CP Entry #14 Reflect on what worked and what did not work during the process of completing your Change Project. What would you do differently and what would you use again?

Overall, I feel my project went well but I did have several obstacles to overcome.  Every year we have a new bunch of students.  Unlike other grade levels, we do not have any "data" to know what our students know or don't know.  Last year, I based my project on the need to improve my math scores according to my i-ready data.  We usually give a mini assessment before school starts to make our classes.  Both years I have taken the average students.  This year, the "average" students were lower than last year's "average" students.  I also began this year with several young students, students that have never been to school before, students with major custody issues, and several students with major behavioral issues.  Along with my classroom management issues, the district changed the sequence of our math program.  All of these obstacles posed a challenge for sure!!!

During the process of completing my Change Project, there are some things that worked such as using the MFAS assessments instead of the math series.  These assessments provided more information than a multiple choice question format.  I would also ask the students to explain their answers which would help to guide my instruction for all of my students.  I also liked that there were many assessments to choose from on the CPALMS website.  However, I did have to narrow down which ones I liked the best.  I liked that the CPALMS website gave great supplemental math lessons for extra support to the math series.

Some things did not work out so well such as what I mentioned before about my class behaviors, time frame for teaching the lessons, etc.  I also found it difficult to make time for all the regular classroom assessments in their leadership notebooks, the math series assessments, i-ready diagnostic and progress monitoring, and the MFAS assessments.  Most of my assessments needed to be completed one-to-one which takes an enormous amount of time.  Once I narrowed it down to the bottom 25% of my students, this made the assessment task much more manageable.

I plan to continue to implement my project next year and use even more of the MFAS assessments.  I will narrow down the best ones and use them on a weekly/monthly basis.  I plan to encourage other members of my kindergarten team to use them as well.  :)