The teacher used many different types of assessments throughout the time I was observing in the classroom. During reading, she kept a running record while the students read to her. She did this about once every couple of weeks, depending on the student. For students that were below level in reading, she did the running record more often. At the end of each lesson she would have exit questions to see if the student understood what she was teaching. This let her know if she was going to need to go over a certain lesson again. The students were getting ready to take the Florida Standardized Assessment (FSA) while I was there. They had taken a practice test in January and the teacher was going over it question by question. She did this to show the students why they may have gotten a question wrong. The FSA is new to the state and the teachers really had no idea what was going to be on it. This made it very hard to teach the students. They call this “teaching the test”. Back when the students had to take the FCAT the teacher would make their tests modeled after the type of questions that would be on the FCAT. I heard the teachers complain about this more than once will having lunch with them. They wanted all their students to succeed on the FSA so they worked hard practicing the best they knew how. They gave the students many different types of question styles so the students could answer them if they showed up on the test. Another type of assessment I saw, was each student had a writing portfolio that they kept at their desk. It contained different levels of their writing. The students and teacher helped decide what pieces of writing would go into the portfolio.
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