Customize Instruction with Formative Assessments

Use Formative Assessment to customize EMC’s Mirrors & Windows for your students—quickly and easily!
Identify Skill Levels
The Formative Surveys provided in the Assessment Guide for each level measure students’ basic reading and writing skills. Administer Formative Survey 1 at the start of the course to determine each student’s level of competency in language arts skills.
Customize Instruction
Use a student’s score on Formative Survey 1 to identify selections and supplementary materials that will best help each student meet and exceed state and national language arts standards. Each selection in the textbook is rated Easy, Moderate, or Challenging, as well as many of the lessons in the Meeting the Standards Unit Resource books.
Measure Progress
To realign instruction. Administer Formative Survey 2 and use the results to revise your plan for each student as necessary.
To obtain a summative measure. Administer Formative Survey 2 and compare the results on both surveys to quantify each student’s progress.

STAAR to replace TAKS

The Texas Education Association recently announced that a new generation of student tests called the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) will replace the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS), a criterion-based test which been in use since 2003.

According to TEA, the new tests will be significantly more rigorous than previous tests and will measure a child’s performance, as well as academic growth. By law, the grade 3-8 STAAR tests in reading and mathematics must be linked from grade to grade to performance expectations for the English III and Algebra II end-of-course assessments.

The new tests will be used beginning in the 2011-2012 school year. A new state accountability rating system will debut in 2013.

EMC’s Mirrors & Windows: Connecting with Literature responds to this call for educational rigor by offering full-length formative surveys, developed and validated by the Educational Testing Service, that measure student performance against other students nationwide.

For more information on the new STAAR tests, visit TEA’s website at http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index4.aspx?id=7874

Texas gets an "A" for Standards

A leading national education journal has given the state of Texas an "A" for its standards and accountability system. The ratings were published in Business Week’s 2010 Quality Counts report, which this year focuses on the national standards debate and examines the quality of work states have done independently preparing their own standards. Texas received a grade of "B" for a related category, "transitions and alignment." The results were announced in a news release last month from the Texas Education Agency.
Full Quality Counts information is available at: http://www.edweek.org/ew/toc/2010/01/14/index.html .

UbD Curriculum Design in Mirrors & Windows

We recently received the following question from a school district reviewing Mirrors & Windows: Do the materials offer multiple measures to assess student mastery consistent with UbD curriculum design?
Answer: The Mirrors & Windows program applies the Understanding by Design curriculum design through the following features:
Desired Results:
· Set Purpose questions in the Before Reading section for every selection help students set goals
· Student rubrics are provided to establish goals and guidelines for Writing Workshops and Speaking & Listening Workshops
· Learning Objectives for each lesson are provided in the Teacher’s edition
· Reader’s Context and Mirrors & Windows questions address the “big ideas” or essential questions and specific understandings that are desired
Assessment Evidence:
· After Reading critical thinking questions assess understanding of the lesson and extension activities offer opportunities for application of learning
· Student Checklists and self-and peer-evaluations are included in the Writing Workshops
· Selection Quizzes are provided for each selection in Meeting the Standards
· Selection Tests and Unit Tests are provided in the Assessment Guide and ExamView Assessment Suite®
Learning Plan:
· The Assessment Guide and ExamView® Assessment Suite offer Formative Surveys and oral reading fluency assessments that indicate a student’s ability level.
· Students can then be assigned selections at the appropriate reading level, with corresponding leveled activities in the Meeting the Standards unit resources and appropriate lessons from the Differentiated Instruction supplements.
· Additional Differentiated Instruction is provided in the Differentiated Instruction supplements and the Teacher’s Edition

Why no Grave Accents in Shakespeare Plays?

We recently encountered a question from some Shakespeare-savvy English teachers asking why the plays don’t include the grave accents. The grave accent in English indicates a pronounced “e” where one normally finds a silent “e,” such as in the word “blessèd.”
In his “Introduction to Hamlet” Richard Leed states that “The past tense ending –ed is usually pronounced as in modern English but sometimes Shakespeare takes the advantage of an old-fashioned pronunciation by allowing it to be pronounced as a separate syllable.” Shakespeare did this to attain his most favored pattern—iambic pentameter. (Iambic pentameter is defined as a ten-syllable line with the accent on every other syllable, beginning with the second one.) Our research has shown that most modern editions, however, including the definitive Riverside Shakespeare published in 1974, have dropped using the grave accent to indicate such occurrences (about fifty of them in Hamlet according to Leed).
EMC’s Mirrors & Windows program has referred to Riverside as the main source for Shakespeare’s works and accordingly does not include the grave accents. “There are a number of instances where printed editions of the plays do not consistently reflect the correct number of syllables to be pronounced,” says Leed. “Such cases include the past tense ending ­­–ed, standard contractions, and certain words.”
Out of curiosity, I checked the text of Hamlet that can be downloaded from http://www.gutenberg.org/, but alas, this version did not include the grave accents either. I thought that if I went back as far as some of the earliest American editions I might find them, but when I checked the text of Hamlet in The Dramatic Works of Shakespeare (on Amazon, believe it or not), published by Hilliard, Gray, and Company in Boston in 1836, I could find no grave accents! It appears one might have to go back to earlier editions published in England--does anyone out there know of an edition currently in print that includes grave accents?

Interactive Graphic Organizers

Many teachers in our presentations have asked if we have graphic organizers online. We absolutely do! Visit www.mirrorsandwindows.com to view over 30 interactive graphic organizers posted under Course Resources. These graphic organizers for reading strategies can be displayed and completed on your interactive boards, completed online independently by the student, or printed and distributed as a PDF to your entire class. Among the models included are an author’s purpose chart, K-W-L chart, pro and con chart, Venn diagram, prediction chart, character chart, sensory details chart, time line, plot diagram, main idea map, and word map. The complete set of graphic organizers is also available on the Visual Teaching Package CD. Notice that they can also be edited and saved in your personal computer file for future use. Teachers love this feature when I demonstrate it in presentations. Try it out and let me know what you think.

EMC's "Fresh, Modern, Diverse" Selections

A teacher in Denton, Texas commented that many of her colleagues expressed that they were pleased with EMC's "fresh, modern, diverse" selections.

Are you tired of teaching the same old literature selections? Engage your students with works by these contemporary authors found only in EMC’s Mirrors & Windows:

Donald Barthelme, Jean-Dominique Bauby, Christy Brown, Octavia Butler, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Mark Doty, Phil George, Allen Ginsberg, Donald Hall, William Least Heat-Moon, Hergé, Ha Jin, Bill Holm, Khaled Hosseini, Jane Kenyon, Jack Kerouac, Ted Kooser, Anne Lamott, Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Audre Lorde, Robert Lowell, Wing Tek Lum, Kathleen Norris, Gordon Parks, Graham Salisbury, Eric Schlosser, Gary Snyder, Twyla Tharp

Give your students something to read

that will get their attention and hold their interest!

Literature that is current...relevant...compelling...thought-provoking.

EMC's Mirrors & Windows