How do you ensure that students with severe speech and language articulation or receptive or expressive disabilities take appropriate routine assessments? For example a student that struggles with speaking fluently i.e. stutters may be omitted from one minute oral reading fluency benchmark testing. Students with specific articulation errors should also not be penalized for these errors during early literacy screeners and benchmark tests. Our district writes the articulations errors on the Acadience test booklet to avoid such penalties.

Beginning of the year activity -- turned test prep strategy!

At the beginning of the year a few years ago, I decided to play 4 corners with students with get to know you questions. I put up a slide-show with questions and the 4 possible responses. I set out the rules (no running, must choose one of the answers, keep within your own space, etc) and labeled each corner. When they made their selection, they could talk with another person or in a small group, why they choose that answer. Then they could share if there was another one they would have picked. If only one student was at a corner, I would go over and talk with them.

What I realized a few weeks in was that I could also do this with math multiple choice questions for practice (I taught primarily math at the time, but you could do it with other subjects too). Students then had to show their work for the answer or explain how they got it. I occasionally would throw in a question that had multiple right answers and would share that up front with students. They then could discuss in their groups if they thought any of the other answers were correct and how they knew.

Getting ready for testing for elementary age students: what are some of your favorite review games?

We love to play Stinky Feet -- I simply use a large chart paper with a foot on it and post it notes. As teams answer questions, they get to pick off one of the post-it notes and see how many points are given or taken. (Not always the best for very competitive groups if they lose points so you can just do various amounts of positive points!)

This blog though makes it more technology-interactive: https://theuniqueclassroom.wordpress.com

How do you use your PLC time? How is it structured? What roles to different members have and how does your meeting time flow?