Testing Week

At Milaca Schools, we have "benchmark week" three times a year, in the Fall, Winter, and Spring. When we benchmark, we assess students in their Reading and Math Skills. For Reading, students participate in three types of tests.

They take a fluency test, where they read a passage three times in a minute, and we look at how many words they read in a minute and how many errors. We call this the AIMSweb ORF (AIMSweb is the brand name or testing company, ORF is Oral Reading Fluency). Fourth graders should be over 114 words by this time of year.

We take the AIMSweb MAZE test monthly. This test gives us some information about comprehension. Students have three minutes to read a page text. Throughout the text, in parenthesis, are three words that complete the sentence. We record the number of words that students correctly select and the number of errors. The number of words should increase each month and the errors should remain in the 0-1 range.

We also take the MAP Reading Test. This is completed on student iPads. There is an app provided by the NWEA testing company. Students read a variety of texts and answer forty related questions. This gives us a exile range (reading complexity for text), a score, and breaks down the data into Vocabulary Acquisition and Use, Literature, and Nonfiction Text.

Students also have assessments that relate to the daily learning and curriculum. All of this data is collected. We look to see if students are making progress. We look for ways we can individualize each student's learning experience. We may change students flex group experience, recommend After School Tutoring, or begin our referrals for Summer School. We meet weekly as a fourth team to share what we are doing, what worked, what failed, and to brainstorm what we can try next. Often, we have mini sessions to look for ways to support student success.

Today, we are taking the Winter MAP Reading Test. We started by looking at the scores.


 










Then, Ms. Leom handed out our goal setting from earlier in the school year, so we could remember what we were working towards. We reviewed test taking strategies (slow down, reread, go back into the text, cross out the answers that do not make sense, and more). Finally it was time to start the test.

   

Testing week is the week before the end of the Second Quarter. It is a full week of exercising our brains.