Setting the Foundation for Success with Beginning of Year Math Assessments

As educators, we know that a strong foundation is the key to success in any subject. When it comes to math, building upon the essential concepts from the previous grade level is crucial for students to thrive in their current grade level standards. That's why I'm so excited to present to you these Beginning of Year Math Assessments for Grades 2, 3, and 4.

These assessments not only provide teachers with an immediate baseline of their students' abilities but also serve as a valuable tool to reinforce essential skills while establishing rules, routines.

In this blog post, we will explore the benefits of using these assessments and shed light on the importance of focusing on foundational concepts and classroom dynamics at the start of the year.

Baseline Assessment:

Understanding where your students stand at the beginning of the year is vital for effective planning and instruction. These Beginning of Year Math Assessments serve as a comprehensive tool to evaluate your students' grasp of the previous grade level's Common Core Math Standards. By identifying areas of strength and weakness, you gain valuable insights into your students' needs, allowing you to tailor your teaching strategies accordingly.

Strengthening Foundational Concepts:

These Beginning of Year Assessments for Grades 2, 3, and 4 specifically target the essential skills and knowledge from the previous grade level. By revisiting and reinforcing the concepts that students struggle with, you can solidify your students' foundation in mathematics and make learning current grade level standards go quickly and smoothly. In my classroom, I like to use the first few weeks to review previous grade level content I know students need extra support with, build strong number sense, and strengthen classroom procedures and routines.
After administering the assessment, you're provided with Small Group Planning sheets that specifically target what extra support your students need based off the questions answered incorrectly. This is a great way to begin small group instruction in your classroom and building those routines and expectations.

Establishing Rules, Routines, and Procedures:

The beginning of the school year is an opportune time to establish a positive classroom environment and set clear expectations for your students. Focusing on rules, routines, and procedures lays the groundwork for a productive learning atmosphere for the rest of the year. Our Beginning of Year Math Assessments can be seamlessly integrated into your classroom routines, allowing you to incorporate essential review activities while emphasizing the importance of structure and discipline. By dedicating time to these foundational elements, you create a solid framework that will support your students' progress throughout the year.
Want to read more about routines and procedures? Check out this blog post.

Parent Collaboration:

Effective communication with parents is vital for student success. With our Beginning of Year Math Assessments, you can engage in proactive discussions with parents, providing insights into their child's strengths and areas that may require additional support. By sharing assessment results and highlighting specific skill areas, you enable parents to be active partners in their child's education. This collaborative approach fosters a strong home-school connection, setting the stage for continued support and growth throughout the academic year.

These Beginning of Year Math Assessments offer teachers a valuable resource to assess student abilities, reinforce foundational concepts, and establish a positive classroom environment. By utilizing these assessments, you can gain valuable insights into your students' needs, develop targeted instruction plans, and collaborate effectively with parents. Remember, a strong foundation sets the stage for success in mathematics and beyond. Start the year right with our comprehensive assessments and unlock your students' full potential.

If you'd like to start your school year off on the right foot, you can purchase your Beginning of Year Assessments here OR save this post to come back later.

Aloha,

5 Ways to Get Your Students Reading to Boost Achievement!

Are your students reading 15 minutes a day? If not they should be! Research shows that 

reading for 15 minutes a day makes all the difference between a successful student and a struggling student. But why 15 minutes?

 

Importance of Reading

A study comparing the engaged reading time and reading scores of more than 2.2 million students found that students who were reading 15 minutes a day or more got a higher reading score than the national average. Growth in a student's reading skills only happens when that student reads for at least 15 minutes a day. 

In this same study it was found that students who read less than 5 minutes a day saw the lowest level of growth in their reading scores. Their scores were also well below the national reading average. Students who read between 5 and 14 minutes per day did a little better, but their scores were also below the national average. “15 minutes seems to be the ‘magic number’ at which students start seeing substantial positive gains in reading achievement.” Renaissance

 

Reading Linked to Student Success in School 

According to a study of the Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA) scores of over 174,000 students around the world, there is a connection between a student’s reading practice and performance. Talentnook

So what is the difference between a student who reads for less than 15 minutes a day and a student who reads for more than 30 minutes a day? It can’t be that big of a difference, right? Wrong. There is actually a huge difference. The difference is 12 million.

