Throughout the year we give benchmark assessments to the students to see where they are at that time when it comes to some of the concepts they are exploring. These usually happen within the first month of school, the first couple of weeks after winter vacation, and near the end of the year. Most of these benchmarking assessments are simple one-minute probes that ask the student to do a certain task. Below are the different probes given for math. They are tracked through AIMS Web and assess five different areas:
- Number identification – In this probe, the student is given one minute to read as many numbers as they can on a given list.
- Oral counting – This probe has the student count as high as they can in a minute.
- Number sequence – This probe has the students tell the assessor how what number is missing in a set of three different numbers.
- Quantity discrimination – In this probe, the student lets the assessor know what number is the larger between two given. They have a minute to go through as many sets of two as they can.
- Addition and subtraction fluency – M-Comp – This is the one probe that takes longer than a minute for math in first grade. The students are given a set of addition and subtraction problems and are given eight minutes to solve as many as the problems as they can. Each problem is worth a certain amount of points. This then lets us know how the students’ computational fluency is coming along.
These probes all give a glimpse into how well the student is understanding some concepts. They let us know who may need to have extra help in the classroom or even if the students may need to take part of a small tutoring group. Friday’s entry will have information on the ELA benchmark assessments given in first grade.