This Is Not a Drill!
This is the real deal! Third grade is the first year students will be required to take the Georgia Milestones. Moving from second grade to third grade is a big leap! Students are expected to be independent readers, writers and thinkers. They are expected to have the ability and endurance to focus for up to 90 minutes by the end of the year and the computer skill to prove their academic competence.
To be considered College & Career Ready, third grade students will be reading passages that fall between the 520 to 820 Lexile Bands. They will alternate between Literary and Informational text during each nine week period. They have two years of constructed and extended writing under their belts. The will practice writing to Narrative writing prompts consistently throughout the year, while also dedicating the first and last 9 weeks to Opinion prompts and the 2nd and 3rd nine weeks to Informative prompts.
The third grade ELA Milestones Blueprint tells us that students will have one 2 point constructed response item and 4 point Extended Constructed Response items for a Narrative prompt, and a 7 point Extended Writing Response for either an Informational or Opinion prompt. Because the writing and language portion will count as 47% of their overall score, it is important for students to have experience with and understand the third grade writing rubrics that will be used for Milestones scoring.
It’s Time to Use Formative Assessments to Drive Instruction
By third grade there is usually quite a range of reading and writing levels in each class. It is imperative that teachers have reliable data to form flexible small groups and drive instruction. Writing and Language are responsible for 47% of a student’s overall Milestone’s score, yet teaching writing and language is difficult. Many teachers struggle with pinpointing specific areas weaknesses, assigning unbiased scores to students writing, providing specific feedback to improve writing and fully understanding the prompts and rubrics. This is where Lennections Assesslets come in!