Just wanted to let everyone know what we'll be up to this week. We will be ISTEP testing on Monday and Tuesday. In math, we are learning about place values up to 1,000,000. Our assessment is on Thursday. We are going to discuss character traits during guided reading on Monday. Then on Tuesday, we will begin our first novel: Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume. This is one of the novels that we will read as a whole class. We began writing narratives (stories) in writing last week. I love the everyone's topic.
I'd also like to let you know how I will be instructing math this year. Before each indicator, I will be giving a pretest. This is for my use only and not taken as a grade. These pretests will assess whether a student has already mastered the 4th grade math indicator. As you might imagine, I expect that the majority of the students will not have mastered these indicators yet. However, for those that do, I will be providing alternate activities to complete that extend the indicator that was pretested. Students who get a 90% or better on the pretest will be doing more group and independent work while I help the majority of the class to master the indicator on which we are working. Of course, I'm still available to answer questions and guide the students who are working in the small group. Every student is still expected to take the same indicator test and show mastery at 80% or better. Any student who does not master the indicator assessment at the end of the unit, will be helped to meet the mastery level on that indicator.
Just to provide an example: last week, I began this system for our indicators on using place value up to 1,000,000. Based on the pretest, I noticed that I needed to correct a common misconception among even the small group. I did this and then gave that group the assessment. This allowed me to be sure that they had mastered the standard before allowing them to continue in this group. It is important to note (and I am stressing this to the class): I do not expect many students to be in the small group. Most of the class should be working at grade level. It is also important to note that the students in the small group will change every indicator based on the results of the pretest. By using this method of teaching, I will be able to meet the needs of the students at a more individualized level. I know this is a lot of new information. It's new for me, too, but I truly believe that it will help students to be successful.
I hope that everyone is having a restful weekend! See you on Monday.
2 comments:
Mrs. Cannon
If a child is having problems reaching the mastery level, will the parents be notified? We spend about an hour each night reading and doing homework and this type of information would be very beneficial so we can assist if our child is experiencing difficuly in a certain area. Thanks for your hardwork and the great blog!
Yes, I will notify the parents if the student is having extreme difficulty achieving mastery of an indicator. This may be a situation where we've taken the quiz, I've retaught the indicator or concept, and the child is still struggling. I'll also send home the indicator quizzes after they are completed so that parents can see how their child did and the skills in which he/she may still need help. I do send home all quiz attempts. Meaning that if a student has to take an indicator quiz 3 times to reach mastery, you will receive all 3 quizzes. This helps to give some indication of where a student might need extra practice. Thank you for the great question.
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