Week3
State Board of Education announces move away from PARCC testing
This was a busy week for news related to ELL. Although I felt there were many interesting topics this week, two stood out to me the most. The first one is an article related to Colorado dropping out of PARCC testing. For those that do not know, PARCC testing is an extremely tedious and time-consuming state assessment that is completely online. Many states in the U.S. started with it but many have dropped out since it was put into effect. New Jersey is one of the schools that use PARCC as a form of state testing so I see first hand the stress it puts on the students. Not only does it take a week and a half to complete, the results don’t come in until the following November. Last year it was 2 rounds of a week and a half. Luckily, this year was only one round but it is still very time-consuming. Our students are extremely proficient in math but because the program is not user-friendly, the technology aspect of it does not accurately represent their content knowledge. It is also very much driven by profit as Pearson is the book company that is contracted for this exam.
Colorado is making an interesting move towards creating their own state tests which will be similar to the questions on PARCC but tweaked to be better accommodated to more students. Colorado also altered a bill which allows ELL students to take assessments in the language they are proficient in up to the 3rd grade to instead have to take it in English if they are partially proficient. This change seems a little harsh to me but I do believe Colorado is moving in the right direction by not using the PARCC testing anymore. With a new governor in New Jersey this year I hope we will be able to take a similar step in the right direction.
Tools for Communication: Exchanging Ideas with Whiteboard Tables
On a separate note, the video on this link discusses how a teacher turned workstation tables in his classroom into whiteboard tables and discussed the ways in which they can be used for ELL. I thought this was such a creative approach to teaching. I have whiteboards for each of my lab tables. Each whiteboard just about fills up a lab table. I use them for various activities or test review but I never knew that there were tables with an entire surface as a whiteboard. When his ELL students work in groups together he shows the students how to depict their ideas through drawing on the whiteboard since they do not always know the correct way to pronounce a word. The teacher also takes words and has the students draw what the word means or spell out new words on the table. He says that the tables are very expensive but he took existing tables that were there, sanded them down, and painted them with whiteboard paint, which I also did not know exists. Unfortunately, my room does not have tables that would allow this to be feasible but for elementary schools or resource rooms, I feel like this could be a really great tool. I plan on passing the video along to our librarian who may be able to get one in our library. Although this teaching technique is not technology related, I felt it was a creative way to make the most of what you are given, especially since some schools have very minimal technology.
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