Does your school administer assessments? For all grades? For reading? What type? How often? For math? What type? How often? Thank you very much for sharing your responses.
Daisy, Our school does, and it is nuts! We have school-wide testing for grades 2-5, and we have it biweekly!!!! We have math, science, and writing all on one Friday, and then the next Friday we have social studies and reading. They are really hard tests, too! Our 3-5 also have city-wide tests quarterly, and in 2nd we have city-wide tests twice a year. Then of course, there are the statewide tests. All we do is test, test, test...
We do a test called the "E-Cart" to assess students' knowledge throughout the county. We have 1 Reading and 1 Math in the Fall, then 1 Math and 1 Reading in the Spring. We also do a pre-assessment at the beginning of the year. They are supposed to help "guide" our instruction...and this is the first year we've used these tests (different test last year, same concept.)
We are a Reading First school, so we do DIBELS testing in grades K-3 in the Fall, Winter, and Spring. (Our school also does DIBELS testing for grades 4-5, even though they aren't under the Reading First grant.) In math, we do district-wide math assessments 3 times a year (every grade): in the Fall, Winter, and Spring. Our school actually does them 5 times a year; we take the Fall assessment twice (Fall and Winter), the Winter assessment twice (Winter and Spring), and the Spring assessment once. We measure our students' growth based on the change in their Fall and Winter assessments. We don't take any school-wide science, writing or social studies assessments.
At my old school every six weeks we gave a pre and post common assessment in each subject and each test took about a whole 90 minute period. Then they were just starting to implement monthly benchmark tests in math and reading.
In September and then again in late May: -spelling diagnostic -reading assessment--PM Benchmark (grades 1-3) or DRA (grades 4-8) -diagnostic writing assessment (we have developed our own) Students who are "at-risk" (achieving a C or below in reading) are assessed with PM Benchmark or DRA again in January.
All testing except state-mandated testing is done within a time frame of about a week to two weeks, so the whole school may be testing, but not all at the exact same times. DIBELS three times a year District-wide Benchmark tests twice a year
Oh, how could I forget... Our Ontario standardized testing occurs at the end of May or beginning of June. Students in grades 3 and 6 complete a total of 6 hours of testing in math, reading and writing (2 hours each).
Trimester tests In our district we give Trimester assessments created by the math coordinator. The results are then used to help improve the instruction and to identify our strentghs and weaknesses. The tests are designed around the MA state standards and the Everyday Math curriculum.
UpsaDaisy where are you in FL? I'm in Orlando. What grade do you teach? I teach in a Christian school PK3 thru 8th grades (no FCATS). We use the SATS (Stanford Achievement Test Series) in grades K-8th. We only give them once a year (Spring) although the company has them for both Fall and Spring. In Kinder, students are tested in sounds and letters, word reading, sentence reading, math, environment, and listening to words and stories. We spread it out over a week. Some grades finish in 3 days, some take 4 or 5, just depends on the teacher and the students.
We have district-wide tests that we got from the county office of ed to go along with our reading curriculum. K-5 only. So far we do not have any common assessments in math.
Hi, jlj. I'm in West Palm. I teach 5th in a small K-8th school (not religious). We also give the SATs in the spring only. We don't do any other assessments yet, which is why I posted this. We are planning to add two assessments a year, I think. Thanks for your input.
