Soooo….I always like to post fun and uplifting ideas for you and your kiddos! Well today my post is not fun and I am sorry for that! I have thought about this post for awhile and decided not to do it because no one wants to read about assessing, but then I realized from talking to others that some might need a more “manageable” way to track student success over the course of the year. Now, just know that anything and everything I mention can be edited in the freebie packet below! If you don’t teach to the Common Core you can change the standards assessed and criteria for your classroom.
I am not anti-assessing…I actually really like data. It’s just how to manage the assessing where it WILL NOT cause me to lose instructional time with my students. If that is once a quarter, once a month, a week, etc. etc. We’ve moved to assessing each standard five times per quarter. So, let’s do some big kid math… Take the standard for counting and answering “how many.” For first quarter you have 20 students and you will assess each student 5 times… that is 100 per quarter you will be doing some kind of 1:1 conferencing/observing/grade taking for just
one standard. Are you with me? They will say assess on the run, during carpet time, small group, etc. Yep, but during those times I am also teaching-taming-inspiring-band aid giving-motivating-shoe tying-ETC. So, I feel the pain… I DO understand both sides of this. I just want to break it down and let you know the easiest way I have found to literally conquer this in my classroom!
Let me first show you what my document looks like! On the left column you will see the standard/concept listed along with a column for student names. Along the top you will see the four quarters broken down. There is also a spot for the date for each assessment data point. We do some district wide assessments that can be used for data points…you will be able to edit those out of the document if you do not! At the bottom of the document there is a description of the standard/concept along with a scoring system of a 1, 2, 3. If your school does {+} and {-} or any other system you can also change that to match!
You might like a spreadsheet for each quarter…my thing was I wanted LESS paper. I didn’t want to handle a bijillion papers when it came to grade card time. I could also easily see student progress for the year!
You will also notice in the spreadsheets that some quarters will be in gray …these are standards not being assessed for that quarter. You can “fill” those white if you need to assess!
So, you have the spreadsheets..NOW WHAT? It’s time to get started assessing of course! 🙂 I have found that my favorite time for these data points is during my observations of students working both independently and in small groups. As teachers we are constantly circulating the room and checking in with the students…now you will just have your assessment clipboard with you! As the students are working with a partner with cubes I can walk up and say something like, “Sunny, can you count and tell me how many bears you have.” “Johnny, will you tell me if you have more cubes or does Sunny has more?”
If students are working on an independent practice sheet you can ask similar questions…point two numbers on their paper or the problem they are working on. They might not be able to understand the concept on paper but will be able to explain how to solve it through talk. For math I have found observing students during intervention and whole-group practice has worked the best! You most certainly can have your clipboard with you at the carpet for your math talks/number sense routines…I have just found that I am busy teaching and watching that I don’t always have time to take note on my clipboard. That is why I have really relied on that group/independent exploration time! In math you might also take a data point grade on a pencil/paper task. I think a nix of both is good!
Now literacy is a little different…and I use my small group guided reading time for most of these observations! However, there are some things in kindergarten I feel that truly need that one on one teacher assessment time…for example letter names! I want to know how many and which letters you know from the alphabet… I like to do these assessments during morning breakfast or indoor recess days so that no instructional time is lost! In the document you will see a letter identification assessment along with a teacher master listing! I feel this letter identification assessment is so important until students master all of their letter names! Also, you will find a quarterly assessment tracker for sight words {you can edit this to match your words}. Sight words are another very important assessment piece for kindergarten! I feel as the teacher I need to know what sight words they know…as these directly correlate to writing and reading! Below is a look at the letter names, sight words, and number identification assessment trackers.
There are also some tasks that I feel are a must for pencil and paper…I need to know that my students both identify and write their letters and numbers. Here is a look at that assessment.
So, do I have any magic tricks to get 100 data points per standard fours times a year? Yep, not really…but a way that I have found to help me track the data! I’m right there with ya! We can do this…. herd cats while getting data points!!! If you have any questions about the document or about your assessing please feel free to always email me at ta******@ho*****.com
Thank you for sharing your wonderful expertise and materials. You help a lot of teachers!
Thank you!!! I love this!
Thank you! We use AIMSWeb for our letters and sounds benchmarks and progress monitoring and that's what our school looks at for progress. The K teachers do common core assessments once a quarter right before grade cards. Since we are departmentalized, it is very difficult to find time to do any 1-1 assessing. I will definitely be using the sheets you provided. I like that they are editable. 🙂
Thanks for sharing! This will perfectly fill the need I have for keeping track of my Kinders' progress. I've been thinking of creating something like these & now the hard part is done for me 🙂 I only have to customize it for my program. I can full relate to your post about it being difficult to fit in all the assessment we are supposed to do along with everything else we need to get done each day. These will definitely help me with this task! Thanks again:)
Oh wow! These are amazing to manage grades and notes! Thanks a million for sharing ♫
I like this post.
It is a great tracker.I will definitely be useful for sheets.You have indeed shared a very informative post. Thanks
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It’s great! Thank you for sharing! This is new for me. I think I could use it for my kids
Number Writing Assessment sheet – what do the symbols mean? Or are they used to help the students keep track of where to write the numbers?
Thanks!
That is just a blank template for the kiddos to write their numbers! The symbols are there for them to find their spot. Instead of saying row one you’d say find the sun, etc 🙂
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