RISE/End of Year Testing – We started RISE testing in ELA classes this week. We will move onto Math next week and Science the following week. We also continued RI and MI testing. We encourage students to take these tests seriously and are asking for your support in reinforcing that message at home.
- Why do we Test? Testing has always been integral to education. Assessments inform instruction by helping teachers know if educational goals are being met. They’re an indicator of what’s working in the classroom and what can be done differently. Testing also gives parents an independent measure of their child’s learning, answering the question: Is my child on target and doing well compared to his or her peers?
- How should students prepare? Practice for the test is the instruction students receive throughout the school year—the skills and knowledge they acquire each day. There are a few things, however, families can do to prepare for test day at home:
- Make sure your child gets a good night’s sleep and eats a healthy breakfast.
- Make the morning of testing as relaxing as possible by arriving at school on time.
- Encourage children to focus and pace themselves without rushing. It’s important to take your time and read each question carefully.
- Remind children that if the test questions seem hard, that means they’re doing well. Similar to the ACT college entrance exam, the RISE test is computer adaptive, which means it adapts to the examinee’s abilities by proposing harder questions when a student gets something correct, and easier questions when the student gives a wrong answer.
- What about kids who have a history of test-anxiety? It’s important to strike a balance with children. You don’t want them to brush off the test. On the other hand, you don’t want to stress them out. How you approach the conversation will differ from child to child. But we like to describe testing skills as life skills. In our professional lives, there is pressure to perform and meet deadlines, and testing is no different. It’s really about demonstrating competency. They’ve worked hard all year in class. Now is their chance to show how much they’ve learned.
