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Gabriella Ramirez

Professor Dugi

EDU 221

29 March 2022

FE #3 Assessments

In Ms. Turco's first grade class at Rover Elementary, she provides a variety of

assessments. Ms.Turco’s assessments are primarily informal. She has a binder with each kid's

work and collects samples, such as writing and observational ways to keep track of their work.

The binders contain all the math, writing, and science work that they do throughout the

semesters.

Math assessments are strictly observational. She uses whiteboards during math lessons, to

see which students are struggling and which are not. Ms. Turco's class sometimes has short math

assessments that she puts in the individualized binders for the students. Informal writing

assessments are based on the daily journals they have. This allows Ms.Turcos to see where their

capitalization, writing, and spelling are at.

Science is project-based and verbal assessments with the students. They go on many field

trips and learn about the different plants and animals in different contents, oceans, and
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environments. The school has a garden where the students can understand and receive hands-on

learning, learning about how plants are made and the insects that help the plants thrive.

Ms.Turcos has small groups, which are based on attention and extra support for students

along with interventionists. This focuses on a lot of comprehensions, phonics, short and long

vowels, and words per minute. Other small groups vary in different levels that are strictly based

on where the students are at. In the higher grade groups, they work on more advanced levels of

comprehension, writing, spelling, and phonics. This helps build the student's confidence in

themselves and become more prepared.

The summative assessment they take three times a year is a standardized test named the

NWEA. First grade takes Acadience, which is a test testing reading and writing skills. Ms.Turcos

has a “walk to read”, which is helping students that are below grade level. She uses a phonics

screener which helps her get a better understanding of where there are short and long vowels,

sentence dictation, and writing styles. At the end of the year, unit tests to see where the students

are before going into second grade.

These are all the assessments that Ms.Turco and other teachers use. Reflecting on this

information I understand that most of the assessments are observational. The group of first-grade

teachers understands that not every student does well on tests and each student thrives in a

different subject or skill. I really enjoyed learning more about this approach and hope to

incorporate some of these things into my classroom.