Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Individual Student Goals

"Testing, testing, testing. These schools do more testing than teaching!" It certainly may feel that way occasionally, but I assure everyone that working with kids is still the overriding priority in all we do. However, effective testing and monitoring can help us better meet student needs.

Over the past two weeks, each student participated in one MAP test in Reading and another in Math. Each test lasted from about 30 minutes to just over an hour for most students. More can be found out about MAP testing at the NWEA site: http://www.nwea.org/

So, what do we do with the data? The Friday, October 8th Teacher's Institute will be devoted to teachers analyzing EACH student's MAP data and constructing Individual Goal Sheets. Teachers will then conference with students, discuss / clarify goals, and begin the process of meeting them.

Timely data put into action with student input is an exciting step towards helping all kids improve and meet achievement goals. That is testing made worthwhile.