Monday

Anybody else have a Monday kind of day today? I sure did!

My schedule was still was up in the air when I left last Friday afternoon. Yes, this is after 4 weeks of school. Because we have a mandatory 90 minute reading block, and I have an ESL interventionist coming in, she and I were trying to make our two schedules come together. We worked on that during the first part of my plan time. Yeah! It worked out. And I'm happy with it. {Really, that's all that matters, isn't it?}

I realized as soon as I walked in this morning, that I hadn't finished working on my centers - so had to do that - I Am So Forgetful sometimes! 

And I need to go with my hub-bub to the Big City tomorrow to talk to a doctor about knee replacement surgery for him - so I had to plan for a sub. OK, got that marked off my to do list also. 

So anyway, the thing I really wanted to get to today, well, that just didn't happen. I did DRA testing last week, and our interventionist has done AIMS testing on all my kids. I had decided I wanted to share that with parents before conferences. Sarah at First Grade Snippets has a pretty cool Guided Reading Snapshot that she uses to let parents know about their child's reading. I used that last year, but this year, I wanted to include the math assessment information I had. 

I made a pretty simple form that basically said, "Your child is successful at ...." and "We will be working on ..." Did not get that printed at work. After I spent an extra hour there {trying to tame my closet a bit} I decided I'd just print it home tonight and then I could fill them out on the road tomorrow. Well, think again. my printer is out of ink! Yikes! 

Anyway, I was just kind of wondering - what do you do with the assessment information you gather? Do you share it with parents? How? Before conferences? Or at conferences? 

I guess I'm feeling like I want this to be a "We're all in this together" kind of situation, and I want parents to be in the loop about their child. Would sure love to hear your thoughts, though. 

Hoping Tuesday goes a little smoother. 

*** Update - I just saw that Sarah from First Grade Snippets also has a Math Snapshot - see it here! 

Testing

Testing, testing, testing. I started mine today. Our district just started using Aimsweb this year. The reading was actually not bad. My students read 3 passages and I was able to do the running record part of that on the computer. (I hope nobody is saying, oh brother, that's so old.) To me, kinda cool. So as soon as they were done reading the passages, I had a score for them.
Oh, my poor little sweeties. Five of them are below average - way below.
Were any of you like this in your first year? A student looks confident, acts confident and has coping skills that make it look like they can read, so (poor newbie teacher) Mrs. S. thinks they can.
Well, now with this, I'm know which students need help - intensive help. They can try to fool me, but now I know.
Math is next week - not sure it will be as cool. It's a paper/pencil test that I'll have to score and then enter.
So I brought all my guided reading stuff home tonight to work on - didn't get to it. 
But tomorrow's Friday!!