Testing, Student Growth, and Introducing Division?!

I apologize again for going missing, but I've been spending some quality time bonding with my baby hamster, Bucky, which I mentioned in my last post. Also, I've been slowly coming out of my creator's block, so I'll be back to making resources for my classroom this weekend (fingers crossed). However, I did want to spend a little time updating you all on the progress my students have made.

This week, my students are taking their winter NWEA Map test to measure how much they've learned and grown from the fall when they took their first round of tests to see where they were at when they first came into first grade. 18 students tested, but there wasn't a way to measure how much 3 of the students grew because they transferred in and had not taken their fall MAP test with us. Out of 15 students who tested in the fall and winter, 100% of them grew. 10 met their winter targets and of the 10 that did, 4 even met their end-of-the-year spring targets! Out of the 5 who didn't meet their targets, 3 students were within a 1-3 point range of meeting their target. So overall, my students did well :)

This week is also the second round of BAS testing for reading growth, and out of the 17 that I tested, 100% have grown 1-2 reading levels! I am so proud of my kids. I even had one student who not only grew 2 reading levels, jumping from a D to and F, but he also scored a 200 on his MAP RIT score! According to the 2011 normative data, scoring a 200 meant he scored between the middle to end of the year score for a third grader! He's a little math genius and I'm so happy to see him growing in reading too. I even have 2 students independently reading at a level L! 

So, to sum it up, my kids are growing and it's a blessing to see. All the hard work is paying off and it's truly been rewarding to watch. They've grown so much that I've had to expand what I'm teaching them to include multiplication and division. They know their 0, 1, 2, 5, and 10s in multiplication by using skip counting strategies and with division, they started yesterday and the majority of the students caught on super quick! Now I have to think about what I want to challenge my students on next because they are just too smart for me to keep up with!