I am feeling just a little inept. Why can’t I find those tools I keep hearing about? I finally found the tools. I have got to admit, I felt just a little bit thrilled that I had found the tools, just a bit excited, I tried them out and I even thought, ok…I can really get behind these tools…these tools are kind of awesome and kids are going to want to use them (and overuse them)! As a service to my fellow friends and teachers, I thought I would share…check out the snapshot below…of course, the tools are right under the guest head in the drop down menu…there you have it…and I wish my fellow teachers happy tutorial tutoring, and practice item practicing in the next seven days!
patrice sutton on education... 