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Students sharpen skills
Mon, Feb 27, 2006
Tests tracking learning By BJ CORBITT The Brunswick NewsTheir eyes trained on small electronic screens, the youngsters tap buttons, coordinating their reflexes with the graphics in front of them in a desperate race against the timer.This isn't a normal video game. It's a FlashMaster handheld computer.The devices offer math drills as games, and they are one of the tools teachers at Satilla Marsh Elementary School are using to help students improve their math skills throughout the school year.Keeping skills sharp is important because student learning is gauged throughout the school year with quarterly pre-instruction and post-instruction tests, a new addition to school routines since Superintendent Michael Bull arrived in August.Those regular exams are a major component of Bull's plan to help students prepare for end-of-year statewide Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests. Given at the beginning and end of each nine-week grading period, they serve as diagnostic indicators of how well students are learning the material they'll need to master before taking the standardized tests.Satilla Marsh Principal Kathie Matthews said that implementing the quarterly exams and the accompanying public display of their results was a big adjustment for her staff and students this school year. "Change is always different, and everything is new this year," Matthews said.Implementing the tests has carried demands both great and small, like learning to use the ThinkGate software and test scanners which grade and display the test results, as well as spending hours actually writing the tests.Placing the results of the exams outside each classroom and on the Internet took some getting used to for many of her teachers, Matthews said."There were concerns because everybody doesn't have the most top-notch class, but they're doing really well and they enjoy the data," she said.Bull has mandated the public displays of scores as a measure to show how well students are grasping material they will likely encounter on the CRCTs. He also encourages teachers to use the results of the tests to pinpoint concepts and skills students are struggling with and adjust their teaching plans accordingly.Knowing that their students' performances are displayed in hallways and online can bring out teachers' competitive sides, according to Satilla Marsh second-grade teacher Jenny McDowell."It's absolutely taken some getting used to because the scores are posted and ... you can't help but compare yourself to the other teachers in your grade level," McDowell said.But at the end of the day, the tests yield valuable information, McDowell said."Seeing the areas that we were weaker on in the first and second post-tests, that lets me see the areas where I need to go back and work harder," she said.With a third round of post-tests coming up next week, more of that data is on the way.
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