Assessment (February)

February is often consumed with the frenzy of completing assessments and prepping for conferences. We use the Work Sampling assessment tool, which looks at the domains of personal and social development, language and literacy, mathematical thinking, science, social studies, arts and physical development and health. This year we piloted a new format with an expanded assessment form coupled with data compilation so we can better track our students' progress throughout the year. The new format took some getting used to, seeming more time intensive and cumbersome, while assessing all the same skills as in previous years. This expansion of the form made it unsuitable as a conference tool, so I decided I needed to develop something to compile all the data from the assessments and my class skills checklists to share with parents. Last year I worked on a narrative form that I used for anecdotal comments for each student for each of the domains, but it was very much a duplication of my efforts to fill out the assessment forms and then restate that information on the narrative form, becoming very time and handwriting intensive. After a couple prototypes, my new form is Excel based and on one page combines my skills checklists with space for anecdotes for both fall and spring data. Using my flash drive, I am able to work at school or at home and print out completed conference forms for both the parents and student files. Now that I have developed the form, it is very quick for me to refer to the class checklists and individual assessment forms and compile the conference data in a meaningful way for parents.