Standard+8

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**Standard 8:** **// Teachers know how to test for student progress. //** The teacher understands and uses formal and informal assessment strategies to evaluate and ensure the continuous intellectual, social, and physical development of the pupil.

**Evidence 1:** Moodle/SpellingCity.com/WeeklySpelling Lists [|Spelling Moodle]

**Rationale 1:** My Moodle site contains my weekly spelling lists and a link to SpellingCity.com which my students use each week during our time in the computer lab. This site is also available for my students to access at home for additional practice. We use SpellingCity.com to first rehearse the spelling words of the week, take a practice test, and after completing the test, my students play the spelling games using the current week’s words. Our computer time is on Wednesday and SpellingCity.com is an effective way to gauge how my students are progressing. This allows me to determine whether students are learning the spelling words that they were introduced to during Monday’s spelling lesson.

I found that when the students used SpellingCity.com to practice their words and play the spelling games that they scored higher than the weeks that we did not use SpellingCity.com in the classroom or the computer lab. Originally, this was going to be my Action Research project. I compared the weekly spelling test scores from four weeks of using SpellingCity.com to the spelling test scores from four weeks of not using SpellingCity.com and found that my test scores improved. This was especially true for those students who were in the low to mid-range. These students improved their test scores by approximately twenty percent.

This year my First Grade Team will be using what I have set-up on SpellingCity.com for their spelling program. We don’t have a spelling curriculum for our grade level. Our district is in the process of reviewing spelling curriculum and is hopeful that within the next two years a program will be adopted. At this time, some people use “Words Their Way” or “Making Words” for their spelling curriculum, but it is up to the individual teacher to choose their program. I’m pleased that my team finds the spelling program that I have designed to be developmentally appropriate for our students. They feel it is easy to implement and follow using the Moodle spelling lists, the link to SpellingCity.com, and the additional word documents that I have created for the daily spelling lessons.

  **KSD:** **8.K.2** **The teacher knows how to select, construct, and use assessment strategies and instruments appropriate to the learning outcomes being evaluated and to other diagnostic purposes.** SpellingCity.com was a valuable tool to use to improve my first graders’ spelling skills. Using SpellingCity.com to rehearse the spelling words of the week prepared the students for the activities that followed. In particular, using the site to complete the practice test was a nice way for me to conduct a formative assessment of my students’ skill levels.  **8.S.6** **The teacher maintains useful records of student work and performance and can communicate student progress knowledgeably and responsibly, based on appropriate indicators, to students, parents, and other colleagues.** The design of SpellingCity.com allowed me to conveniently track my students, providing both parents and students information regarding performance. I was pleased that my First Grade Team liked how I had implemented SpellingCity.com and that they plan to utilize the site in their classroom spelling structure for the upcoming school year.  **8****.D.1** **The teacher values ongoing assessment as essential to the instructional** **process and recognizes that many different assessment strategies, accurately and systematically used, are necessary for monitoring and promoting student** <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 140%;">**learning.** <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 140%; text-align: left;">I found SpellingCity.com to be a developmentally appropriate way to strengthen and track student progress. By integrating the program into my Wednesday computer time, I could effectively gauge how my students were progressing with their learning of the spelling words that they were introduced to during Monday’s spelling lesson.