District STAAR testing is now less than two weeks away.
“We have five days of star testing that affects the campus where everyone in that subject that needs to take it,” counselor Courtney Tarbox said. “We have April 8 that will be English I, April 10 will be English II, April 15 will be biology. April 16th will be US history and April 22 will be algebra one. So essentially we have three weeks of star testing in April.”
On testing days the first three periods will be extended for those that are not testing, but otherwise there shouldn’t be any schedule changes.
“It does adjust the campus schedule a bit and they try to get the majority of testing done in an extended first through third period. Then that way the majority of students are done testing and everyone can still go to their regular lunches,” Tarbox said. “If a student needs a little more time, they are allowed up to using the full school day for testing if they need it.”
Aside from a few classes getting relocated, students that are not being tested shouldn’t be affected during testing times.
“One day will be a senior field trip. Other than that, anyone who is not testing, whether they are in 9th, 10th, 11th, or 12th grade, would go to their regular classes. Some classes might get relocated,” Tarbox said. “We tend to always test in the A 300 wing, so if a student that’s not testing, if their class is normally there, there’ll be posters for them to look at so they know where their teacher was relocated to.”
Teachers have been using numerous approaches in class to teach what they expect will be on the state tests.
“With my students what we are doing is we’re trying to do high level interest, so we just did a rotation escape room about Kobe Bryant where they competed with ‘trashket’ points to see who would win donuts. We have also coming up an argumentative text that they will be composing about the rap feud between Kendrick Lamar and Drake, and then we are playing Jeopardy games,” English teacher Amy Truong said. “That is the plan. Try to keep them interested so that they can learn as much as possible.”
English teachers are for the most part focusing on strengthening students’ constructed response skills.
“So, I focus on a lot of test taking strategies, we’ve spent the last year working on the content. So I really talk about how to answer a question. How to not feel overwhelmed, how to take a brain break if you need it, that kind of thing,” English teacher Abigail Hubbard. “Then we’re also talking a lot about kind of fine tuning some issues in our written responses both in our extended constructed response and our short constructed response.”
