Archive for October, 2011

Petition to Reinstate the Space Shuttles

Saturday, October 1st, 2011

Guest Blog Post by Nora Miller, mathematician and web editor:

I would like to invite you to vote for a petition about the International Space Station and the recently retired Space Shuttles. The plan to use Russian Soyuz spacecrafts to supply the station has fallen through, and it’s possible that the ISS will be shut down without ever having been put to its original purposes. I am asking the White House to bring the shuttles back until another option can be found.  After you vote, please share the link with your friends. Thank you!!

Primary Screening Assessments Updated

Saturday, October 1st, 2011

Repeat visitors to my blog know that several different posts since 2009 have explored the topic of screening our youngest students (K-2) through the use of interview assessments rather than waiting until students are proficient at taking multiple choice tests. That led to my sharing on this blog site, and in printed articles in The Oregon Mathematics Teacher (TOMT) magazine, a series of articles that dealt with the topic of interview assessments. After several years of trying out many variations with lots of students at the k-2 level, I was finally able to narrow down to 3 or 4 questions at each grade level that seemed to give the best indicators of students who would struggle in math.

A recent message from Jenny Carloni, a teacher in Roseburg, Oregon has me devoting yet another entry to this topic.

Hello Ms. Cooke,

I’ve been reading about your screening assessments in TOMT.  I have an incoming third grade class.  What would you recommend as a good beginning-of-the-year screener to identify their basic mathematical understanding?  I’ll appreciate anything you send my way.

Thank you,
Jenny Carloni, 3rd Grade Teacher

In response to Jennifer’s message, I am uploading to this blog the most current versions of my K_2 Screening Assessment.

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