Re-teach the Standards
Finish Strong!
After Spring Break both students and teachers are like stable horses. Let me explain. Growing up near the equestrian center adjacent to Griffith Park in Los Angeles, my cousin and I would rent our favorite horses, Cupid and Angel, for a one-hour ride. For the first 45 minutes, our well-trained mounts would obey our every request including riding down into the concrete L.A. river. However, like-clockwork, during the last 15 minutes of our ride these stable horse pointed their noses back to the stable and no amount of cajoling would turn them away from their mutual goal.
In traditional calendar schools across the U.S. and Canada, spring-itis is now setting in. The weather is changing. The clock has sprung forward. The standardized tests are over. Only Open House remains and the summer countdown begins.
I have a cure for stable horses and spring-itis: re-teach the Standards.
Not a repetitive re-hash of what has already been mastered, but an assessment-based, targeted triage of what was taught, not not caught.
Good teachers are all about what has been learned, not about what has been taught. It’s all about what kids have mastered, not about what their teacher has covered.
Teacher Unknown
Here’s your motivation to finish strong. Here’s your opportunity to demonstrate your professionalism to your students, parents, administrators, colleagues, and most importantly… yourself.
As an aside, I love having my eighth-grade ELA colleagues tell their students, “I know you learned this last year, because you had Mr. Pennington last year in seventh-grade.” Not that I’m a great teacher, but my colleagues have my year-end ELA and recording matrices which document exactly what students have mastered on these comprehensive assessments.
Check out the following FREE Common Core-aligned diagnostic ELA and reading assessments. Don’t use them as summative assessments; give them now to gap-fill the Standards that your students have not-yet-mastered and in the fall to differentiate/individualize and plan your year-long instruction. Select the assessments that fit your grade level. Of course, Pennington Publishing provides all of the corresponding worksheets and activities to specifically remediate each and every Standard and skill measured by these assessments.
Get the Diagnostic ELA and Reading Assessments FREE Resource:
