A group of teachers from the International Schools Leadership Team has been meeting to draft ideas for common progress reports for the elementary programs during spring of 2015.
Hiromy Pingry hkpingry@seattleschools.org, lead
Stephanie Chen, Sergio Jara-Kessi, Leticia Clausen
Plans for Fall 2015 - Progress Reports
Q&A on STAMP Testing:
1. Q: Why is my child’s Speaking score lower than the target?
A: Examples…
“Our entire class had trouble using the microphones to make recordings. I think the children got frustrated and were not willing to record very much. You don’t need to worry about their STAMP ratings here because I know that they all speak in Spanish a lot in class and are developing proficiency as we would expect.”
OR
“Most of the students in class managed to make recordings and meet the target level proficiency even though they were not completely comfortable recording their own voices. Some students, however, are really shy, especially speaking out loud when other students are nearby to make the recording. Next time I’d like to give Mary a chance to record by herself in a quiet setting so she could feel more confident.”
OR
“Yes, we were a little surprised that the STAMP Speaking scores were not higher, but in reflecting on our instructional practice, we realized that we need to give the children more opportunities to speak in longer segments (not just answer yes/no or one work phrases. We’re glad to have this feedback early in the year so we can make adjustments to how we are teaching.”
Etc.
In other words, look at your data and decide what is the best explanation. I’d love to get into this in-depth. I’m sorry we’ve not had time, but I’m hopeful that some funds are going to come and we will be able to meet.
2. Q: Why is my child’s Writing score lower than the target?
A: Examples:
“We have not put an emphasis yet on learning to type in the language, so some students were not very comfortable writing that way. We do other writing (by hand) in class, so I’m comfortable that the students do know how to write. You don’t need to worry about that score.”
OR
“We realized by looking at the students’ writing samples that we have not been encouraging them to do enough independent writing in Japanese on non-academic topics. We want them to learn the full language (not just academic topics), but it’s hard to fit all that in. We are working as a district to figure out how to make sure that are children learn academics and language and literacy.”
OR
“Writing is always tricky with kids. Sometimes they just aren’t interested in writing about the prompt that is offered. When I looked at Mary’s writing samples, I saw that she got a higher rating on one than the other two (so her overall score was lower). I can see that when she’s interested in something, she can write well.”