TEACHING THE TEACHERS

[Carol Holst <kceh@airmail.net>]

Finish your coffee so you don't spray your computer.
Carol

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HoustonChronicle.com -- http://www.HoustonChronicle.com ;| Section: 
Local & State


Feb. 25, 2004, 7:29AM

TEACHING THE TEACHERS

Educators learn how to prepare for TAKS exam
By JO ANN ZUÑIGA
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle


Students are not the only ones honing their skills for the state 
accountability test that started Tuesday.

At Stephen F. Austin High School in the Houston Independent School 
District, teachers worked the Friday before and Monday of the Presidents 
Day holiday to prepare for the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, 
the latest version of the state's required test. HISD students were off 
those days.

Teachers have had several training sessions throughout the school year, 
but as the TAKS drew closer, teachers said they were almost as nervous 
as the students taking the test.

For the Feb. 13 training, more than 100 teachers received testing tips 
from English teachers and from a literacy coach for the reading, writing 
and language arts component of the TAKS.

Raymond Pocquette, a newly hired literacy coach, told one group of 
teachers, "We're not teaching to a test."

"We're teaching thinking strategies that can be applied to life," he 
said.


Too much focus on test?
Some educators have criticized tests like TAKS, saying they come with 
such high stakes -- promotion and graduation for students and in some 
cases, bonuses for educators -- that school districts focus the 
curriculum solely on the exam.

Angela Valenzuela, an education professor at the University of Texas at 
Austin, is among them.

"In the context of our bottom-line, educational business model, teachers 
and administrators are not instructional leaders," Valenzuela said. 
"They've become compliance officers instead."

But English teachers Karen Lockhart and Lesley Guilmart, who attended 
the workshops, said they are concentrating on instruction. All courses, 
even physics and chemistry, require students to be on a high reading 
level to absorb the content, they said.

"This is all the things we would be teaching anyway. The tests are just 
tools," Lockhart said.

Pocquette reminded teachers of the school's "ABC blueprint" that 
students are taught to use as a guideline when answering 
English/language arts composition questions. Students must write both 
short essays and longer compositions for the TAKS test.

The ABC blueprint reminds students to: A -- Answer the question in 
complete sentences.

Then B -- Back up the answer with evidence including a brief quotation 
or paraphrase. Finally, C -- Conclude with a commentary, not repeating 
the answer, but explaining the quote and how it supports the answer.

The literacy coach is a new position at Austin and several other HISD 
schools. Pocquette previously had directed a remedial reading program.

A $1.2 million donation from Houston A+ Challenge, a nonprofit education 
organization, helped fund the placement of 27 literacy coaches in high 
schools throughout the district this year.

The grant paid for 80 percent of the program, and the schools paid the 
remainder. By the fourth year, schools will pick up the full tab if they 
still want the coaching.

The literacy coaching program is designed not only to help with TAKS but 
also to improve methods of teaching reading.


Follow the bouncing ball

"I can teach you within the next few minutes how to make your students 
better readers. Are you interested?" Pocquette asked.

Dozens of teachers responded with a resounding "Yes!"

Pocquette pretended to bounce an invisible basketball to a participating 
coach.

"Watch it bounce four times before he catches it," Pocquette said as the 
teachers bobbed their heads to follow the invisible ball.

"I just showed you how to survey a test," he said.

Using that technique, students can learn to "bounce" or skim through a 
test question.
The students need a way of plowing through the TAKS, which requires them 
to read three or four pages of essays and answer questions. The former 
accountability test, the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills, had only 
three or four paragraphs of reading for each question.

"You pre-read by bouncing through a few paragraphs to pick up 
significant words like `virus' or `mononucleosis' so that you can 
connect initially to that text," he said.

After students have an idea what the essay is about, they go back and 
read it carefully to answer the question.

English teachers were not the only ones who attended the professional 
development workshop.

Football coach Al Downey plans to apply what he's learned at the 
workshop to the school's disciplinary resource center, where he presides 
over students who are in detention.

"Many times kids act up because they're already behind in class," Downey 
said.

"So in these exercises we're learning to help keep the students 
task-oriented while they're being disciplined," he said.

John Cotten, who teaches business computer information systems, said, "I 
find these workshops helpful. Even a professional golfer still gets 
tips."

"We've had at least three TAKS training for teachers in the past 10 
months," said Austin High Assistant Principal Eva Silvas. "And we're 
planning to have at least two more on math and science before those TAKS 
tests in April."

TAKS testing began Tuesday in writing, reading and language arts. TAKS 
reading tests resume March 3 for third grade, and TAKS math, social 
studies, science and reading tests for the higher grades resume April 27.


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HoustonChronicle.com -- http://www.HoustonChronicle.com ;| Section: 
Local & State
This article is: 
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/2418449