West Blocton Elementary — What’s Best for Every Student
In this small rural community in Bibb County, something extraordinary
is going on at West Blocton Elementary School. As one of the first 16
schools involved in the Alabama Reading Initiative (ARI) four years
ago, West Blocton is committed to improving the learning of every child
who enters their door.
According
to first-grade teacher Pam Smitherman, before West Blocton became
involved in the ARI, "we were just beginning to look more at continuous
assessment [of our students]." Before that time, according to
Smitherman, "I was using assessment mostly as a way to get a grade –
not necessarily using it to guide instruction, but to have something to
document why they had a B or C or whatever."
Karen
Hubbard, who has taught third, fourth and fifth grades, tells much the
same story. "In the later grades, we just used the traditional grading
system. At the beginning of the year we looked at the records from the
year before. If we were fourth grade teachers, we dug into that fourth
grade curriculum. We didn’t really think about what level the children
were on that much.
With
the ARI, times have changed. Today, a description of West Blocton’s
continuous assessment strategies fills six pages. The assessment
toolkit is filled to overflowing with tools like the Dominie Letter
Knowledge Assessment, Dictation Test, Segmentation Test, Phonics Test
(Onsets), Test of Phoneme Identities, Core Reading Words, Reading and
Writing Assessment Portfolio, Spelling, Accelerated Reader and many
more.
Every
teacher maintains a "Reading File Box" with folders on every child. At
each grade level, results from a dozen or more assessment tools (many
of them administered multiple times) are included in the folders, which
follow students from grade to grade. "We can look at the assessments
from the end of the previous year," says second-grade teacher Tammy
Morton, "and it doesn’t take us long to figure out where students are
and focus in on what they need. It saves is four to six weeks."
