Chapter 15

Knowing in advance that I am meeting with Ingrid’s grandmother to discuss about her scores, I will make sure to get information from all teachers’ subject and compare their comments about Ingrid’s strength and weakness with the standardized achievement test results. It will help me to have a better criterion when discussing the scores with Ingrid’s grandmother, particularly in the “struggle” subjects.

I will start the meeting introducing myself following by talk a little bit about general aspect of Ingrid’s personality in class.  Then, I would explain what a standardized achievement test is, telling Ingrid’s grandmother that it is a test that compare Ingrid’s score with the average performance of students at her same grade level.  I would also explain that the purpose of this kind of tests is to help students to improve academically by letting them know how much they have learned in each subject area and for us, as teachers, has the valuable information that could help us to improve our instructional strategies, plus know better the strength and weakness of our students.  After this introduction, I will make sure that Ingrid’s grandmother understands what percentile and stanine means, by telling her that percentile is the percentage of students at Ingrid’s same grade level that score less than or equal to her; and stanine is based on a statistic which an average student scores is 5 with a standard deviation of 2.

I will then go over the each score beginning with Ingrid’s strength subjects ending with her weakness.  I would mention that Ingrid’s has accomplished above average students’ achievements in reading comprehension, science, and social studies; she has accomplished average students’ achievement in math concepts, and that I can notice that she is struggle with spelling and math computation, since her scores reflect achievement below average students’.  Hence, based on standardized achievement test results, we have to concentrate our efforts and work in the spelling and math computation areas, to bring her to the level she needs to be.

Honestly, I will avoid going into the national percentile bands chart, since this information is not as relevant as the percentile and stanine scores, and it can be confusing for Ingrid’s grandmother.

Finally, (1) I would suggest Ingrid’s grandmother to encourage Ingrid to have a word-book at home, so every day she can work a couple of words (definition, how to spell it, and use in a sentence) to help her level with her peers in the spelling area.  (2) I would also highly recommend that any math or spelling homework should be checked by her grandmother, so it can be corrected for any error when needed. (3) If they have access to internet, I would suggest several sites where she could practice either spelling or math computation abilities having the feeling that she is playing more than working in her weakness.  But, if internet is not available, suggest some math workbooks with fun activities that help Ingrid improve her math computational skills.