What's Changing on the 4 and 7 Writing Test in 2019-2020 School Year

Not much for THIS year from what I can tell.

Writing Tests

• Writing Assessment is still federally required for 3-8 not just 4 and 7. But not this year.
• Elimination of stand alone writing test will happen NEXT year - 2021-2022. 
• Which means - the kids this year will still take a test that looks pretty much like what we have been doing. There'll be an essay and multiple choice questions for revising and editing. They are using questions that are already in the item bank and that overlap the previous TEKS. You have to look at TEA's side-by-side docs to see what those are. And we can probably expect that items tagged as accessible, readiness, or supporting in the previous TEKS will maintain those labels on the new TEKS.
• Implementation of an integrated reading-writing test for 3-8 is expected in 2021-2022.  
• We will probably see field test items for the integrated items on THIS year's tests - 2019-2021. 
• Committees are working right now to design what the assessment will look like. 
• Committees worked in July to decide which items for the new TEKS (for both writing and reading) are assessible and which ones are not.  I don't know when we will see those reports.
• There is a cap on multiple choice (75%) that starts in 2022-2023. NOT THIS YEAR. With the requirements that all STAAR tests be online by 2022-2023, this gives more flexibility in what that other 25% will look like. I don't know what that will look like. TEA is working on that with teacher groups.
• There is a feasibility study due in December of this year about getting the online assessment accomplished. I'm guessing you'll probably get some surveys at the district level soon about infrastructure.  

Kinds of Tests

1. Formative Assessments - made by you for your kids to see if they are learning and what you need to be doing to help them. Nothing new here. We do this all the time. It's not going to be reported to the state or used for accountability, so no one freak out. 
2. Interim Assessments - made by Texas teachers with guidance from the state. For you, your grade, department, or school after units or learning cycles. We do this already, but this is online through the same technology used for the STAAR test. Don't freak out here either. The test is for measurement, designed to be predictive of STAAR and cannot be used for accountability. It's supposed to give you some test prep resources and guidance about how your kids are progressing towards mastery so you can intervene before STAAR time. It's optional and free. 
3. State Assessments - made by Texas teachers with guidance from the state. It's the STAAR test. I think we all know about that measurement and accountability purpose. With the changes mentioned above and in items 1 and 2, I think you can see movement toward better alignment of assessments and curriculum trajectories.
   

 

ELAR STAAR Data Trends from TEA: Outlined by Topic

At TCTELA's conference, TEA shared additional insight about data trends from recent assessment item analysis. Texas teachers moving the needle on performance for STAAR in many areas. Yet - as in anything - there is room for improvement. As we plan for next year, regardless of what the assessment looks like, TEA has provided rich ingredients for us to consider about refining our instructional expertise and understanding about student performance.

While TEA can provide data and synthesis about what these data points indicate, it's our job as practitioners to identify ineffective practices and to embrace progressively complex understandings to influence our pedagogy and interactions with students as we select our curriculum and plan our lessons.

In the following links, you will find the data points, analysis, identification of potential problems, and directions to begin your search for solutions as you plan for the faces you will see in the next few weeks.

• General Trends
• Where We Are Doing Well
• Author's Purpose
• Summary
• Organization
• Supporting Evidence (Reading Lens)
• Supporting Sentences (Writing Lens)
• Transitions
• Thesis
• Editing
• Constructed Response/Essay

ELAR STAAR DATA TRENDS from TEA

As we are digging into our STAAR data and preparing instruction for the upcoming year, TEA has provided guidance about statewide trends and areas of opportunity to help focus our work. As they have psychometricians and access to large amounts of data, their insights about what rises to the top like cream seems like a good place to make a big dent in our results: a rich source of information. Like butter in a cookie recipe, our lessons would benefit from using these ideas as a quality ingredient.

