Tuesday's Staff Meeting

Staff,

Welcome back from your well deserved spring break! Your Monday PLC time is set aside for teams to wrap up the second trimester essential learning. If you have additional action steps to record please do so here:  PLC Products.

At Tuesday's staff meeting we'll be digging into a new component from the reading portion of the Forward Exam this year called Test-Dependent Analysis. Here is an overview of this portion of the Forward Exam.

A TDA is a text-based analysis, based on a single passage or a multiple passage set that each student has read during the assessment. The passage or passage set will consist of either literary or informational text. In order to successfully answer a TDA, students must analyze and use information from the passage(s) in order to plan a comprehensive, holistic response. Students will then write their response including supporting evidence from the passage(s). Students will have up to 5,000 characters to formulate their response. Students' responses are scored using a rubric which takes into account both the composition and the conventions of the student’s writing. The TDA portion of the Forward Exam requires students to read the text and then respond in writing in one of several ways:  identifying and explaining a theme or central idea, using textual evidence to support the claim about what that theme or central idea is, and  analyzing the development of an event, character, central ideas, or theme, using textual evidence to support the explanation and analysis.

In teams on Tuesday, you'll be digging into and answering a sample item embedded in my presentation, put in an electronic format by Amanda McCarthy, with the purpose of preparing students for the Forward Exam. These same electronic formats will later be used as practice by 3rd-5th grade students. I have included the criteria for a proficient response, as well as the child friendly language our instructional coaches created.

Child Friendly Proficiency Language

• I answered all parts of the question
• My opinions and ideas are supported with evidence from the text.
• My ideas are logically grouped
• My response has a clear introduction, body, and conclusion (Beginning, Middle and End)  
• I used details, examples, quotes, and/or facts from the text
• I used multiple examples from the text to support the main ideas and key details
• I used transition words
• I used vocabulary from text

Here are the PDF resources with all the sample questions and student exemplars for 3th-4th and 5th grade: TDA Forward Exam 5-6 TDA Forward Exam 3-4