6-8 ELA Minutes 4/13/09

GRMS: ELA Monthly Meeting 4/13/09

Topics: Writing Prompt: Anchors, Tech Issues, Schedule issues, NWEA, Reading Totals

Next Meeting: May 18

Prompts

Scoring Codes: same as what was used in the fall
SWP-W (writing content) SWP-L ( Language/usage/grammar)

Looking at improving what we can do to make the work happen more easily
We would like to see the following in place for next year:

Prompt writing happens in LA Classes not homerooms
Over the course of 2 days to deal with less impact with the whole school
LA Dept will set the days
Spread out the computer time so we don’t have crashes

Feedback from kids:
Hard or “lame” question
Not easy to write about
Kids did not know what the word “influence” meant so were guessing what the question asked
Kids felt it was another test we asked them to do for us -- not for them
( a la MEAs, NWEAs, Prompts, Assessments)
Many students did not buy in or invest

NWEA

Concerns were raised about the second site
Too hot for whole classes -- no windows or ventilation
Server crashes – what do we do and how do we prevent kids from having to redo work

Reading Totals

Please remember to get reading page totals for your teams into Todd.
( LA Lab totals are in your boxes )