STAAR Data Analysis Trends from TEA: The link is here – salient slides are 57-63. While TEA can tell us what the problems are in the item analysis, the state of Texas leaves how that is to be addressed in the classroom to us - the practitioners. As I looked through the data, these insights resonate with my experiences as a teacher and administrator. I think they will resonate with yours too. I've summarized what TEA states in the bold heading and reference implications and recommendations as a subheading. 

Summary Statements and Implications

1. Items are addressed as “areas of opportunity” and address items that we have seen growth in since the inception of the assessment as well as those items in which we are seeing no movement.
2. Reading:
1. Purpose of the Selection: Students are missing these questions for all genres. They are basing their answers on the verb without considering the rest of the phrase. Synonyms for genres outside of the traditional persuade, inform, and entertain are used. Sometimes, two stems will use the same verb and data patterns indicate confusion.  
1. Implications and Recommendations: Teach additional vocabulary - synonyms - for PIE; Teach that author’s purpose extends beyond the verb to include the message/gist; Help students see the differences between theme or thesis. These look different depending on the genre.  
2. Summary: Students are selecting answer choices that consider the beginning, middle, and end as opposed to focusing on theme, message, author’s purpose, and text structure.  
1. Implications and Recommendations: Stop teaching BME strategies that bypass actual understanding of the nuances, meaning, and structures in texts. Address how summaries work in multiple genres and not just with plot structures. The correct answer for a summary will always reference the author’s purpose, theme/message (depending on the genre) and be written in a way that reflects the text structure. For example, if cause and effect is used to organize the text, you’re probably going to see the sentences constructed in the summary that reflects that structure.   
3. Text Evidence that Supports the Idea: Students are choosing a restatement of the main idea as opposed to the sentence that supports the idea.  
1. Implications and Recommendations: Make sure students know the difference between restatement and support. Explicitly teach the progression of meaning from idea to text and evidence. I think we also have to show them how these items are constructed – all the answer choices are directly from the text. Some kids don’t know that. One of the distractors is always going to be a detail. Kids need to be able to know how the distractors are composed.
3. Writing
1. Thesis: Students must understand the text at a macro-level that references the focus and purpose of the text. Most students are suggesting answer choices that are too broad (doesn’t capture the gist and focus on the topic) or too narrow (a detail from the text). Some students won’t consider a correct answer if it is shorter or not verbatim language from the thesis.  
1. Implications and Considerations: 1)Most kids reading the revision passages are not reading for meaning: they are reading to correct. You can’t revise something you don’t understand. Teach kids the purposes for reading revision passages as opposed to purposes and strategies we use for editing ones. 2) Students who avoid shorter, correct answers are reading to match and not reading for meaning. Summarization and paraphrasing lessons are warranted.
2. Runons, Sentence Combining, Comma Splices, and Fused Sentences: While students may be aware of the “rules,” they are not reading to correct sentences in terms of how the rules impact meaning and the relationship between ideas. 
1.  Implications and Considerations: Grammar instruction that focuses on rules and editing corrections does not address the components of reading for meaning and using punctuation as a tool for communication. Students also need to be able to identify the four basic ways sentences are flawed and show up as distractors (see bold items above).
4. Constructed Response - The Essay
1. Undeveloped Specific Examples: Students write “specific examples” as they are taught, but fail to explain them with how they connect to the thesis.  
1.  Implications and Considerations: Teach students organizational strategies besides or within the 5 paragraph essay format that structure the ideas by meaning (text structures or kernels). Teach students development and elaboration techniques such as looping or prove it.
2. Predetermined Expectations for Examples Forming Lists: Students are writing papers with a specified number of examples: usually three examples. This causes listing and undeveloped answers that do not add to the effectiveness of the response.
1. Implications and Considerations: Stop teaching the 5 paragraph essay. Stop telling people to use a predetermined formula for evidence and teach them how to develop ideas within text structures that match their purposes.
3. Lack of Personal Connection: Students are being told – in all grades – not to use personal anecdote. Kids are writing about stuff they know nothing about.
1. Implications and Considerations: This is bad advice left over from when kids got confused between literary and expository genres. People told them not to write anecdotes to keep them from wandering into narrative. The test doesn't work that way anymore. Hasn't for a long time. Let kids write anecdotes in informative essays. The rest of the world does. Teach them how to write an angled anecdote or embed them in more advanced text structures.