By the time a student graduates high school, a student reading for 30 minutes or more a day will encounter 13.7 million words. And the number of words their classmates who aren’t reading 15 minutes a day will encounter? 1.5 million words. It is so important that our students are reading 15 minutes per day because it will greatly impact their success and achievement in school. 

SO WHAT SHOULD YOU DO WITH THIS INFORMATION?!

1. Encourage Reading in Your Classroom, in any way or form.  

It is so important that we encourage our students to read. Some of the ways we can do this is to invite them to reread, or read it again and again. Rereading builds speed and accuracy and helps students gain confidence in their reading skills.

For our youngest readers, teaching them that reading the pictures is also a form of reading. This will help them to feel capable of reading and begin a love for reading at an early age.

2. Teach Students to Find Just Right Books

Teaching students to find books that are a good fit is also extremely important. If students are reading books that are too difficult for them and/or not of interest, that is surely a way to discourage them from wanting to read more. By teaching them how to properly shop for books, we can help to build that love of reading.

When teaching students to book shop, have them open up a book and read through a few paragraphs. Can they read and understand most of the words? Is it too easy? Does what they are reading interest them? Is the type of book interesting to them?

If so- this is a good fit. If not, they can return it and find a new one. I also like to let students know that it's totally okay to start a book and decide that you don't like it.

 3. Organize Your Class Library to Make Book Shopping Easy

 Let's be honest- finding books in a library are rather difficult if you are just browsing and don't have a specific author or title in mind. I believe it's important to organize your own classroom library so that it's easy for students to find books they love reading. We don't wan't students to get discouraged from reading because it's too difficult to find a book!

Book bins are a great way to keep books organized and the best thing about it is that students can pull a bin out and easily look through to find a book they like. Students often check out books by looking at their covers. They are much more likely to pull out a book if they can see the cover versus just the spine.

The other great thing I love about the bins is that you can choose different ways to organize your books to make book shopping easier for students. In my own classroom library, I had my books sorted out by popular chapter series, favorite authors, and genre. This way, students could stick to the books they love, discover new books by their favorite author or even explore new books in their favorite genres. You can grab my library book bin labels here.

 

 

4. Host a Book Drive 

Another great way to make books accessible to students is to host a book drive at your school!

If you have never heard of a book drive, it is where students bring in gently used books and swap them out for a new one. The great thing about a book drive is that it provides new books to students and also makes reading more accessible to those who may not have books at home. It also helps to encourage reading at home. I held one at my school a few years ago and it was a total hit!

 

To ensure book swap inventory stayed up, I required children to swap for the same type of book they brought in (chapter book for chapter book and picture book for picture book). To keep track, when kids came to give their books, they would get a colored ticket (indicating picture or chapter book). They could then choose however many books for the number of tickets they had. 

If you have any questions for me about hosting your own book swap, feel free to DM me over on Instagram @teachinginparadise. 

5. Make Time for Read Alouds, Daily

I know that as teachers, you are always strapped for time. However, research shows how important it is for students to be reading daily. By Incorporating read alouds into your school day you are modeling fluent reading for students, introducing them to new books and authors, and most importantly, helping them to find the joy in reading!

I love to use Read Alouds to introduce new concepts that we are learning about. It's a great way to throw in a fun picture book. 

In addition, during the month of December, we read 1 Christmas/Winter story a day. The kids are so excited and look forward to these daily holiday read alouds. You'd be surprised how many students are not read to at home on a daily basis. 

So, no matter how old your students are, they all love to be read to! I've seen 6th graders in our school library so excited to sit on the ground for our librarian to read to them!

If you're a 3rd grade teacher, get my list of favorite Gr.3 Read Alouds here.

