We just finished Week 2 of our divided writing groups that were double-blocked. The kids have gotten so much more accomplished, and I've really enjoyed hearing their continued writing conversations. So much progress has been made since the first day of school. This last round of expositories that the students are finishing up will not show until the next report card due to multiple turn-in dates. As I grade them, I am sending them home. This paper has a STAAR like rubric attached, and your child was rated on a 4-3-2-1 scale. Depending on how well a child does on the objective portion of the STAAR writing test, a 2 will be considered passing, just to give you an idea. The objective portion is weighted more heavily. This is the first year the students only have one day of testing. Whew! I think we are all glad about that. All students are prepared and ready. These last couple of weeks (minus track and field and field trips) will be focused on final review and test taking strategies so that students feel confident going into test day. Ultimately, they will all do their very best, and that is good enough for me. I'm much more interested in crafting writers than test takers.
My students are bringing home a graded open-notes Texas History test. They were given 3-4 class sessions to review their newspapers, notebooks and class conversations. Scores ranged from 70 to 100, so I feel that it is a fair representation of their overall knowledge of Texas Independence. Points were not given on the essay portion (just a paragraph) if the student copied directly from the newspaper rather than explaining in his/her own words what the question asked. We will be moving on to Statehood soon, as Texas flies her 5th flag, the United States flag.