Time, LOTS of time, for Typing

     I'm not trying to be critical of anyone or any school, but there is a glitch in our writing curriculum. Students are asked to 'publish' their work through typing, but kids simply don't automatically know how to keyboard, and are extremely slow at it. Often they learn typing the wrong way too, such as using the 'caps lock' key every time they need a capital letter.  It seems to me that in our quest to be a 21st century school system, we are forgetting that students need to know where the letters are on a keyboard, how to use two hands, how to use a shift key for a capital letter, and how to find the punctuation marks.

      In addition, students don't come to school on an equal footing.  One family may have laptops, desktops, and tablets so those children have prior knowledge of keyboards, while another family might be struggling just to keep a phone.  Personally, I'd like to see a renewed encouragement and time allotted to teach simple keyboarding to kids in upper elementary school so they can publish their work in a more timely, less stressful manner. 

     Keyboarding is part of the Common Core, by the way.  (Not that that matters to North Carolina.)
Here's a good article about keyboarding and the Core here.  The people who wrote the Common Core recognized the importance of this skill, but didn't dictate exactly how to get the kids to meet the standard.  My opinion is that we can't assume the students will learn it without direct instruction. 

Why do I care?  I'm only a speech pathologist you might say. However, I do have integrated IEP goals which involve me pushing into classrooms during writing time for those students with language difficulties.  The times when students are typing are a waste of time for me to apply skilled interventions.  I become a clerical assistant.

The girl in the above video is a typical kid.  She has handwritten a lengthy, four page story and is going to be typing a long time! Can there be a better use of instructional time other than hunting and pecking?

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The Common Core--Informal Assessment based on Marzano's 1st Grade Math Vocabulary

Last week, I posted an informal assessment based on Common Core math vocabulary for kindergarten. I've given this assessment to my kids ranging from first grade to fifth grade, and the results are astounding.

As I sit in classrooms and in IEP meetings, what is apparent to me is that my students (those who are language impaired) don't have the foundations in math concepts and vocabulary to be proficient in the higher level tasks asked of them in the classroom.  I find holes in what they should have learned in previous grades and my homemade assessment based on this book validated my beliefs.

I have now created an assessment based on first grade math vocabulary from this book--Vocabulary for the Common Core.  My intent is to administer this to children who struggle in math in 2nd grade and older.  First graders are still being taught this in the regular education classroom.

My second grade students should be given both the kindergarten and first grade assessments.  Later, I plan develop one more assessment based on 2nd grade math vocabulary, and then will switch to Marzano's Common Core literacy vocabulary.  Focusing on the early grades is my goal.


   As an example of a vocabulary concept, the first screen shot to the right focuses on the word 'strategy'.  In my school, I hear teachers use this word about 50 times a day---I'm not sure my students understand it. For this assessment,  I took the word out of the math context into a familiar setting to see if kids can answer the question in a way that makes sense.  

The next screen shot on the left shows easy ways to see if the child can demonstrate a few concepts introduced in first grade.  Again, this assessment is for second graders. First graders are still learning these in the regular classroom.

There are five pages total--vocabulary is straight from the book, and assessed as simply as possible.

Let me know what you think.  I didn't include concepts that were more 'math' such as place value, and computation.  I also want to give this to typical second graders to see if they can actually answer the questions (I've been out of school for a couple of days, but plan to do this).  If typical kids can't answer the questions, this test will need changed a bit to really be a valid indicator of a gap in learning.




Click here to download my Informal Assessment based on Marzano's 1st grade math vocabulary.