Thursday, February 11, 2010

FCAT CRUNCH—The Time is Near

FCAT Season offically started February 9 with the FCAT Writes.

If you have had your formal visit from the IRT team –two recommendations probably topped your list of Deliverables—

• spend the first 20 minutes of class on FCAT strategies

• analyze the benchmarks that are most tested from year to year. (http://fcat.fldoe.org/fccontentfocus.asp)

Diane Fettrow provided High School English Department Heads with just that-- Benchmarks, Skills and Number of Items in the Past Two Years in Reading.

Examine the data and have your teachers do the same thing with Science, Math, and the appropriate grade level of your school. The data is available—use it.

Now that you have this information, what do you need to do to assure teachers are using the information to your school’s advantage?

First, make sure teachers have taught all the skills listed on the chart. Next, have them recognize the clusters and skills that have the biggest payoff. Then, teachers should use the released items, the old tests, (http://fcat.fldoe.org/fcatrelease.asp) from the Department of Education for practice.

Teachers should not make this just another assessment. They should use it as a teaching tool to find out what students are missing. . . what they don’t understand. Time is running out!