How does Social Economic Status Impact School Culture?

It is very interesting to hear all of my classmates experiences.  I'm currently teaching in a Title 1 school where 95% of students are on the lowest side of the spectrum of social economic status (STS).  I feel the discussion we had in class today was very rich because it gave me an idea of the opportunities and parental support that students are getting in Cupertino where families are wealthy and engaged in their childs learning.  I feel the SES does impact school and class culture.  It is clear that API scores are higher in schools with strong and high SES and API scores are considerably lower for schools that have a low SES.  Students that come from a low SES do not receive the same family support, are not exposed to technology, and don't have the same value of education. 

A Look into Assessments Used in my Kinder Classroom

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In my classroom I am currently assessing all of my students in Language Arts and Math because report cards will go home next Wednesday.  But throughout the year, I use a variety of different formative and summative assessment measures.  I would like to discuss three assessment measures in particular. 

The first assessment I would like to discuss is journal writing. In my Kindergarten classroom we have Language Arts group rotations four days out of the week. Everyday, each student gets to visit a new group and complete different activities that are aligned with the current theme that I am teaching.  One of the groups for Language Arts that always stays the same is the “Interactive Journal Writing” group.  During this time students get to draw and write about anything that they would like to express.  The purpose of this group is to emphasize and practice five main rules of writing.

1-   Write your name

2-   Write the date

3-   Sentence starts with a capital letter.

4-   Sentence has spaces between the words.

5-   Sentence ends with a period. 

These five goals for writing are used as a type of scoring rubric at the bottom of every page in their journal.  After the student has completed their work, they will get a star for everything they remember to do. The goal is to get 5 starts for their writing.  All students enjoy this assessment because they have the freedom to share and express whatever they feel.  It is also a wonderful way to see the student’s progress as they grow throughout the year. Journal writing is a performance-based assessment.  I am assessing students based on a process and am able to see first hand how the students are producing language.  I am able to differentiate instruction in this type of assessment.  Just as Tomlinson states, it is good to “differentiateinstruction based on student readiness, interest and learning profile.”(Tomlinson, 2001) For example, my ELL’s can use their native language and get a chance to use their alphabet sounds to express their picture.  My students with special needs are able to use a chart that lists all the alphabet sounds and the picture that represents the sound to help them remember what sounds are needed to write the words.  This assessment integrates many different skills into one task and helps me understand what each student needs help with or has strengths with. 

The second assessment used in my classroom is another formative assessment.  All of my students have their own “mailbox” in which they put their completed word into.  I collect all the work that has been gathered in their mailbox and send it home in their homework folder for their parents to see what we have been working on and learning throughout the week.  I use this worksheet to see how students are completing their tasks in Math and Language Arts.  When students are completing a worksheet in my small cooperative group I always have the students recite back to me the words or phonics they have completed to see if they are grasping what the task was.  This is a way for me to work one on one with students and help them and see where they are struggling. 

The third assessment used in my classroom is on that I perform three times a year.  This is a systematic assessment of literacy and math development that covers work samples, observed behaviors, letter sound association, phonological awareness,print concepts, phonemic segmentation, high frequency word reading, and CVCword reading, number sense, number writing, patterns, colors, shapes etc…  This assessment is performed once at the beginning of the year, the middle of the year and at the end of the year.  It shows the pace of how the student is learning and it is used for report cards and to let parents know what skills are needed before the student advances to first grade.  I currently have a substitute for two days so that I can pull students one by one and work question them to cover all the skills that we have been working on throughout the year.  “Assessment is today’s means of understanding how to modify tomorrow’s instruction. (Tomlinson, 2001)

Tomlinson, C. A. (2001). How todifferentiate instruction in mixed-ability classrooms (2nd ed.).Alexandria, Va.: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development

Happy birthday Dr. Suess!