State Testing Reflections - Building Confidence

Aside from the content knowledge, confidence level has appeared to be a big obstacle for some of my students. They know the content, but the thought of taking a state assessment panics them. This is even more so these days as the emphasis on testing keeps growing in our culture. Our state allows up to three attempts on most state assessments, so some students can have a lot of testing. As 7th graders they have up to three attempts for reading, up to three attempts for math, one attempt for writing, and if they are qualified as an English Language Learner, they have the two portions of the ELPA assessment. All of these assessments span multiple days. Imagine all of these testing days if you have test anxiety or a low confidence level.
We talk to our students about remaining calm in testing situations, and we also try to have them do Brain Gym activities prior to their testing sessions. Something new that we are trying to build confidence in genral is an after school program that is fairly brief in duration with problem solving team builders. One of my colleagues is running the program, and he is the perfect person to do it. He participated in a summer leadership program for years. The one year I was able to go we were co-leaders on the team, and he led many of the problem-solving team builder activities. Since he is running the group right next door to my classroom, I could often hear the laughter, along side his motivational talks to limit their frustration while working through different activities and to debrief each activity.
 
I love that this new piece will not only help students to remain calm while testing, but it also serves a bigger purpose of having a life skill to limit frustrations while problem solving and to keep trying rather than giving up if the first plan does not work out.

State Testing Reflections - Stem Questions

In my first post in this series I talked about how it is essential to help students transfer their everyday reading skills to state tests. Some students are able to make this shift on their own, while others benefit from having some classroom time spent understanding the testing genre. I also previously mentioned how my state has blueprints and specifications, which includes stem questions for each of the reading strands, making it easier to help familiarize students with the test language.

Our director originally brought up the idea of having a 5 question quiz each week to go along with our read aloud using the stem question format. I liked this idea in that it would give students opportunities to get how the tests are set-up without using too much of classroom time on test prep activities. I think it ended up working really well for some of my colleagues; however, I struggled with implementing it consistently. It was hard to know exactly where I would be in the read aloud book on the day designated for the quiz. I also knew that hearing a book prior to answering questions and reading the text while answering the questions were two different skills.

Lately I have been reflecting on the possibility of having a text of the week. I got the idea from Kelly Gallagher's article of the week. I thought that I could adapt his original idea to include stem questions. I would be able to frame the text as they would be in state testing as well. Although this would incorporate many more texts than current events. It would include fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, as well as texts that match up well with reading to perform a task.

This summer I will continue to think through this idea, but I know that in one form or another, I am going to try it out next year. Yet another example of King's concept of "two previously unrelated ideas [coming] together."

State Testing Reflections - Writing Components Pondering

Aside from the regular reading and writing assessments, my students classified as English Language Learners also participate in our state's English Language Proficiency Assessment (ELPA). One test covers reading, writing, and listening, while a second has speaking. I had already reflected on the writing state assessment and the success of having a prompt writing genre, but as my students geared up for ELPA and I have been reflecting on the most essential pieces that I will make sure to integrate next year a thought came to mind regarding writer's notebooks that synthesized ideas from many sources.

Before I explain my idea, I am going to back up and give a quick overview of the influences that came together for the idea. Much of how I use writer's notebooks right now is inspired by Marsha Riddle Buly, a visiting professor that I had while on exchange in Mexico. She has been very influential in who I am as a writing teacher. She pointed me in the direction of starting to delve into so many areas that are key components of my classroom today, such as workshop in general, writer's notebooks, and word study. While writing feature articles, she showed us how utilizing notebooks to guide writers through lists, quick writes based on ideas from the lists, and experimenting with certain pieces of a work in progress (such as an introduction) can be very beneficial. I am certain utilizing writer's notebooks the way she modeled it will always be a big component of my workshop.

I am currently pondering others' ideas as well. This summer I saw how Mark Overmeyer emphasized the benefits of prompt writing and I later read his book to hear the full explanation. At the same time I was reading Jeff Anderson's ideas for instruction with editing and mechanics. Their thoughts have been in the back of my mind simmering away throughout the year as I have been implementing some of their ideas. This spring I read how Penny Kittle also incorporates a lot of quick writes in her classroom. 

I had been thinking about having my students write more quick-writes, including quick writes inspired by prompts, rather than just related to their current piece of writing in their notebooks next year. Inspired by the ideas from the various influences to give it a try, I also thought about how this would help my students when they come upon the extended answer responses on the ELPA. My thoughts right now are that I will also link my Everyday Editing lessons, inspired by Jeff Anderson's ideas (and the title of one of his books), to this practice in the notebook. I will be rethinking the scope and sequence of the teaching points I integrate taking into consideration not only my grade level language arts standards, but the English Language Proficiency standards. This again would help students score at higher levels on the ELPA writing portion.

