Archive for the ‘Educational Tools’ Category
If you have taken the initiative to home school your child, it is important that you follow up with your commitment. Conventional teachers are required to stay up-to-date with current teaching methods, changes in curriculum and current events; and as your child’s teacher, you should too. One of the most important ways to gauge your child’s progress and ensure that they are retaining the necessary information is through standardized tests for home schoolers.
While standardized tests certainly aren’t foolproof, they provide one of the best means of measuring a child’s progress. Using the results from your child’s standardized test, you can see which subjects they are excelling in and which ones need some work. Remember, home schooling often produces more apt students, but it takes a concerted effort from the teacher as well.
Mistacres School recognizes, in fact designed the school, on the fact that all students learn differently. For this reason, we have aligned ourselves with Metametrics and the Lexile which allow us to develop programs that meed each student’s current learning level. But we also must take into consideration the student’s learning style.
We know there are three basic types of learning styles: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. When we learn, we depend upon our senses. Most of us tend to use one more than the others although some will use two or all three equally. Often our style will change according to the task that we are doing. How do you approach learning how to knit verses how to work a math problem? Do you depend on more styles learning science concepts then reading a book? Understanding your style(s) could help you better understand how you interact with others, how to complete tasks more efficiently, how to study more effectively.
There is a great site that will help you determine what your learning style is and what that means. I encourage you to go here and explore your own style of learning.
MetaMetrics has developed a free site which allows us to develop individualized programs for all children.
Who has access to the MetaMetrics site?
1.Teachers of any grade, any subject, from any where in US or internationally for that matter as long as they are teaching in the English language.
2.Parents who have their child’s Lexile score or a good idea of their child’s reading ability and interests. Parents anywhere, anytime can access this site, meaning military families on the go have access.
3.The CHILDREN themselves. How empowering is that!
Where can the child’s Lexile score be found?
1.Many state assessments now report back reading ability in Lexiles.
2.Some norm-referenced or achievement assessments taken in schools including:
a. CTB/ McGraw-Hill: TerraNova, Tests of Adult Basic Education, b. Pearson: The Stanford 9, Stanford 10, MAT 8 and Aprenda 3 (Spanish language test of academic standards,
c. Educational Records Bureau: ERB: Comprehensive Testing Program, 4th Edition,
d. Riverside Publishing: The Iowa Tests, Gates-McGinitie Reading Test,
e. DIBELS,
f. Measured Progress: PTS3,
g. Northwest Evalutation Association: Measures of Academic Progress (MAP)
What tools that are available to us?
1.Find a Book: The teacher, parent or child enters their Lexile measurement or lexile range, books of interest or using key words, and then search. You will be given a reading list to review. The program gives you the option to a) add to “my reading list”, b) use WorldCat to ind the books at a local library using your zip code, or c) buy it from Barnes & Noble which has lexiled their books.
2.Lexile Analyzer: You are required to register for this tool but it is free. This tool allows you to scan in up to 1000 words of material from a book, magazine, newspaper, etc. and get a lexile read. You are able to upgrade to measure longer text if you are an educator. There is both an English and Spanish analyzer.
3.The Lexile Database contains measures over 10,000 books from hundreds of publishers. There are separate databases for English and Spanish titles. You must sign a license agreement with them before they give you access to download.
4.The Lexile map places examples of popular books and text on the Lexile scale as a reference guide for what a Lexile measure means. This can be downloaded in English or Spanish.
5.MetaMetrics partners with the nation’s largest periodical database services. This means that you can get Lexile measures for newspaper and magazine articles, as well as encyclopedia and reference content. A few of these are:
a. EBSCO Publishing: leading provider of online resources for schools.
b. Grolier Online: Fully integrated database collection with age appropriate learning environments.
c. NetTrekker: Fast, easy access to educational resources from the entie Internet organized and standards-aligned.
It would be time well spent to explore their site and learn for yourself how Lexiles can change your approach to lesson planning as a teacher, reading and working with your child as a parent in the know, and taking charge of your own learning as a student.
Mistacres School provides indivualized programs
to their students . They do this by using the Lexile.The Lexile Framework for Reading is a standard measurement which allows us to match the reader to the text. It was developed by an organization called MetaMetrics. They recognized that grade and age was not the way to determine a child’s ability to understand text. They compare it to going into a store to buy shoes. The child walks in and the sales clerk asks him his age. He states he is 12. The sales clerk goes in and brings out a rack of shoes labelled “12 year olds”. The boy looks at the shoes and at his feet – that they don’t match.
http://www.youtube.com/metametrics
We don’t buy things by our age – we buy by who we are, what we need, what fits us. Then why to we teach that way. A child who is 12, in 6th grade is determined to be at a certain level. That child is given textbooks and materials for that grade level. And who determines the content of the material? Textbook publishers that haven’t a clue how to differentiate material.
Many years ago I taught a reading class at a local college. At that time I also worked in a public school with learning disabled students. I took into the class a dilemma. A 7th grade science teacher came in frusrated and threw down her science text. “I don’t know what to do with your students. Even when I get a textbook written especially for slow learners they still don’t get it. They’re just to stupid to understand and you need to fix it.”
Back in those days, teachers used various methods based on a formula of number of sentences, length of the sentences, words and characters in the sentence, etc. It meant graphing out the text of a number of samples in the book to come up with a grade level for the text. I copied various pages from te book and distributed them to the students. There task, to determine the grade level of this book labeled, “Adapted for the Handicapped Student”. What they found shocked them. This “adapted” text was written on a level that ranged from 11th grade to 1st year college. And the students were “just to dumb to get it”?
But those days SHOULD be over. The Lexile has allowed us to put children on a universal scale. When we drive from state to state, we know what 35 mph means. Just because we change states doesn’t mean that the measurement changes. However, when a child moves from school to school, much less state to state, the way their reading skills are measured differ. Their Lexile score is the same regardless of where they go to school and it is immediately usable. It is this measurement that allows us to ensure a “good fit” . It helps us select reading material that meets and challenges each student’s ability. More important, it is a powerful tool for matching instruction in content areas to the reader which leads to individual achievement and SUCCESS. Using Lexiles, teachers can connect students with instructional resources that match their reading abilities. And it isn’t just fiction and nonfiction books that are Lexiled. The list of textbooks, periodicals and Web sites with Lexile measures grows every day.