As educators, we want to do all we can to ensure that our students are successful in school and later on in life. One of the best ways we can do this is to make books accessible and ensure that they are reading the magic number of 15 minutes a day.

 

Until next time.
Aloha,

Sources:

https://www.renaissance.com/2018/01/23/blog-magic-15-minutes-reading-practice-reading-growth/

https://talentnook.com/blog/the-15-minute-magic-elevate-your-childs-reading

12 Ways to Quickly Check for Student Understanding

Teachers around the world are picking up the pieces and filling in learning gaps caused by school closures, distance learning, and concurrent teaching. Students haven’t had a normal school year in 3 years. Sadly, this means a loss of learning time for many and teachers are having to fill in those gaps and address those needs. 

Despite planning stellar lessons to teach your grade-level standards we must not forget about checking for student understanding. This simple act of checking up on learning throughout your teaching will make a huge difference in your students getting it. Let me say it now...Do NOT worry about your pacing. Instead, worry about making sure that your students understand what you are teaching. It’ll all pay off in the end, I promise. 

Let’s dive into different ways on HOW to check for student understanding.

Turn and Talk - Turn and talks are so powerful because they can be used with any subject in so many different ways. You can pose a question to students such as "share with your partner what you think the main idea of this paragraph is and why". You can have them solve a problem independently then share with their partner how they solved it and why. You can have them explain a concept that was just taught.

As students are sharing with their peers, you can walk around the room to listen to their conversations. You may pop into some of them to ask follow-up or clarifying questions. Depending on how students respond, this gives you an idea of their level of understanding.

While walking around, be sure to jot down quick notes about what you're observing!

Click here to get this observation sheet.

Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down- Teach students to put their heads down for this one (to avoid them looking around and copying others) OR have them place their thumbs by their heart so only you can see them. Pose different questions to your kids and have them give you thumbs up or down.

You could also use this one to get a gauge of student understanding after introducing new concepts. Thumbs up if this is making sense and you feel confident. Thumbs sideways if it kind of makes sense and you need a little extra practice. Thumbs down if you are confused and need more help.

*This of course will take talking to your students beforehand. Let your students know that it is OKAY if they don't understand and give you a thumbs down. If they aren't honest with you (and themselves) you won't be able to help them. Let them know that nobody else knows what they're showing you. Teach your kiddos to keep their thumbs showing until you tell them (to give you enough time to write down who needs extra help).

Whiteboard Checks- Whiteboard checks are great to use for math. Have students solve problems (teach them to hold their boards down while they write), then have them hold it towards their chest with the back of the board facing out. This is your cue that they are done. When most of your students have their answers completed, you can have them flip their boards and hold it above their heads. You can do a quick scan to see who got the answer correct and who didn't.

Jot down notes about how students are doing. Again, you can use a checklist like the one shown for student observations to mark how kids are doing with the concept. You can choose to make 5-6 kids at a time for each problem.

Whiteboard checks also pair well with task cards. This helps you to not have to think up of the problems. It can also be utilized well with multiple choice questions for longer answers like ELA.

Pinch Cards- Pinch cards are great to get quick snapshots of student learning. You can use double-sided pinch cards so that you have a variety of question types that you can use. True/False, ABCD, Yes/NO, Agree/Disagree.

If you're interested in the pinch cards shown above, click here.

Quick Checks/Exit Passes- Assign quick exit passes to your students to check for understanding of the day's lesson. Use these quick checks to determine what you will cover in tomorrow's lesson and/or to determine your small groups.

Utilizing Exit Passes like this will truly help you to avoid serious intervention issues later on. Your pacing may get slowed down, but it's better than keeping up with pacing and then later finding out that half your class do not understand what was taught in the last month!

I am currently in the process of creating these Quick Check Assessments for every single Grade 3 Math Standard. You can pick up what I have completed so far here.

Be sure that you are following me on Instagram and TPT so that you can be notified when I post new resources (and Quick Checks). Any time I post something new, I will ALWAYS mark it down 50% off for the first 24 hours!