Yet, I wanted to make sure that I was doing it for more than improved test scores. I was sifting through different rationales for the thought but leaning toward the benefits for my students as writers. Then I thought about the advice that YA author Sydney Satler mentioned to my class for one of our Author Tip Tuesdays about how practice writing unrelated to her novel each day helps her to become a better writer and impacts the quality of her novels. There's the rationale that gives me a real life authentic reason of how it can impact my students in becoming better writers, not just better ELPA extended answer writers, but better writers in general. I think I will give it a try.

State Testing Reflections - Prompt Writing as a Genre

I first heard about the idea of teaching writing to prompts as a genre from Sarah (The Reading Zone) and from Stacey (Two Writing Teachers). This year was the first year that I have had a class at the grade level to complete their actual state writing assessment. 

Before talking about my reflections on how my first writing to a prompt genre and how students did on their writing assessment, I want to give some background on my state's writing assessment. Hearing other teachers comment on their state assessments through blogging and college coursework, I realized that there can be significant differences in testing among states, so I thought some background might be helpful. In Oregon students participate in the state writing assessment to be scored by the state in 4th, 7th, and 10th grades. Students are scored using our state's writing traits scoring guide (my personal favorite is the 7th grade condensed bulleted version under the writing student language scoring guides). 7th graders are scored on: ideas and content, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions on a scale from 1-6. However, voice and word choice are not calculated into the score and conventions is double weighted. Traditionally this process was completed with two raters independent of each other. However, this year and last with budget crunches, the 7th grade papers are scored once and then doubled. Students need a 40 to meet and a 50 to exceed. 

Throughout the whole year we talk about the traits, modes, and genres of writing through the natural process of writing workshop. Going right along with the concept that if students write widely and often they will do well on assessments, the prompt writing genre is truly able to focus on what is unique about writing for prompts, rather than what makes good writing in general. I use my state's resources, including sample prompts and examples of scored writing to familiarize students with what is required in able to meet or exceed on our state's assessment. I talk with students about how to look at a prompt and decide which mode of writing it is eliciting and help them make connections about what they know about what makes each mode unique, as well as the generalizations of strong writing for all modes. For example, they know that with expository writing they are explaining something, which takes on a different organizational set-up than if they choose narrative or imaginative where they will be telling a story, yet regardless of the mode the writing should always flow smoothly. 

I also talk to students about applying what they know about the writing process and what they prefer as a writer. When we are doing the genre writing unit we do not use our writer's notebooks. Instead, I talk to them about how they can use the same tools we use in their notebooks with regular notebook paper, which is what they can use on their state test and is also standard for other writing assessments at later stages in their life. Rather than guiding them through specific ways of gathering ideas as a class they do this on their own. While they have already done this various times throughout the year with their self-selected writing, I typically guide them through gathering ideas with new genres. However, the prompt writing genre is all about practicing writing independently, about taking what they know and shining as writers. 

When my students took their state writing assessment I was thrilled to see the pencils flying. All of my students had something to say. Nobody appeared to have writer's block. I know this would not have been the case without the combination of writer's workshop that values writing for authentic purposes on a daily basis coupled with a brief unit to prepare them for this specific genre. I was so proud of all of my students and how they have grown as students over the last two years. I look forward to continually improving my practices in writer's workshop and the prompt writing genre.

State Testing Reflections - Helping Students Transfer Skills

State testing is an area I think about a lot, as I am sure would be true for the majority of teachers in this age of emphasis on testing. Yet, it is a fine balance to stay true to personal philosophies while also trying to help students succeed when they are in testing settings. My goal for my students is about more than meeting or exceeding on a state test, I want them to be life long readers and writers. I feel very fortunate to have had many professional development opportunities to help me shape who I am as an educator striving to give my students the best educational experience possible. 


Writing a post about testing was on my blogging to-do list. This morning when I read a post on the topic over at A Teaching Life, I started to write a comment with my thoughts on the topic and quickly realized the time to write my post had come. I have heard often that if students are in an environment where they read and write often, they will succeed on assessments - simple as pie. Yet, in the post that I read this morning the educator asks, "Will this transfer (as all the research says it should) to their test taking abilities?" Something that my school learned was that in some cases there were students who were not performing as well on assessments as expected because of lack of knowledge of the way the assessment questions/prompts are set up.


However, one of the reasons I love the environment where I teach is that rather than throwing out all of our promising practices and exchanging them for canned curriculum in response to the testing hysteria, we problem solved to think about what we could do to help bridge this gap while maintaining our school's philosophy. Our state, Oregon, provides testing specifications and blueprints that include stem questions. Paired up with an emphasis on data teams to be more cognizant of our students' academic strengths and weaknesses to better inform instruction, being able to create some opportunities for our students to familiarize themselves with transferring the skills they use everyday as readers, writers, scientists, mathematicians, etc. has been essential to some students' improved performance on state assessments. 


As I am typing and realizing how much I have to say and reflect upon with the topic, my one to-do list testing post has quickly transferred into a list for a series of posts. This week I will be posting more about this process, as well as other testing aha moments and the success of other ideas I learned from the blogging community, such as teaching prompt writing as a genre.