Now, imagine that you are meeting with Ingrid’s grandmother today to explain her scores on the recent standardized achievement test. What will you tell her about Ingrid’s performance? her strengths? her weaknesses?
Ingrid’s performance is nothing to worry about, she scored pretty well. I am thoroughly impressed and unconcerned about her reading comprehension, science, and social studies skills. And that is quite impressive, reading comprehension is something most students struggle with and she was in the 92nd percentile. Her strengths, then, are her reading comprehension, science, and social studies skills. Her weaknesses, only shown from this test, are spelling and mathematics. She scored between below average and average on those two areas of education concepts. I would, especially if Ingrid’s grandmother is concerned, be constantly telling the grandmother that standardized tests only provide a rough idea of what the student knows and can do. I would reassure her that test results will not be the only things affecting instructional decision making. Maybe Ingrid becomes nervous during test taking. I would use more assessment tools than just standardized tests for my students.
If grandmother asks you what she could be doing at home to help strengthen Ingrid’s skills, what will you suggest?
I would suggest that Ingrid continues to read because she is performing really well in reading comprehension. I would have the grandmother work on vocabulary and spelling words that are commonly used, so that Ingrid will be more knowledgable on spelling words familiar to her. Also, the grandmother would need to help Ingrid with different strategies to solving math problems and to recognize what procedures to use with what math problem. If the grandmother spent some time out of school to help Ingrid on these concepts, Ingrid would more than likely improve in spelling and mathematics.
I agree completely with your assessments. The only other thing I would possibly add is to tell the grandmother not to obsess or worry too much about the areas that Ingrid is having a little trouble in. She is performing close to average for the most part. You could also encourage the grandmother to get Ingrid a tutor for those subjects if she's worried about not being able to help her.
ReplyDeleteGood to see you saying this is only one assessment. It's nice to have a record (beyond just the grade book) to show the grandmother to help illustrate your point. Just one thing beyond the test scores is usually enough to say, hey, look at this, here's another way I'm looking at how Ingrid is doing.
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