Graphic Organizers- Graphic Organizers are a great way to assess reading comprehension! It's a quick snapshot to see if students are understanding the various comprehension strategies.

I have a ton of Comprehension Graphic Organizers readily available for you. The best thing about them is that there are both printable and digital options available.

Frayer Model- Yes, I know. Technically the Frayer model is a graphic organizer, but I felt this one needed to be a stand alone option. This is great because you can have students show their understanding in a variety of ways. You can truly see the understanding or lack of understanding through the various ways of representing something.

DLIQ- This is another great Exit Pass. This comes in the form of a Graphic Organizer. Students fill out each section below:

To get a copy of this DLIQ sheet, click here.

Whip Around- Whip Around and Pass works well for anything that can be answered with a quick response. You can decide if you want to allow students the opportunity to pass or not.

This works great with math facts, phonics practice, reading of sight words, etc. You can have a list on display, whip around the room and point to a different word, problem, or sound. Students must quickly respond then it's on to the next student.

This is a fun one that students often feel like it's a game. I used to time how long it would take us, and they would set goals to beat their previous records!

Hashtag it- Hand out sticky notes to students have them come up with hashtags for certain concepts. For example, you might ask them to hashtag multiplication. They might come up with #equalgroups #repeatedaddition #arrays #rowsandcolumns

As they exit the room, they can submit their sticky note (be sure to include names) so that you can quickly and easily see if they understand the concept.

Observations- Similar to the turn and talks, you would want to have some type of checklist to use while observing students. You could conduct observations while students are working independently (watch how their solving problems), listen in on conversations, observe them working on the computer, etc and take notes of what you notice.

Share Out- Have students share their thinking! This gives you so much insight into their own understanding of certain concepts. You can ask follow up questions to really dig deeper at student understanding. This is so much more powerful than a paper pencil test because you can truly see conceptual understanding through students sharing aloud their thinking and reasonings.

Regardless of how you choose to formatively assess your students, make sure you are doing it on a daily basis! In addition, make sure it's quick and easy so that you're actually able to check those assignments and use it to inform instruction for the following day. 
If you use any of these ideas, freebies or resources offered in this post, I would LOVE for you to share it and tag me on Instagram @teachinginparadise .. It would truly make my day :) 

Save for Later!

Don't want to forget about these tips? Pin the image below to save for later. 

Until Next Time...Aloha!

What are the SMPs (Standards for Mathematical Practices)?

Raise your hand if you’ve ever had a parent say “Why is math so difficult now?!” or “This isn’t the way I learned math. It’s so complicated and confusing now.” 

Chances are that if you’re an elementary teacher, you’ve definitely heard this or maybe even thought this yourself.

The Common Core Math standards can not effectively be taught without a focus on the Standards for Mathematical Practices (SMPs). Understanding the SMPs will enable you to better be able to shift your teaching practices from a focus on content (the standards) to a focus on application and true understanding. The SMPs are actually the heart and soul of the Common Core Standards.

You might be thinking:

Think of the SMPs as the process which one must take to learn their content standards. In order for students to be truly proficient with their content standard, they must be able to apply, communicate, make connections, and reason about the math content. This differs from how you (or your students’ parents) learned math because back in the day, proficiency was measured by a correct answer or one's ability to carry out a computation (based off of rote steps). 

These practices can’t be learned in a quiet math classroom filled with drill and kill activities/worksheets (think back to when you were in school). This level of thinking must be developed in classrooms filled with thoughtful conversations and hands-on explorations about math concepts. Your ability to ask thought-provoking questions is what will truly be the change in your math classroom.

Let’s take a look at Standards 1-4:

Standard 1: Make Sense of Problems and Persevere in Solving Them

In short, what is expected is exactly what the standard says. Students will be able to understand the problem-solving process and know how to navigate the process from start to finish. They have a variety of strategies and know how to go about solving a problem. Last but not least, students don’t give up at the site of a challenging problem. They have the tools in their “toolbelt” to power through and figure it out on their own. 

