A Tisket A Tasket!

Hello Kinder Friends,

In your teaching life I hope you have found a Fairy Godmother like I have. In my district, one of my Fairy Godmothers is Cindy Brown. I am fortunate to have several. Fairy godmothers are the people who inspire you and help you along your teaching journey. They always seem to have the best ideas and advice and they share that with you at the best of times. Sometimes it just feels like magic. These are the people who just get the "teacher spirit" in all of us.

Like I said, this idea comes from Cindy. I walked in to a training session with this red basket I purchased from Wal Mart. I had the materials stored in it for the session I was presenting. It kind of made me laugh that everyone thought the red basket was cute because the truth is...that basket has given me fits all summer. When she saw it, she came up with the rhyme you see printed on the label in the picture above. Even though the basket is not my favorite, the idea stuck with me and I played with that idea for the rest of the summer. Since assessment and rubrics and report cards are a hot topic in my district this was the perfect idea at the perfect time... Like I said, sometimes Fairy Godmothers are like magic. The reason the basket you see above is not my top pick is simply because it is not sturdy enough for all that it has to hold. I have learned that you just have to have a sturdy basket if it is going to get you through the year. What I love about the basket is the size because it will hold all that I need.

At the end of our sessions the other day we had some fun coming up with ideas about the contents of an assessment basket. Some of the top picks were...

Post It Notes

Pencils

Pens

Labels

Copies of Assessments

Clipboards

Clipboards with Storage

Testing Schedules

Curriculum Guides/Overviews

Rubrics

Checklists

Monitoring Notes Recording Pages

Basically anything you would need to get assessments up and running pretty darn quick! Having it all in a basket makes it easy to do assessments anywhere and everything is in one place when you need to take it to meetings of any kind.

If you need a copy just click on the image at the top of the post and you can some some assessment magic of your own!

Happy Days Friends!

Assessments!

I guess I have literally been MIA for a few days. I have been preparing for report cards and conferences. Assessments have been on my mind for a few weeks since going to a great training within my district. I have also had some long drives home thinking about assessments for report cards, monitoring notes and checklists since being on a district committee to help create a new Kindergarten report card. It seems that when you talk about adding more assessments, we always seem to look at it as more work leaving less time for teaching. As teachers, we are mental note takers as we make decisions on the spot each and every day in our classrooms. I will admit, sometimes those thoughts do not get recorded in our beautiful monitoring notebooks or data books. I have challenged myself to take a deeper look into how I assess my students, how I document it and how that data shapes my lesson plans and individual and group instruction. 

Currently I have been using ESGI to assess letter identification, letter sounds, sight words, numeral identification, shape recognition and patterning. I LOVE the ease of using this product. I am able to come in my class and assess a few children before announcements and at any time I have either a few minutes within my day or I schedule a task to assess and complete it on all of my students in that period. I love the multiple ways that you can represent your data and use it for planning the next steps for individual students or groups of students. I have also discovered that I enjoy using this tool to gain current data and make lesson planning decisions based on current data for each child or my class as a whole. My students enjoy it too and it has been motivating because they are starting to realize that this is measuring what they know and several children this week asked me when we would be testing again! 

This tool has also been motivating for me because I have the flexibility to assess something right after we have done something and see the results or after we have completed several lessons. I have also used this as a pre assessment tool as well. I think I am ready to create some of my own assessments now. If you have not checked out this resource you might want to give it a try! I plan on using this product this year as I take a closer look at how I assess my students, how I document it and how this information shapes my instruction. 

I am currently reading this book provided by my wonderful Math Specialist CB in my district. 

Mathematics Assessment Sampler 

By DeAnn Huinker, Anne Collins, Lynn McGarvey, Gladis Kersaint, Linda Landin

This sampler presents assessment tasks that are appropriate for use with students from age 4 through age 8. The book provides teachers of primary grades mathematics with examples of assessment tasks that reflect the various ways assessments can be used prior to, during, and following mathematics instruction. Teachers can then consider the potential of these tasks to uncover the mathematical understandings of their students for the purpose of planning further instruction. Each task can be altered by changing the context, breaking the task into subparts, limiting the scope or complexity of the task, or extending the task to provide more challenge or enhance the depth of understanding being assessed.

What I like most is the Continuum of Understanding for each task and the section Looking for Understanding. 

ESGI Easy Assessments!

I have to share this with you. I have been busy assessing my class and I am thrilled that I am almost finished. As I was preparing for progress reports, I was printing my class reports from ESGI and I noticed the link for parent letters. I clicked the link and was directed to a complete print out of testing results and parent letter to print for the individual results of each student in my class. I realized how comprehensive this information was and I loved the format of the information. Upon further investigation, I realized that I could edit and customize the parent letter if I wanted to. As I was thinking about all the possibilities and how excited I was to be able to offer all this information to my parents, I clicked on the print flash cards link. With just one click, I am able to print out individualized flash cards and a custom letter for my parents based on current assessments. I am amazed at how easy it is to prepare for an entire class of progress reports, parent letters AND support materials to help each student BASED on assessments. Preparing for this really was a click of a few buttons and you look like the smartest teacher around! Now that I have all this student data I am able to make lesson plans based on this information and that truly is DATA DRIVEN INSTRUCTION! If you have not checked this out you really should because this really is assessment in a snap, so how bout that?  

Assessments

I have been working assessments since the very first day of school. I am using a new tool for assessments called ESGI. I have also been working with my children on our traditional assessments we have used for years in our district. I have to say so far I have had a very positive experience with ESGI software and the data it has provided me with has had a huge impact on my lesson planning and small group planning within the first week of school. First, I love the fact that it is user friendly and faster to test rather than sitting down with the traditional assessment forms and pencil. Second, I think the classroom data it provides is EYE OPENING because of the easy format the information is presented in. I really like the ways in which I can view the class or individual data and I sure enjoy not having to take my paper and pencil assessments and create graphs of information on my own. 

As I continue to use ESGI I am looking forward to utilizing the individualized print resources for RTI and as a resource to send home activities based on the particular needs of each child individually. This truly is data driven instruction when the tools are utilized.