Preparing for PARCC - Blog Series Part IX

Integrating PARCC Practice:

Rethinking Homework

This post is part of our blog series on PARCC. In this series, we offer tips and strategies you can use to ensure that your students perform at their very best on the PARCC tests.

Preparing for the PARCC assessment is not something that can be done overnight. It’s important to set a year-long plan of PARCC integration so that students are prepared for not only the content but also the format of the test. Many facets of the school day may need to be reexamined, including rethinking traditional homework.

           

What does homework currently look like?

In many cases, homework looks a lot like it has always looked. For math, it may be a series of short answer items, designed to give students practice with the skill that was taught in class that day. It may conclude with a word problem which requires students to practice that same skill. For English, it may be reading a passage and answering questions or looking up definitions for the weekly vocabulary list. This is the way homework has always looked. But now students are taking a new type of assessment, based on a new set of high-expectation standards. It’s time to rethink homework.

Homework, PARCC Preparation-Style

“Teaching to the test” is a negative term that is often tossed around when talking about preparing for any assessment, especially PARCC. But consider that PARCC is the assessment of the Common Core State Standards, and these standards set the expectations for our students. Therefore if classroom (and homework) experiences are aligned to these standards, then PARCC preparation is already taking place to some degree. It’s important to examine all facets of the students’ learning to ensure this!

Rethinking Homework in the Mathematics Classroom

The mathematics portions of the PARCC assessment include three types of items:

• Type I items assess concepts, skills, and procedures. These items are all machine-scorable and include multiple select, category sorts, drop down menus, drop and drag items, and other technology enhanced items.
• Type II items assess expressing mathematical reasoning. These items may require students to critique the mathematical process used to solve a particular problem or to describe their own process in solving a problem.
• Type III items assess modeling and applications. These items require students to apply mathematical models to real-world contexts or scenarios. 

So what does this mean when it comes to mathematics homework? Consider how to incorporate PARCC-like items alongside or in place of the more traditional homework. For example, instead of asking students to solve a list of expressions such as 5 x 75 + 3, provide students with a Type I multiple-select item, such as:

With this Type I item they are practicing the same skill they would have with the traditional homework, but now they have also practiced answering a PARCC-like Type I item.

What about the more challenging Type II and Type III items, in which students may be asked to critique a process or apply a mathematical model? In this case, students may not be ready to attempt these items as homework until they have had ample classroom practice. This is a perfect opportunity to implement a flipped classroom model. The “homework” is actually the lesson, delivered through a digital media format such as an existing YouTube video or a teacher-made Powtoon. Students learn the skill or new concept at home, and then practice with the Type II or III items comes during class, when students can collaborate with each other and receive guidance and feedback from the teacher. 

Rethinking Homework in the English Classroom

Parts of the ELA portion of the test are performance-based assessments, where students have to read one to three passages, answer questions, and write a prose constructed response (PCR). Other parts of the ELA portion require students to read a single passage and answer questions. For both the performance-based assessments as well as the stand-along reading passages, there are two types of questions:

1. Evidence-Based Selected Response (EBSR): An EBSR is a two-part question (Part A and Part B). “The term refers to a type of ELA/literacy test item that asks students to show the evidence in a text that led them to a previous answer.” (parcconline.org). An EBSR item assesses vocabulary knowledge, elements of literature, main ideas, key details, structure, or integration of ideas.
2. Technology-Enhanced Constructed Response (TECR): “This ELA/Literacy item uses technology to capture student comprehension of texts in authentic ways that have been historically difficult to capture using current assessments. Examples include using drag and drop, cut and paste, and highlight text features.” (parcconline.org). A TECR item also assesses elements of literature, main ideas, key details, structure, and integration of ideas.

Many times students are assigned “reading comprehension” packets which require them to read one or more texts and respond to questions about those texts. Creating EBSR and TECR questions to accompany these reading comprehension packets will familiarize students with these types of questions, providing them with a comfort level when it comes to answering questions in this format.

A typical vocabulary assignment for students will find them looking up definitions for a specific list of words, perhaps using those words in a sentence, and possibly finding a synonym and antonym for each word. The standards require students to go beyond this, however, and on PARCC, students may be asked to reflect on author’s choices when it comes to vocabulary. Consider this alternative to the traditional vocabulary assignment: instead of just looking up definitions, students first identify three to five words in a reading passage. They then consider possible synonyms that the author could have used in place of the identified word (looking up the definitions and synonyms as needed.) Finally, students write a description of how the meaning or tone of the passage would have changed had the author used one of the alternative words instead. This combines the development of vocabulary (in looking up the definitions) with consideration for an author’s choices and the impact of words in a text.

