CSAP and YOU
In the spirit of CSAP week, I was wondering about how much lesson planning is geared towards CSAP. During the course of this year, my lower level algebra course was very much influenced by the CSAP tests. I focused on CSAP vocabulary, problem solving, and answering in complete sentences. Does the CSAP test influence your lesson plans? If so, how? What about subject areas that are not covered in the CSAP test (World Language, Counseling, etc.)? How do you address the CSAP test?
posted by Nelson at 1:00 PM
10 Comments:
I think that in Special Services there is extra pressure to "prepare" students for the CSAP. Some of that preparation falls into the grey area between ethical and unethical according to the last pages of your CSAP manual.
In my World Civilizations class, we worked on some paragraph responses to prompts based on the curriculum that we had just studied. We went through the writing process from planning to drafting, to writing a final copy, and even self-evaluation and peer-evaluation. I think the evaluation piece was especially effective with my students because they could see what others wrote in response to the same prompt. Most of the evaluations that students and their peers did were not only reliable, but also impressively accurate.
My Academic Workshop class focuses on CSAP preparation all year long. In that class we have been using the Rocky Mountain News series "The Crossing" to address reading and writing skills in conjunction with a CSAP preparation book. For math we use a variety of retired/released CSAP materials and supplement that with other worksheets.
I think the students feel more prepared going into the test, and that it gives them a little confidence to know that they have worked on the types of questions that they will find on the test. Hopefully that makes a difference, but there are students out there who just don’t care, and I’m not sure how to make them care about their performance on a test that in reality has very little effect on them personally, and a huge effect on their teachers and the school.
CSAPs were very different for me this year. At my last school we (the special education department) spent months preparing accommodations for special education students. With these accommodations we made sure the students were with a proctor that they were most comfortable with to help ensure their success. Every single person in the building was "on-board" with CSAPs. It really showed the students that we all cared about these tests, not just the English, Math, and Science teachers. All of the teachers, paraprofessionals, librarians, counselors, etc. had some “job” during CSAP week. This really helped with the small group accommodation. For a kid that qualifies for small group accommodation they usually have difficulty with focus, so the fewer students in the room the better. A small group is not 10 students, it should be less than 5 students total. When I think of a student with ADHD I think of which situation would be better: 9 other distractions or 4?
To prepare for CSAP in science we spend a part of each class (5 minutes), for about a month before, asking questions. These questions are from previous test, or ones that teachers from other states have brought with them. We give the students a few minutes to answer the question and then we discuss why the correct answer is the best answer. This allows us to cover questions that may not be in our subject. It also allows us to review previous material that students may not have had in a couple of years.
At Arapahoe, students came in and asked questions about CSAP. Usually, the question was, "Do CSAP scores go on my transcript?" As a counselor, I encouraged my students to do the best they could on the tests and I believe many of the students took the test seriously. I was a relief proctor in 3 rooms and it was interesting to see how different groups of students took the test more seriously than others. I was more involved with CSAP in the past than this year, but still contributed and do think it's important for everybody to be involved.
The CSAP does touch upon information literacy/educational technology questions such as understanding the basic elements of a web address or how to properly cite a source in a bibliography. Such topics are typically addressed when I work with classes completing a research assignment regardless of the content area.
Interestingly, I wonder to what extent our “prep” efforts go toward students doing their best when it comes to applying the test taking skills required to achieve at their highest? I raise this question because I have yet to see a student, in the years that I’ve proctored CSAPs, read the questions first before plunging into the reading passages. I doubt that there is a social studies, science, or language arts teacher who doesn’t emphasize this strategy when assigning students to read content area materials. In every instance that I’ve been a witness to, students will read the entire passage from beginning to end without at least scanning the questions first to see what they should be looking for. What a poor use of their time --especially since it is not uncommon for questions to be answerable without having to read the passage. For example, a question might ask for a definition of a word used in the reading or a question might use an example sentence from the passage and ask the student what literary term the sentence exemplifies. Neither of these examples requires any reading of the passage. The irony is that I bet many of these same students use test taking strategies when taking class tests. There appears to me that often a disconnect happens when students take standardized tests that are not for them personally high stakes (like SATs, ACTs, or APs). I guess what I’m saying is that I not sure we see the best from our students because they don’t always transfer good test taking skills to the CSAPs. Students who are struggling readers or who have difficulty with tests would benefit from using test taking strategies, I just don’t think they put these tips and tricks to use often enough when CSAPping.
I really agree with what you guys are saying. However, my lesson planning is not geared towered CSAP at all. Now I do have small pieces of writing and math in what I do but nothing that would correlate to CSAP.
Since my subject area is not directly tested on the CSAP, my preparation is a little different from the core classes. My goal is to integrate reading, writing, and math applications into my curriculum to help the students succeed on the test.
I would agree that by promoting reading, writing, and math in all of our classes we can help with student learning. I believe the business dept. does a good job with this in ICA.
There are two main things I did to try and help my students with CSAP. First I tried to help them stay focused, but also maintain a sense of humor. They came in too nervous and stressed on the first day, so my fellow proctor and I tried to just help them relax. While I was not the proctor for my freshmen, we had spent several weeks on writing. When we returned in January, I started assigning a lot more writing. The assignments were basically just constructed responses, like what they want on CSAP. I tried to emphasize the basics of good writing with them.
I guess I don't really think about it as much as I should. But just as Paul said, I model answering in completing sentences, good punctuationa and attention to spelling. Although this is a different language, it still carries over to English. I also try to teach my students to be resourceful and tend to use this phrase alot. Learn how to find the answers you don't know and problem solve for yourself. Hopefully this aids them in tests like CSAP!
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