Edits: 7/26 - You can see more here: https://roseshona.blogspot.com/2019/07/elar-staar-data-trends-from-tea_15.html 

Resources for Drama

Someone asked me about where you can find resources for Drama. Like, you know there's no Drama section at Barnes and Noble or the library.

'Cuz, y'all: People don't read plays. They watch them. They are actors in them. They perform in them. If you wanna find dramas for kids, you're gonna have to look in another place.

1. Talk to your theatre teacher or speech teacher. They have plays. One Act plays are probably the best for the littles. (I bet the local theatre and children's theatre folks will be good resources too.)
2. Google scripts for Disney movies, cartoons, and other movies and TV shows, commercials, etc. You'll find TONS and BUNCHES of this stuff.
3. Look for Reader's Theatre stuff. TONS of that out there.

So this brings another consideration to the teaching of Drama. What's the purpose of reading a drama? That's going to change how we read them. At least it should. If you're reading The Crucible only as literature, you're missing  Arthur Miller's purpose and dramatic act of free speech. If you're reading a Reader's Theatre adaption of Bubba The Cowboy Prince, you're missing the author's purpose for writing it that way. It's meant to be read for the purpose of preparing it for a performance. Let's not steal the joy of watching a performance or of preparing one as we share these lovely writings with our students.

*Yes. I spell threatre funny. Most Americans spell it: theater. Most of the rest of the world does it the other way.  I like being obstinate.

Making a YAG: Some Opinions

Here's the question I received:

Shona,

I attached the updated YAG.  I was hoping you could look at it again for me and let me know if it looks ok.  We are still struggling with 5.12 and 6.11.  We don't know if we can get them all in during 1 six weeks or not😞  Right now we have them marked as every six weeks and I know we discussed hitting everything every six weeks but what would that look like for writing specific compositions (or teaching them how to)?

As always your help is extremely appreciated!  Don't know what I'd do without you!

Here's my thoughts:

Dear Friend, I don’t know if I’m reading this correctly. Basically, it looks like you are teaching every TEK every six weeks…is that right?

There are a few ways you can go with teaching specific the composition types/genres. The biggest problem here is that you really don’t know what genre you need to compose until you know what you want to say and why.

1. Using a thematic approach. Select thematically linked texts. In the first six weeks, cover a variety of genres in the texts that you read, listing the characteristics and readers demands. I use the lead4ward bookmarks for this. Teach several idea generating prewriting strategies. I have these on my seed ideas section of the writing notebook on my digital portfolio here: https://www.bulbapp.com/u/pre-writing-and-planning. Have students start some drafts. Then teach genre shifting and selecting a genre based on audience. In the following six weeks, assign multiple genre works that require multiple genres in each submission. See Tom Romano’s work for samples. You’ll see some here too: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WuJ4FVoOUbSkUO_CrMQQyaST9VRroN1cb19dqUwzZtU/edit?usp=sharing Scroll down and look at the samples under the heading for Digital Writing Experience
2. Using a genre focus approach. Basically do the same as above, but have a lead focus/feature on the genres. I’m really a fan of this approach because it doesn’t spiral the practice and exposure toward mastery.
3. Use the textbook YAG. Seriously. It’s not an entirely bad idea.
4. Use an approach that centers on elements of the author’s purpose and craft strand. If you are teaching repetition, look at how repetition is used across the genres. Name the purposes. Then re-enter your writing workshop documents and play around with it. Compose genres that you haven’t messed around with.

Sounds like we need to have a face to face convo so I can show you how to do this. You up for that?

Shona