This District ELA Benchmark is designed to work similarly to our Math Benchmark. It is administered in small groups and covers standards that students should have some familiarity with at this point in the year. Below I will outline each question in the assessment, what it tells me about the students' progress, and what instructional next steps I can determine from it.
Reviewing student class results is one way to assess student progress as a whole. In this section I will compare my student results to those of other kindergarten classes at my school and in our district.
My class as a whole scored 10% higher than our school average and 15% higher than our district average. We also scored 12% higher on mastery that our school average and 3% higher on master than the district. While these results are comparatively promising, I would like to move more of my students from Unsatisfactory and Approaching Basic into the Basic and above categories.
13 out of 24 students assessed scored a Basic or above on this test. I will target my remediation in small group and individual instruction to address the 11 students who scored Approaching Basic or Unsatisfactory.
When looking at my class overview like this, I can see which specific questions my students received low accuracy on. Questions 1-10 are all CVC blending practice, so it is not surprising that many of these questions are in the low accuracy category, with less than 50% of students answering correctly. Students also struggled with questions 12 and 13, which were questions where students were asked to sound out and circle the correct beginning, middle, and ending sounds in a CVC word and then write the word. I plan to practice this skill whole group during phonics class, and then create an independent W.I.N. center where students can work on this skill.
My students tended to do better on questions related to comprehension than they did on phonics skills. I will continue to focus on building these basic phonics skills to make sure that they have a well rounded understanding of the many ELA skills covered by this benchmark.
Assessing student progress as a class is important, but it is also important to draw conclusions from looking closely at individual students' data. Below are two examples of student benchmark responses, one from a student who is on track and one from a student who will require extra practice. In these presentations, I detail what skills each student has mastered, and what their next steps for learning and instruction will be based off of their assessment results.
My students scored above school and district averages on this assessment, but they still have more to learn for all students to score Basic or above. I will continue to practice and assess letter sounds in a wide variety of contexts, and to use these testing results to create relevant CVC centers and games so that students can continue to practice these skills. I will also communicate our class goals to my students so that they can be engaged in tracking their own progress and in reaching our learning goals for our next benchmark assessment.