Idea Farm

I did not get as much done today as I was hoping … which is pretty typical. I frequently underestimate how long something is going to take! For today, I downloaded each assessment map for Grades 2nd-5th, created a spreadsheet that I will use to track how the students are doing during the assessments. I am struggling with how I want to setup the sheets. I want to use some of the knowledge I have when it comes to workflow and Google Sheets, using formulas to ease my life, so I need to take some time to actually plan out how I want the sheets to work, and what the end product I want when it comes to the sheets might be.

From there, I was able to create question banks for 3.OA.1 & 3.NF.1. I used our math curriculum, Bridges, to do that work. I had not realized that Bridges is setup differently for different grade levels. In 5th grade, in our Teacher Masters, there is a recording sheet that breaks down the assessment by question and attaches a standard to each question. I did not find that for 3rd grade, so it made the process of figuring out which questions to screenshot and add to the document I created much longer!

Tomorrow I will:

Choose the 20% Anchor skills for reading.
Finish at least one more Keystone Standard problem bank.
Finish one assessment for one (or more, have to think about that) anchor skill for writing.

The idea is to touch up these posts as I go, and to use this forum for myself to reflect upon/keep track of a process/journey I am taking. I am focusing on the learning of my students.

Today I started with the 20% idea. 20% of some knowledge is foundational, and if you master that, the other 80% is simpler to learn. I decided that the 20% for writing is Craft & Elaboration (9 categories on the rubric), and then I started working on Maths.

First, I recorded the total number of standards in each of the 5 maths domains, and found that there are 26 total standards. 20% of 26 is 5.2, so I was looking for 5-6 “anchor” standards.

Then I used the coherence map from Achieve the Core to find out two things:

How many standards are required to be mastered in order to do well with each of the 26 5th grade standards.
How many future standards are each of the 26 5th grade standards connected to.

I added the totals of 1 & 2 for each standard to get a total number of standards involved, and then did an Z->A sort to order the standards. The top 6 standards, (7 with ties), according to this method are:

5.NBT.1 (10)
5.NF.3 (8)
5.NF.4 (8)
5.NF.5 (8)
5.NBT.7 (7)
5.NF.7 (7)
5.MD.2 (7)

At this point, I decided that I should, for the top 5 standards, pick one from each domain, which meant that the official 20% foudnational anchor standards are:

5.NBT.1
5.NF.4 ( I chose this one because it attaches to 6 future standards)
5.MD.2
5.OA.2
5.G.2

From there I mapped out each standard with the help of the Coherence Map, looking at what the pre-requisite standards are for each of the 5 anchor standards. I looked two levels back. For example, in order to be ready for 5.NBT.1 you needed to have mastered 4.NBT.1, 4.NF.5, 4.NF.6, & 4.NF.7. In order to master 4.NBT.1 you needed to have mastered 2.NBT.1. In order to master 4.NF.5 you needed to have mastered 4.NF.1 & 4.NF.3..and so on.

After mapping out all of the connected standards, I decided to list every standard that was on the map in a Google Sheet so I could do a COUNTUNIQUE formula to see if any standards repeated, which 5 did:

3.OA.1
3.NF.1
4.OA.2
4.NF.2
4.NF.4

Each of the above standards showed up two times on the map. I decided to call these “Keystone” standards.

Why am I doing all of this? Great question. My hypothesis is if I focus on the 20% of anchor standards for any subject until every student has mastered them, then all of the students should leave our classroom on Grade Level. Having mapped out the math standards, I can now develop assessments to give at the beginning of the year.

What are those assessments going to look like?

My thought here is to first give assessments on the 5 Grade Level Anchor standards, and then look at the results of the class:

If the class results come back at less than 30% correct, then I backwards asses all students on the Level 1 Pre-Requisites and Level 2 Pre-Requisites if necessary.
If the class results comep back with greater than 70% correct, then I will pull the other 30% into small groups to backwards assess and create plans for each student.
If the class comes back in-between 30%-70% then I will try whole group instruction/activities for that standard.

The above percentages comes from the Peer-to-Peer instruction framework developed by Eric Mazur.

At this point I am wondering if I should start the assessing with the “Keystone” standards, to ensure all of the class has mastered each of the standards.

I am also wondering about the assessments. One item that Neil Heffernan talked about was the idea of students “Spinning their Wheels”, so shouldn’t the assessments I use show that as well?

For tomorrow, I have some time in the morning to continue this work. My thought process is to:

Create the Keystone Assessment
Unpack the Craft and Elaboration skills and consider how to assess those items (I think I want to use DOK 1, 2, & 3 here…for example, can a student recognize dialogue, write a dialogue sentence when asked, and include dialogue in a cold-write)
Choose the 20% for reading literature and informational.

Day 2, The Best Laid Plans...

Day 1, Focus on Learning