Taking the Stress Out of the Tests!

I work at a charter school where I currently teach fourth grade. My school has a large number of high risk/high need students. It is often the last stop school for students who have been bounced around to schools throughout the district due to behavioral issues. Our charter school focuses on the individual child and each student has an individual learning plan.

While I love working for a charter school because it allows me creativity with my teaching, we often don't have the funds that bigger public schools do to purchase curriculum and classroom materials. Most of our curriculum and materials are horribly outdated (our reading series is from the 1970's). What my classroom is lacking in the most is test preparation materials that teach my students the skills they need to master our state mandated Criterion Referenced Tests. Students face so many pressures in today's classroom that were irrelevant when I was in elementary school. The pressure to pass the state tests is just one of the many things they struggle with when they reach the intermediate grades. The group of students that I have coming in this fall did very poorly on the tests in the 2008-2009 school year. Over half of them were unable to pass the Math or Language Arts test.

With so many student's struggling to pass these tests, this tells me that I need to focus on test taking skills and reinforce Math and Language Art skills through daily standards based practice review. This is why this proposal is asking for a resources that will teach students the strategies they need to be successful test takers, and reinforce their learning through daily practice. The Daily Language and Daily Math Centers that are requested will be used for weekly math and language arts skills reinforcement. These centers will help me as a teacher evaluate what skills the students are struggling with so I can see what areas I need to provide further instruction. The Test Prep Language Rings and Test-Taking Strategies Activity Center will provide my students with practice on the question formats they can expect to see when taking the state tests. When students are familiar with the question formats on state and national tests, they become confident and can avoid the test anxiety I have seen some of my students display in the past.

Thanks for taking the time to read my proposal. It is truly inspirational that donors like you are willing to give to students in need throughout the country. Your donation will make it possible for my students to not only acquire the skills they need to pass the mandated state tests, but to also acquire confidence in their own testing abilities as we practice our test taking skills with these materials throughout the school year. Thanks in advance for your generosity.