Iowa Assessment Program Good Evening, this is to inform you about the national assessment program that your child takes in grades 2-7.

WHAT IS A STANDARDIZED TEST? It is not a mastery test. It is designed to find out how much a student knows and compares your child’s performance to his/her peers in the same grade across the county.

One Piece of Evidence of Learning Information obtained from the Iowa Test and the Cognitive Abilities Test should be used with other information about your child.

An Integrated Assessment Standardized Achievement Iowa Student Self Assessment Performance Assessments – Writing Assessments An Integrated Assessment Program Teacher Made Tests You may want to change this to reflect what you do in your school Local Assessments Ability Assessment CogAT

Appropriate Purposes for Standardized Testing Identify strengths and weaknesses of individual students Identify strengths and weaknesses of groups of students Monitor year to year developmental changes Provide feedback to students and parents You may have some other purposes in your school that you want to add

What is a Norm? Compares student performance to a representative sample of the population in the same grade and at the same time of the year An indicator of strengths and weaknesses in specific achievement areas. The norms are comparing students to a representative sample of 200,000 students across the country

How Tall is Waldo? 1 5 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 95 99 Explain National Percentiles – Let me illustrate a norm . Waldo is taller than 90 % of all the people in this group – only 10% of his friends are taller than he is. He is at the 90th percentile in height

Test Taking Strategies Why are we testing?

How Heavy is Waldo? 1 5 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 95 99 In this slide, you can see that Waldo is lighter than most of his friends. He is heavier than only 20% of his friends – 80 % of his friends are heavy than he is. – Waldo is at the 20th percentile when comparing weight.

Relationship of Stanines and Percentile Ranks Explain that if you have a child at the 50th NPR, that would mean that your child is average doing as well as 50% of his peers and 50% of his peers are doing better. Explain stanines- A stanine is a grouping of percentiles. 23% of the country are in the 7th ,8th, 9th, stanines and 23% of the county fall in the bottom 3 stanines. A student falling in the first or second stanine could be at a chance level- the student may have guessed on the test.

Is Waldo Taller or Heavier? Attribute Percentile Height 90 Weight 20 We could substitute reading for height or math for weight

What Do I Need to Know about The Iowa Assessment

The Iowa Assessment Standards Reflect the Latest National Standards in: English Language Arts Mathematics Social Studies Science If you are using Common Core Standards you can use the term “Common Core” because when the new forms of the Iowa Assessments were built, the Common Core standards were incorporated in the construction of the assessment.

Important Information for Students to know To be average a student needs to only correctly answer approximately 50% of the items. The other items are designed to see how far beyond his/her grade level a child might achieve. Items do not go from easy to hard – Item difficulty is mixed.

ELA ( English Language Arts) Reports to Parents You receive information about your child’s performance in several areas: ELA ( English Language Arts) Mathematics Social Studies Science You may want to add a sample of a parent report that you give to parents after this slide

Sample Reports You may use this slide if your home reports looks like this. Or you can make a generic copy of the report you send home so parents can look at a similar report while you are presenting.

English Language Arts (ELA) Reading Written Expression Conventions of Writing Vocabulary ELA total score consists of 4 subtests. At grades K-2 you may also have an extended ELA total if you gave the Word Analysis and Listening tests.

Students read several informational and Reading Students read several informational and literature based selections silently and answer questions. A suggestion for parents: Read a story to you child and leave our a word and ask him to fill in the space with a word that makes sense, talk about what might happen later in the story, develop a love for stories. Asking a child who is struggling with reading to read orally every night does not really help your child but rather listening to an interesting story and anticipating what will come next will help your child to develop a love for reading.

A pure measure of word knowledge Vocabulary A pure measure of word knowledge Test of word knowledge Not a reading test – as no context is provided to give meaning Best predictor of achievement 25 To operate the machine A oil B run C build D repair Vocabulary is a key component of academic success. Introduce you child to new words every day.

Written Expression Assesses the Editing and Proof-reading Strategies of the Writing Process Select a better ending sentence Revise a sentence

Sample – Written Expressions The student must read a short report and select an addition to the report that would help to improve the report.

Conventions of Writing Students must proof-read and select the correct convention of writing for a given sentence. Punctuation Spelling Capitalization

Students will be asked to identify mistakes in various passages. Sample - Punctuation Assessing the use of commas. Students need to indicate the line that contains an error Students will be asked to identify mistakes in various passages.

Math Assess student’s knowledge of: Geometry Measurement Fractions/ decimals Data interpretation Algebraic expressions Problem Solving Work with your child to assure that he can quickly recall answers to simple multiplication, addition and subtraction facts.

Sample - Math Use of Algebraic Expressions - from a grade 5 test

Math Computation Pure assessment of the ability to add, multiply, subtract and divide using whole and rational numbers Items are intentionally not embedded in word problems Speed and accuracy in computing Students need to know their addition and subtraction facts by the end of grade 2. Multiplication and division facts by middle of grade 3

Social Studies Use of Primary Source Material Addresses concepts in: Economics History Geography Multicultural Society Government

Science Process and Content Increase emphasis on analysis of experiments, lab methodology, theories, and concepts Balance of items across science content areas: Life, Physical, Earth, Health, Environment

Cognitive Abilities Test ™ CogAT ® is key to understanding how your students learn! CogAT measures the development of reasoning abilities that are critical for success in school. Results profile students’ verbal, quantitative, and nonverbal abilities—allowing teachers to plan instructional interventions. Use CogAT to better understand your students and help them learn more effectively.

Powerful Tool Alone or With the Iowa Tests CogAT… Provides extensive information on how to use students’ scores in ways that help students learn CogAT with The Iowa Tests... Provides predictive achievement scores

CogAT Measures Important Reasoning Skills: Making inferences Detecting similarities and differences Comprehending problem situations Forming concepts Classifying and categorizing objects, events, and other stimuli Creating and adapting problem-solving strategies Using past experience and instruction in novel problem contexts

Abilities: Verbal Ability – Best predictor of academic success Quantitative Ability – “number sense” ability to see relationship of numbers Nonverbal Ability – Best predictor of how fast a student learns

Cognitive Profiles A Profile= All Abilities roughly at sAme level B Profile = One of the Abilities is aBove or Below the other B(N-) or B(V+) On the parent narrative report, parents are referred to the CogAT web site for more information on their child’s ability profile

Cognitive Profiles C Profile = Contrast A student shows a relative strength and a relative weakness. C(V+ Q-) E Profile = Extreme difference between abilities

Explanation for Parents and Teachers www.cogat.com Click on interactive report and enter student profile

This is a sample of the web page that parents can go to This is a sample of the web page that parents can go to. Parents put in their child’s profile and then they can receive a report on characteristics of similar students with that profile and instructional strategies.

Verbal Parents are usually very interested in seeing what a CogAT test might look like – analogies of words

Quantitative Numbers in series – find the pattern and determine what number comes next

Non-Verbal Classification of shapes – Which shape has similar characteristics to the first three

Non-Verbal Analogies of shapes – The first shape is to the second shape as the third shape is to ??

Non-Verbal Paper folding – Fold the paper over in the direction of the arrows, punch the holes and predict what the paper would look like when it is unfolded. Students must visualize this.. They do not actually fold a piece of paper or punch holes.

Nonverbal Subtests