A Reader Asks... Common Assessment Reflection

A LYSer asks the following:

SC,

I have attended a number of your conference sessions over the past several years and always feel that your information is very pertinent and valuable.  Our campus will be conducting 3-week common assessments this year and I am curious about your thoughts on the reflective process following these assessments. 

What are your recommendations on what to include: weak TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills); plans for re-teaching; etc.; to help drive future instruction and fill gaps from previous teaching?

Thank you for your time and advice.

SC Response

Thank you for your kind words and great question!

Short-term data analysis and reflection is a quick process.  Think halftime adjustments in football.

A. What’s working? Let’s take advantage of that.

B. What’s not working? What will we do different to slow down the damage?

Most schools get hung up spending all their time either hating the assessment and/or sorting students into “can do/can’t do” groups.  Both of these actions are counter-productive.

In terms of immediate adjustments and actions, what the instructional team should do is identify the two deepest holes (the SE’s the students as a whole did the worst on) and re-teach those two elements as they continue to stay on pace with the curriculum.  Those identified deepest hole concepts should be added to the next checkpoint and then after the students take that checkpoint, the new deepest holes are identified and the process continues.

Do what works, quit doing what doesn’t work and re-teach the deepest holes as you continue teaching forward. That’s it in a nutshell. 

For more direct support, just call.

Think. Work. Achieve.

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