Assessment Tools

1. Accelerated Reader

* Accelerated Reader or AR is a daily progress monitoring software assessment in wide use by primary and secondary schools for monitoring the practice of reading, and it is created by Renaissance Learning, Inc. It is a self-paced, individualized computer assisted reading program used in many schools. Children read books and then take computerized multiple-choice tests that measure their comprehension of the books.

2. Teacher Made Tests & Quizzes

· These are forms written or oral assessments that are not commercially produced or standardized. In other words, a test a teacher designs specifically for his or her students.

3. Rubrics

· Rubrics are scoring guides used to evaluate the quality of students’ written and oral work.

4. Performance Tasks

· Authentic processes, performances, demonstrations, or products by which students demonstrate or apply the knowledge, skills and strategies, and attitudes that they have acquired as a result of instruction and practice.

· A performance assessment consists of two parts, a task and a set of scoring criteria or "rubric." The task may be a product, performance or extended written response to a question that requires the student to apply critical thinking skills. Some examples of Performance Tasks include written compositions, works of art, research projects, open-ended math problems, and analysis and interpretation of a story the student has read.

5. Centers Contracts & Checklists

· Our students spend their Language Arts time working in centers. These centers include Tiger Readers (Orange SRA), Dino Readers (Green SRA), Outer Space Readers (Chapter Book & Book Log), Vocabulary Detectives, and the AR Challengers (Accelerated Reader). The students filled out contracts and checklists that require the students to log in what center they have worked in during the day and rate their performance in each center. The checklist also requires the students to mark whether they have reached the goal for each center that they have worked on.

6. Journals

· Journals are usually written in narrative form, are subjective, and deal more with feelings, opinions, or personal experiences. Journal entries are usually more descriptive, longer, open-ended, and freer flowing than logs. They are often used to respond to pieces of literature, describe events, comment on reactions to events, reflect on personal experiences and feelings, and connect what is being studied in one class with another class or with life outside the classroom.

7. Reading Logs – students are required to read both a chapter book from the classroom library and an Accelerated Reader book from the school library.

· Book Logs – the students use this reading log with the chapter books that they read from the classroom library. The book logs ask the students to identify the title of the book, author, illustrator, genre, what they liked most about the book, how they can relate the story with their life, and also rate the book.

· Reading Partnership Logs – students bring home these reading logs to have their parents acknowledge that they have read either the chapter book or the AR book. Parents are asked to sit and listen to their child read the book and then sign the log.

8. Standardized Tests

· Standardized tests are tests on which all students answer the same questions, usually in multiple-choice format, and each question has only one correct answer.

· In the beginning of the school year, all the students are required to take the STAR Math and STAR Reading to determine their math and reading levels. The student’s reading result from the test will determine what level of book he or she can borrow from the school library’s AR selection.

· 3^rd grade students are also required to take the Reading First Assessment. This tests the students’ phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.