By making changes to homework such as those suggested above, students will have experiences applying their knowledge and skills in a variety of formats, including those that will prepare them PARCC.

Standards Solution and Inspired Instruction offer 540 PARCC lesson plans, online PARCC-like assessments with technology-enhanced items, PARCC workshops, and PARCC demonstration lessons. Please contact Judy Cataldi for more information: 

judy.cataldi@standardssolution.com or call 908-223-7202

Standards Solution Holding, LLC is not owned by or affiliated in any fashion with PARCC, Inc.

Preparing for PARCC - Blog Series Part VIII

Preparing for PARCC

Creating PARCC-Like English Assessments – Part 2 TECRs

This post is part of our blog series on PARCC. In this series, we offer tips and strategies you can use to ensure that your students perform at their very best on the PARCC tests.

One way to assist students to perform at their personal best on PARCC is to simulate the test-taking experience, both in terms of the test content and the testing conditions. This two-part blog post covers how to create a PARCC-like English assessment. Part 1 addressed how to select text, how to identify what is special or unique about the text, and how to write Evidence-Based Selected Response (EBSR) items. This blog will present ideas and templates for creating the assessment’s Technology-Enhanced Constructed Responses (TECR).

What is a TECR?

“This ELA/literacy item uses technology to capture a student’s comprehension of texts in authentic ways that have been historically difficult to capture using current assessments. Examples include using drag and drop, cut and paste, and highlight text features.”  (parcconline.org) 

What types of technology-enhanced items does PARCC utilize?

The PARCC assessments include several types of technology-enhanced items:

• Multiple Select: These items are similar to multiple choice questions, except that students can select more than one correct answer.
• Highlight Text: Students highlight sections of the text to identify evidence that answers the question.
• Reorder Text: Students rearrange text selections to place them in chronological order, or to display theme, supporting details, etc.
• Drag and Drop Text: Students drag blocks of text to tables to display attributes of the text: setting, characterization, chronology, etc.

At this time PARCC only has a few sample online practice tests. However, instructors can make their own TECR items and integrate the concepts as paper and pencil experiences. It’s a matter of identifying what the question types are requiring of students. By providing additional opportunities to practice TECR items in class, students will be more familiar with the construct of the TECRs. Additionally, the TECRs assess students’ ability to meet Common Core ELA Standards.

Below are several templates you can use in your classroom. Download the template, and fill in the blanks based on the text you use. Students can either cut and paste the items or draw lines to the correct space. Either way, students will have a chance to apply the Standards as well as practice using the TECR formats.

Literature TECR Templates	Informational Text TECR Templates
Character Comparison	Attribute Comparison
Character Responses	Problem-Solution
Setting and Supporting Evidence	Cause, Effect and Response
Characters Attributes – Story and Poem	Detail Comparison
Narrator and Character Perspectives	Sequence of Events

Standards Solution’s president, Victoria Pagonis, would be happy to review your work. Email your TECR to victoria.pagonis@standardssolution.com along with the text, your reason for choosing that text, and the standards that you wish to assess with the item. She’ll reply with feedback and suggestions for improvement.

Standards Solution and Inspired Instruction offer 540 PARCC lesson plans, online PARCC-like assessments with technology-enhanced items, PARCC workshops, and PARCC demonstration lessons. Please contact Judy Cataldi for more information: 

Judy.cataldi@standardssolution.com or call 908-223-7202

Standards Solution Holding, LLC is not owned by or affiliated in any fashion with PARCC, Inc.

Preparing for PARCC - Blog Series Part VII

Preparing for PARCC

Creating PARCC-Like English Assessments – Part 1 EBSRs

This post is part of our blog series on PARCC. In this series, we offer tips and strategies you can use to ensure that your students perform at their very best on the PARCC tests.

One way to assist students to perform at their personal best is to simulate the test-taking experience, both in terms of the test content and the testing conditions. This two-part blog post covers how to create a PARCC-like English assessment. In Part 1, we’ll address how to select a text, how to identify what is special or unique about the text, and how to write Evidence-Based Selected Response (EBSR) items. In Part 2, we’ll explain the Technology-Enhanced Constructed Response (TECR) items and provide templates for creating these items.

What is an EBSR?

An EBSR is a two-part question (Part A and Part B).

“The term refers to a type of ELA/literacy test item that asks students to show the evidence in a text that led them to a previous answer.” (parcconline.org)

An EBSR assesses vocabulary knowledge, elements of literature, main ideas, key details, structure, or integration of ideas.

In order to create an assessment, we have to identify what PARCC calls “texts worth reading.” Let’s look at how PARCC determines if a text is worthy of study.

