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From Brandie June 18th 6:51pm: It looks great and you guys were all super to work with. If anyone wants to compare notes on Objective Test #3, let me know. I've been going over the chapters in the book today on the way to Tampa and am going to take it this weekend.

From Justin June 17th 9:11PM: Here is what I turned in as the final assignment. I want to say thank you to everyone for the hard work.

From Courtney June 17th 8:19pm: The test looks great. Justin I think the test is ready to go except, could you please change the point value on the last question to 9 points instead of 10. The rubric only has a maximum of 9 ponits. I would do it myself, but I'm in Orlando quickly borrowing someone's computer:) Dr. Bai left us a message on webcourses for our group in case you all haven't checked it. She feels we are ready to submit:) Thanks for all of your hard work and help.

From Justin June 17th 7:46PM: Here is the final rough draft with the test directions. Please make any changes needed so we can turn it in tonight. From Eric June 17th 5:05pm: Fixed up the out of place D - that was supposed to be part of the letter E question. Could not tell about any odd breaks in the document. Take a look and let me know what you think.

From Brandie June 17th 2:18pm: I'm sorry I wasn't able to make meeting last night, but 7pm meeting got pushed back and ended up running over in to our meeting time. When I open the document there are some odd breaks of questions across pages where the instructions and the info aren't kept together. I'm not sure if anyone else is seeing that as well or just me. Question ten has a letter D. just before the graph that seems out of place. Didn't want to remove if it is supposed to be there. Everything else looks really good! :)

From Eric June 16th 11:33pm: I have added a modifications part toward the end of the section. Please review and feel free to add if you feel I have missed something. Thanks!

From Justin June 16th 8:52: Here is the new draft. Eric is finishing up section f from the instructions, and I am trying to come up with overall test directions. Please feel free to give ideas and let me know what you think.

From Justin: Here is the meeting link https://www.yugma.com/viewer/viewersignup.php?SessionID=416747935

From Courtney June 16th 3:05pm: I won't be able to meet tonight because my sister is having complications with her pregnancy. I have made changes to the test and have highlighted the changes I've made. I need help writing overall test directions. We probably need to say something about point values for each question. I did that for question 16 already. I'll try to check back later tonight or tomorrow.

From Brandie June 15th 10:11pm: Here is another revision. I did some editing, added a cover page, and created a table for the rubric to tidy it up a bit. One thing I noticed is that the 3rd and 4th standards listed the Standard # wasn't lining up with the text... Don't know if this is just on my display or what was going on. Justin can you look at it I could not get them to line up.

From Justin June 15th 5:16PM: Here is a new rough draft. I have placed the new table of specifications and rubric in this document that Courtney provided earlier today. I have also reorder the test questions. The questions should start with multiple choice, then true/false, the short answer, followed by the extended response question.

From Courtney June 15th 11:32am: I have revised the table of specs and created a rubric for our product. I will attach in discusion board and try to here as well. If you all agree I would like to change the wording on old question #8 to read: Design a story that produces discrete data using the topic of food. Then create a data table and an appropriate graph that goes along with the story you created. Although there are no penalties for spelling, punctuation, and grammar errors, do your best to consider them in your story. Please check the rubric and revised test question to make sure I didn't forget anything or in case something doesn't make sense. Let me know what you think.

From Justin June 14th 10:07PM: Here is what we have after last nights meeting.

From Justin: OK let me know if it is still doing it. If it is I will restart the program.

From Brandie: Justin, it isnt letting my type in chat box am logging out and trying to go back in.

From Justin: Here is the link to the meeting: https://www.yugma.com/viewer/viewersignup.php?SessionID=416581667 From Brandie: Is the link for the meeting the same as the one from last week?

From Courtney: The computer I'm working on has the old version of Word so I'm unable to make corrections to the word docs that have been sent. If we aren't able to "talk" tonight, Justin would you be able to pull up one page at a time and then we could all make comments one section at a time? thanks

From Justin: I will set it up for 8PM again then.

From Courtney June 14th 5:46pm: 8pm is fine with me

From Brandie June 14th 5:34pm: I am fine with 8pm again. I am no math teacher, but this looks really great! Is there anything else that you'd like help with in terms of formatting or editing or anything else that needs to be done. Didn't think to give everyone contact info earlier, but my # is 321-446-9464 if you need to/want to go over anything.

From Justin June 14th 5:28PM: I can set up the web meeting again. There is a conference number to call but I have never tried it. We can all give it a try however it is a long distance number. I know that with most phone plans now there is no such thing as long distance so we can give it a shot and see if it works. What time is good for everyone.

From Courtney June 14th 5:11PM: I can meet later tonight. Eric, if possible, would you please give me a call (386.589.6134) so that I can go over the test with you? It is so much easier for me to talk than try to type out stuff I'm thinking. Or, Justin is there a way to conference call so that we all can talk and type? I love what we have so far:)

From Eric June 13th 10:22PM: Are we planning to meet on Monday? Now with school out I am free so let me know what the plan is, looking forward to finishing this project up!

From Brandie June 13th 5:23pm: I too focused on completing test today. Am on my way out but will have tomorrow to look over and create some questions if we have gaps to fill.

From Eric June 13th 2:50PM: I went ahead and made a set of questions I was thinking of when I made my learning objectives. Take a look and let me know what you think. Any question can easily be altered or written differently if needed. Here is the attachment, look forward to discussing them with you all:

From Courtney June 13th 11:29AM: Things are finally calming down for me since the end of school. I am getting ready to take exam 2 today and then I'll start working on actual test questions. Now that I'm out of school, I will have tonight and all day tomorrow to write questions. I'll try to post the questions by 5pm tomorrow so that hopefully everyone will have time to look over them before our chat. Do we want to chat at 8PM again this Monday or earlier?

