The other day a teacher invited me into her classroom to help her facilitate the first Focused Interim Assessment Block (FIAB) with her 3rd grade students. She asked me to teach her how to…
- find a relevant FIAB to use
- create a test session for her students to access the FIAB
- view the resulting scores
“Piece of cake!”, I said. While her students were out at recess, I took just a moment to show her how to log in to the CAASPP website and select a relevant FIAB to use. Once her students returned from recess, we gave each student a card with their name and SSID on it. Within just a few minutes all students were logged in and working on the FIAB.
About 30 minutes later, the first students began to finish the 12-question FIAB and the data popped into the teacher’s account a few moments after that. The teacher was amazed when the data revealed a few questions that only about 20% of the students answered correctly. We looked at the questions and immediately recognized that those questions were worded in a manner very UNLIKE how the math concepts were worded in the textbook.
Even though the teacher had taught the multiplication facts, the question on the FIAB was decidedly different from anything the teacher had taught…even though it was the exact same content.
Another example was this problem. It is just a multiplication problem, but it was unlike anything she had taught.
For each of the next days, the teacher projected one of the most missed questions and used it as a warm-up before the day’s regular lesson.
She was grateful it is only December and she has five months to continue using all the available 3rd grade FIABs as powerful instructional tools in preparation for the CAASPP.
If you teach any grade 3 through 11, please consider asking your MCOE Math Team coordinator to show you how to use the FIABs with your students!
Here is a video our MCOE Math Team, Robyn, made demonstrating how to select an FIAB and create a test session and view the results.
Other blog posts about the FIABs:
https://theothermath.com/index.php/2024/12/03/how-to-close-the-rigor-gap/
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