Week of November 2

Today was the first day back after half term. It was a training/prep day for the staff so there were no students, a good way to ease back into things. However, there was a training session on the use of an Excel program that had information about the students SAT scores from last year. There was also a discussion on a new form of testing that England is now trying to switch over to called APP.

The APP testing seems a little bit confusing because the whole point is to level the students, however, to give the students a test, you pre-level them (this is based on the teacher's judgement). Then it is up to the teacher to make the tests, one for each level. I see a few problems with this type of testing that I discussed with my cooperating teacher. The first problem is there is no standard test questions. One teacher could think they were making a test fair for a level 3 while another teacher, in the same school, in the same city, or even somewhere else in the country, could have a completely different idea of what they believe to be fair for the student at level 3.

The other major problem that I saw was the fact that you are testing your students more (4 times a year) as opposed to just one time at the end of the year. One of the reasons this test came about was because they didn't want to test the students as much. It just seemed a little counterproductive.

As I discussed all this with Mrs. Sheppard she agreed. The teachers don't seem too happy about this type of testing especially because it adds a lot more work for the teachers. They have to make the test and they have to grade/assess the information they get from the tests. Also, it doesn't seem that even after reviewing the data it has much impact on the students' levels.

...At least it doesn't seem only America is struggling with the issue of test taking...

This week I will be taking over the literacy hour for the year 5s and 6s. We will be discussing a few of the different genres in fiction literature. To begin the students will get a list of books and reviews or short blurbs about it and then they will have to try to group them into the different categories that we will have discussed as a class. When they have grouped the books we will discuss differences and why the students chose what category they did for that particular book.

Later on in the week we will break down 4 of the genres a little further (science-fiction, historical, mystery, and fantasy) using extracts and books to find text features. The mini unit will end with the students writing their own short story about a simple activity (i.e. walking home from school or grocery shopping) choosing one of the genres to write in.