Celebrating Failure in Rm 613

Dates. Names. Details. Facts. No debates. No discussion. Just dates, names, and details. This is how history was (and probably still is) taught. Due to the expectation of the state testing, teachers had to follow the strict pacing guide in order to ensure that students will absorb the necessary information to pass the tests. Thankfully, things are slowing changing because of Common Core. Even so, I’m still faced with the struggle of quality and quantity of topics as a history teacher. My department has been flexible and accommodating to the new expectations of CCSS; we are adjusting our pacing and tests almost weekly to emphasize the quality of information rather than the quantity, which has been a big stress reliever.With testing season upon us (CAHSEE this week, SBAC next week, then SBAC again in May), I can’t help but worry that I won’t be able to cover all the major topics with my students. What if I let my juniors out into the world without understanding how various minority ...

I wanted to update my blog with the results from my RTI for this exam: Based on the results of this RTI compared to those from the previous RTI, I had a higher rate of students increase their scores. My mastery level compared to the previous RTI improved by at least 10%. It is also worth noting that with the previous RTI I only had students retest with a 69% or lower while this time around I had students with a 79% or lower. But still, more students increased their scores. Compared to my colleagues, I had less students “master” the material with retesting, meaning they received an A or B. I’m not sure if mastery is something to look at when discussing retesting, but still my scores were lowers. At the same time, I had less students eligible for retesting; for two periods of world history I had nine students and for two periods of US I had eleven. Overall conclusion is that RTI within the classroom was more successful for the students with more students passing. Whether o...

In all my years at my school site, which is a whopping two years, we have always done Response To Intervention one way. Two weeks after the set benchmark date, we have RTI week at our school, where we take twenty minutes at the end of the day for three days; Wednesday and Thursday to reteach information and Friday to retest. While this system worked in some ways, we as a school site recognized that this was not in the best interest of the students: Students could only be placed in one subject to retest, which meant that they needed to arrange on their own time to be retaught the information for their other classes. Since we don’t have a large staff, many of us teach multiple classes so that means that students may get RTI for our class, but have another teacher reteaching. This unfortunately was difficult for the students since they sometimes had to adjust to a different style or different presentation of information for only two days. Most of all, student scores were not imp...