As you know, Westwood Public Schools’ grade 3-8 students will take the PARCC on-line assessment this year. Students in Grades 3, 4, and 5 will take the Performance Based Assessment and the End of Year Assessment in both ELA and Math. Grade 5 will also take the MCAS science assessment. I would like to support you and our students as we prepare for the PARCC.
Some skills we want to address include keyboarding, drop and drag features, self pacing through videos, highlighting key words and phrases, copy and paste. Becoming comfortable with technology takes time and practice. Students need to build their stamina. (Common Core: one page in a sitting in 4th grade, 2 pages in a sitting in 5th grade) Repeated exposure to keyboarding for writing assignments, research papers, or even quick write activities will be beneficial. Some other tools we can use: Google forms for assessments, Brainpop videos, videos with embedded questions (EdPuzzle), and even using your classroom website to have students practice manipulating various menu features.
You can find practice tests and grade specific sample questions on the PARCC website. (This site does not work within the Chrome browser. You may want to open in Safari or Firefox.) You may also want to check out Next Generation’s Website for additional sample questions. I hope we can work together to support our students.