How do I get my students to be able to do this?

• Focus classroom activities and discussions on students’ thinking rather than on the correct answer

• Do not rely on oversimplified methods to teach concepts, such as keywords (I saw the word altogether so I added).

• Pose students with problems that push students to apply their understanding of math content and allow them the opportunities to explain their process of solving.

• Provide students with opportunities to explore complex problems that include multiple approaches to solving. Allow them opportunities to share all of these different approaches. 

• Praise student efforts, put value on their persistence and process on solving rather than praising the correct answers.

• Create a supportive and nonthreatening classroom environment where discussions of confusion points are encouraged. Openly discuss these confusion points and include insights on ways to simplify problems and move through confusion. 

• Acknowledge the efficiency of particular strategies but also celebrate individual, reasonable approaches. 

Standard 2: Reason Abstractly and Quantitatively

Standard 2 addresses the importance of building a strong understanding of numbers. When students are given a problem, they are able to represent the problem using numbers, symbols, and diagrams (abstractions). Students must see the connection between the problem situation and the abstract representation (equations). Once the equation is solved, students should refer back to the context of the problem to evaluate if the answer makes sense. 

How do I get my students to be able to do this?

• Ask students to identify and describe the data in the problem.

• Model building appropriate equations to solve problems.

• Use diagrams to model math situations to make it easier to see what is happening in the problems. Can students draw a diagram to show a word problem for 3 x 5?

• Frequently ask “what operation makes sense?” or “How should we build an equation to match this problem?”

• Ask students to write a word problem to go with a given equation.

• Consistently ask students to explain equations or diagrams, connecting them to the problem scenario (e.g., What does the 6 represent in our equation 6 x 3 = 18?)

• Ask students to label answers by referring back to the problem to determine what the quantity (solution) represents. 

• Ask students if the quantity makes sense when referring back to the problem (e.g., Does 3.5174 buses make sense?)

• Discuss building appropriate equations to solve problems (are there more than one equation that could be used to solve this problem?) 

Standard 3: Construct Viable Arguments and Critique the Reasons of Others

This standard means that students are able to come up with a correct answer and also explain WHY it’s correct. In addition, they’re able to listen to the justification of others, or even look at how a problem may have been solved, and identify any misconceptions or misunderstandings that the person may have had. They are able to communicate their thoughts to others. 

How do I get my students to be able to do this?

• Don’t just accept an answer from a student, follow up with questions such as “why?” or “How do you know?” 

• Encourage students to use math vocabulary in their justifications

• Use probing questions such as “Does that make sense?”, “Why is that true?”, “Does Ronald’s way to solve this problem also work? Why or why not?”

• Give students the opportunity to listen to their classmates' reasoning. Rather than the teacher asking clarifying questions or correcting a misunderstanding, allow the students to do this. 

• Create a non-threatening classroom environment where students feel safe to share their arguments and know how to ask clarifying questions, and how to respectfully disagree with others. 

• Provide students opportunities to work with error-analysis problems. 

Standard 4: Model with Mathematics

This standard encourages students to create models or visual representations of abstract math ideas. When students create models of problems, they are able to see the problem clearly and then work towards a solution. When you ask students to create math models, you are challenging them to represent their math understanding- to get it out of their heads. The power of this is that as students share their own thinking (Standard 3) and view the models of others (and listen to their thinking) they are able to gain new insights and strengthen their own understanding. 

How do I get my students to be able to do this?

• Model the use of diagrams and drawings to represent problems

• Encourage the use of manipulatives

• Encourage students to create simple diagrams to show problems

• Encourage students to come up with multiple ways to model a given problem

• Have students justify why they chose to use a given model

• Ask students to interpret models of their classmates

• Have students share out about the models they created and why

I hope that this post was helpful in learning a little about what the practices are and why they are important.

Head on over to this post to learn about the last 4 Standards for Mathematical Practices.