Assessment Folders

We've embarked on what is probably my least favorite part of the school year...  Assessment season!

When we return from Christmas break we pretty much hit the ground running when it comes to preparing for state assessments.  January was pretty much a whirlwind of test prep and getting my third graders acclimated with the testing program on the computer.  We've got another whole month before assessments, but we've still got a lot of ground to cover between now and then.

My school is known for getting really good scores, so the pressure is always on.  One thing I really like about our test preparation, though, is that we get the students involved in their learning and get them excited about their achievements.  

Our assessment folder are something that I started doing a few years ago to keep things organized and help the students track their progress.  We have a lot of really great formative assessments available online to help our students with test preparation.  We take at least 2 or 3 formatives each week, most of which give the students valuable experience with our online testing program.

I have my students track their progress on some graphs that I created in Excel.  They have one graph for reading and one for math.  I labeled the graphs with each of the online formatives so that they can keep track of their progress.  (Sorry I didn't have any graphs to show!)  These graphs are great data to share with parents at conferences.

We do most of our practice tests in one of the computer labs, so these folders are a great way to keep everything together when we're traveling back and forth.  It's obviously nothing fancy, but just a little something to make our test prep a little easier and a little more organized for my students and me!