STAR testing galore!

Three times this year-beginning, midway and end, we will be taking the STAR assessment. As I shared at the beginning of the year, this is just another piece of the puzzle of your child's understanding and strengths/weaknesses. Today, we took the 2nd round of these tests and after taking the Math portion this morning, I was happy because the majority (22/24) raised their score from the first round-which is all I asked, that they show they are growing in their learning! After looking at the Reading portion, about 1/2 of the class lowered their score from the first round. Hmmmm... Maybe we need to hit specific reading skills harder? I need to look closer at the listed strengths and weaknesses and see what we need to work on. It didn't help that some finished the 30+ question assessment in less than 15 minutes... Anyway, we still worked on building our math fluency with addition, subtraction, multiplication and division as well as problem-solving in Math Workshop this morning and this afternoon, in The Beaded Moccasins, found out that Mary has been kidnapped by Native Americans! We also read books in small groups and discovered the theme and gave specific textual evidence to support this theme. Then, in Writer's Workshop, we looked at the opinion writing rubric and compared 3rd grade to 4th grade and using this rubric, looked at their pre-assess opinion piece from yesterday and decide where they fell on this rubric-most are at the 3rd grade level (some lower), which is fine because you can't get better if you don't know where you are starting!