From englishlanguagearts at lists.maine.gov Mon Oct 6 13:47:47 2008 From: englishlanguagearts at lists.maine.gov (Communicate with ELA teachers) Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2008 13:47:47 -0400 Subject: [EnglishLanguageArts] October 6, 2008 UPDATE Message-ID: <32E5C6B0B949584D9B6168C5F727916B047BC525@SOM-TEAQASMAIL1.som.w2k.state.me.us> Welcome to Maine Department of Education English Language Arts Listserv This service is an attempt to keep Maine educators informed about current issues, upcoming opportunities and resources in ELA. Please send any responses to: patsy.dunton at maine.gov or diana.dioron at maine.gov as this is not a discussion forum. Our goal is to post information as needed but not more often than once a week. October 6, 2008 Topics: What happened with the list in June. About grade 8 writing on the MEA Upcoming MEA and MHSA workshop information. Our problem in June: If you have been with us for a while, then you recall that many messages got into your box through our list in June. This was undoubtedly due to a human error which, unfortunately, altered the settings and allowed responses. It is our intention to keep this line of communication as open as possible so we will not allow anyone else to post a message. The problem has been corrected and should not happen again. If you asked to have your name removed because of the flood, please know that we asked you to wait until we made this correction. If you still want to be removed, please let us know again. We apologize for this inconvenience. Grade 8 Writing Assuming that you know that we will not be reporting grade 8 writing scores for the March 2008 MEA, we would like to offer a little more information or another way of explaining the situation. In March of 2006, all grade 8 students wrote to a single prompt as part of a state-wide field test of several writing prompts. Each prompt was presented to about 1200+/- students. The statistics of these items were analyzed and two prompts were moved forward. In 2007, all students wrote to one of those field-tested prompts. Student performance on this item was consistent with field test data. In 2008, students wrote to another of the field tested prompts but student performance was quite inconsistent with field test data. The situation was studied by the Department and our testing contractor, Measured Progress, but no reasonable explanation for this anomaly could be determined. Therefore, Commissioner Gendron chose to set this item aside and not report student scores. When an item performs significantly differently than predicted, the item must be questioned. While there are many speculative reasons for this outcome, there are none which can be reasonably proven. Without a reasonable explanation, the data just can't be used. We will be going forward with a single-prompt writing assessment at grade 8 in 2009, one which is aligned to the 2007 Maine Learning Results: Parameters for Essential Instruction, English Language Arts writing performance indicator B 3: Analysis/Argument. A sample prompt can be found at http://www.maine.gov/education/mea/0708materials/sample09prompt.pdf and the correlating scoring guide can be found at http://www.maine.gov/education/mea/0708materials/gr8scoringguide121807.p df Professional Development Opportunities offered by Maine Department of Education The 2009 MHSA and MEA will measure and report student academic progress in relation to the 2007 MLR federal accountability standards and writing standards for the first time. Teachers who are well-versed in the new accountability and writing standards will be comfortable teaching the new standards. Students will be able to demonstrate their knowledge of the content of the standards on the MHSA and MEA. MHSA Fall Workshop information including link to online registration: http://www.maine.gov/education/mhsa/08pdworkshops.pdf These sessions will include information about College Board tools including data analysis and free online materials during the morning session and specific content area instructional models presented by Maine teachers during the afternoon sessions. We are combining PSAT and SAT presentations so all teachers should plan to attend one of these workshops! MEA Fall Workshop information including link to online registration: http://www.maine.gov/education/mea/0809materials/pdworkshops.pdf These workshops are presented as content and grade-span specific sessions. They will run for the full day in ELA and will address both reading and writing topics. The training will include: ** Discussion of the intent and meaning of accountability content standards and performance indicators of the 2007 Maine Learning Results ** Instructional implications and strategies directly applicable to the content areas that participants teach ** Orientation and review of the types of data contained in various MEA reports, including data trends ** Suggestions for preparing students for the MEA format ** Reviewing, adapting, and developing rich, engaging performance tasks that align with performance indicators from the Maine Learning Results -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.informe.org/pipermail/englishlanguagearts/attachments/20081006/44f0fac4/attachment.html