Lizmo

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Home : 2008 : March : 28

Lizmo
By johabella

I can definitely understand how it can be frustrating when it seems as though you are going nowhere. That must be very tough. I'm really sorry that you are going through that.

Does your team look at the data
that you all have, based on a "common formative assessment", during your meetings? At our school, we sort the data by students that passed the skill tested, those that didn't, and those that were "perfect". On Wednesdays, we each take a group of students from all the fifth grade and homogenously group them so that all the ones that need enrichment go to certain teacher and deepen their

thinking on that skill. Another teacher takes the ones that didn't pass and reteaches it so they get it in another manner which they then get retested on. The last teacher will get the students that passed, though with errors, and attempt to "fix" it. We all get students from all the classes and work at the level they need for that certain skill tested. Every week, we test a new skill (reading) and when we meet, we sort the current data and create our groups. I don't know if that's something you are already doing, but it might be worth a shot to try out, if you are wanting to change it up. We do it for math and reading right now, and hope to do it for Science at least once before the end of the year. I can truly say that is the main thing that has helped our students as a whole.

Another thing we do at our biweekly meetings is create our common formative assessments so that we are all giving the same test, based on skills that we are teaching and coming up with 2-3 versions of the test for those students that may need retesting. Our team doesn't really plan together, but we do give the same assessments and teach the skills for those assessments, just teach it a little differently.

Our district is really pushing for this to happen at all our schools. We are the "pilot" and they hope to have all schools (middle and high included) by 2013.

I hope that helps. :)

Johabella