Five PARCC Criteria for Selecting Texts Worth Reading:

“Texts Are Complex: PARCC assessments follow the staircase of text complexity in the CCSS to ensure assessments track student progress each year towards college and career readiness.

Texts Are Diverse: PARCC texts stem from across the disciplines (e.g. ELA, history, science and technical subjects), are written by authors with diverse backgrounds, reflect the CCSS prescribed balances of literature and informational text, and appeal to a wide range of student audiences.

Texts Are Authentic: PARCC texts are authentic works of exceptional craft and/or rich repositories of ideas and information rather than commissioned-for-the-test passages lacking sufficient evidence, organization, and style.

Texts Are Paired Effectively: PARCC text pairings, where required by the CCSS, have meaningful and significant points of comparison that invite questions beyond superficial observations.

Texts Meet Demands of Bias and Sensitivity Guidelines: PARCC texts are carefully vetted to ensure that while they pique student interest and appeal to a wide audience they avoid highly controversial topics that may be troublesome to students.”

(parcconline.org)

Now, let’s complete the following four steps to create your first EBSR item.

Step #1 – Consider Your Text

Once you have selected your text, you have to think about what is special or unique about the text. Take a look at your text. With the understanding that text complexity is important and students should continually be exposed to increasingly complex text, determine which sections or passages may be difficult for students. Here is a sample for you to consider.

OK, so now we’re ready to create text-dependent questions. Read what PARCC has to say about text-dependent questions:

“Good text dependent questions will often linger over specific phrases and sentences to ensure careful comprehension of the text—they help students see something worthwhile that they would not have seen on a more cursory reading.

An effective set of text dependent questions delves systematically into a text to guide students in extracting the key meanings or ideas found there.

They typically begin by exploring specific words, details, and arguments and then move on to examine the impact of those specifics on the text as a whole.

Along the way they target academic vocabulary and specific sentence structures as critical focus points for gaining comprehension.”

(parcconline.org)

Step #2 – Identify What You Want to Assess

Now that you know what is special about your text, what do you want to assess? PARCC created Reading Evidence Tables for Kindergarten through grade 11. Take a look at your grade level’s document.

PARCC Reading Evidence Tables (Scroll about halfway down the page to see the list of evidence tables.)

Using your grade level’s table, identify passages in the text that can be used to assess the evidences to be measured by your test item.

Step #3 – Construct Part A of Your EBSR

Think about PARCC’s Item Guidelines listed below and use our template to construct Part A of your EBSR.

Constructing Distractors – Part A

ü  “The primary purpose of a distractor is to provide evidence that a student is not able to meet the standard(s) assessed due to student misconceptions.

ü  Distractors must be plausible responses to item stems.

ü  Items should not use negative distractors.

ü  The written style of all distractors in an item should be similar to that of the correct response(s).

ü  Answer responses (distractors) are not ordered alphabetically by first word or by short to long, etc. the answers in the order they appear in the passage.”

(PARCC - Item Guidelines for ELA/Literacy PARCC Summative Assessment- Best Practices for Distractors for EBSR items)

Step #4 – Construct Part B of Your EBSR

Follow these PARCC guidelines for creating Part B:

ü  “In Part B, when writing the distractors for evidences, all of the answer choices must be the same type of citation of evidence (e.g. all quotes or all paraphrases).

ü  Particular care must be taken for Part B items, where students are asked to select evidence from the text such that distractor wording to achieve parallelism in style does not overly impose distractor wording.

ü  All answer choices for Part B must be accurate/relevant/from the passage.”

(PARCC - Item Guidelines for ELA/Literacy PARCC Summative Assessment- Best Practices for Distractors for EBSR items)

There you have it! You constructed the first EBSR for your PARCC-like assessment. Standards Solution’s president, Victoria Pagonis, would be happy to review your work. Email your EBSR to victoria.pagonis@standardssolution.com along with the text, your reason for choosing that text, and the standards that you wish to assess with the item. She’ll reply with feedback and suggestions for improvement.

Let’s review. To create a PARCC-like English assessment with Evidence-Based Selected Responses, you have to:

• Select a text worthy of close study via a comprehensive analysis of the text.
• Identify specifically what you want to assess with a comparison of the reading evidence docs AND what is special and unique in the text.
• Create EBSRs that have quality distractors.

Standards Solution and Inspired Instruction offer 540 PARCC lesson plans, online PARCC-like assessments with technology-enhanced items, PARCC workshops, and PARCC demonstration lessons. Please contact Judy Cataldi for more information:

Judy.cataldi@standardssolution.com or call 908-223-7202.

Standards Solution Holding, LLC is not owned by or affiliated in any fashion with PARCC, Inc.