From Justin June 13th 10:01AM: Here is a start to the final project. I need help coming up with questions for the test because I have no books to look through to finds questions. I do have one question up as a guide to see what everyone thinks. I am going to look through Eric's work and try to come up with a Rubric fro grading, but that is a little hard without questions. Please give me some question ideas.

From Justin June 12th 9:53AM: Eric I am going to start compiling what we have into one document. I hope to have it done by Sunday afternoon sometime. Sorry I have taken so long but had an emergency this week and was sitting in the ER with family. From Eric June 8th 10:28PM: I have made a sample of possible instructional objectives. They can be found here:. I did change a couple things from the initial table of specifications, so if you don't like what I have put, you can always change it or let me know. The bold words in the document are words I found from the textbook that highlight the type of question (pg. 118-120). I tried to think of questions while making the obectives along with question types (MC, Matching, Short Answer, Extended Response). I guess being a high school mathematics teacher, I perfer more Short Answer and could have made to many for an elementary test, but, anything is really workable! I didn't put any example of the types of questions on their, so if some of the wording is confusing, let me know and I can show you an example of the problems I was looking for. I will try and make some test questions by Friday or Saturday morning on what I was trying to base everything on. Let me know if something is confusing, sorry if it is a little messy, look forward to hearing everyone's thoughts!

From Justin June 7th 8:02PM: Here is the net meeting site. https://www.yugma.com/viewer/viewersignup.php?SessionID=415848660 Just go to the link and install the viewer. From Justin June 7th 6:48PM: I have a net meeting area set up where everyone can join and view what is on my screen and chat there. I will put the link up about right at 8PM or a little earlier. You will need to download the viewer and have java installed to use this.

From Justin June 7th 11:48AM: Looks like we will shoot for 8PM tonight then. We will chat in the class chat room first, but I will try to set up a net meeting area so everyone can view one screen and talk via mic if you have one. I will post more details later.

From Brandie June 7th 10:11am: I am free tonight as well for chat 8 or after is fine. I can also come to Orlando on a weekend if we need a face to face as well.

From Eric June 7th 9:55am: I am free late tonight (its Finals week at my school - gotta get prepared for the rush starting Tuesday). I think I should be free after 8PM. If that is too late, then just send me the chat transcript and I will put my input in Tuesday.

From Courtney June7th 9:28am: I am available tonight. Let me know when and where.

From Justin June 7th 8:24AM: Will anyone be available tonight to talk about the final project. I would like to get together so we can get an idea on what everyone is working on. We only have two weeks left.

From Justin June 3rd 11:16AM: I have let the professor know about the wiki site. However if you are worried post everything here then I will take all the documents from here and post in the class discussion if you would like.

From Brandie June 2nd 11:28pm: I've taken the liberty (being the English nerd I am) to make some revisions to the Learning Context in terms of clarity and mechanics. This version has the comments and additions/deletions noted, but if you open and accept or reject the changes they should go away. I also changed the FCAT year to read 4th grade based on Courtney's comment below as I believe that is correct. I have Word up and running and am available to help with anything that needs to be done. I've met my deadline for my other two classes for this week and can focus more on our work here.

From Eric June 2nd 9:52 pm: Are we missing anything for the parts due tonight? Do we need anymore with the table of specifications? Have we posted a link to the wiki for the teacher or will we be posting everything on the webcourses?

From Courtney June 2nd 9:44 pm: I just posted the table of specs and SSS to webcourses. Not quite sure if I uploaded it correctly here on wiki. We do not have objectives posted yet. Please make changes to table if needed.

From Justin June 2nd 8:49PM: If there is something that you need done via Word post it here in the wiki. Let me know what you need and I can try to edit it however you want it to be.

From Courtney June 2nd 8:15: Great job on the Learning Context! I agree with the changes and I think the FCAT would be 4th grade, but after reading online, now I'm confused:( I am stressing out because I'm having issues with my word program in order to update the table of specifications. I need to add the total row to the bottom and include the other info. I'm going to shut down my computer and try again. Oh, any idea how long we should make the test (# of questions, length of time)? If I can't get this to work tonight, I can do it at school tomorrow. I'm not giving up yet. If I have to I will write it out by hand and scan it into a document:)

From Justin June 2nd 8:13PM: Here is the Learning Context with some of the changed Eric suggested. Eric I was unsure if you thought it should be in bullet form or paragraph form. Please let me know as it stands it is on paragraph form. From Justin June 2nd 7:48PM: Thanks Eric the changes you made are very good. I will edit the document and post it again. From Eric June 1st 10:45PM: I have done what I feel are my revisions from your rough draft Justin. Here is the link:. A couple things from my revisions. 1. As much as I love the video conference, it is highly unlikly a 5th grade class is going to have a remote instructor. Students just are not at that level to not have an instructor in the classroom, whether they be in regular school or homeschooled, so I put back in a regular teacher. 2. I put more ELL students in along with keeping your student from Mexico, although being we teach in Florida, to make it more realistic I would pick something like Puerto Rico. 3. I tried to add some of my own opinions to add on what you were thinking, just to also clean it up a little. My changes are in bold, please let me know what you think. I will be looking over the table to give my rough draft in the afternoon, because I believe it is due by Wednesday night. Thanks!

From Justin June 1st 9:43PM: I have created a rough draft of the learning context description from part A. Since I am not in the teaching field nor have I ever been a teacher it would be great to get some input and see what everyone thinks. This is in office 2007 format if you are unable to open it let me know and I can change it.

From Justin June 1st 4:50PM: I agree with Eric this is a good start. I would like to find some time this week that we can all get together via IM or something. I would like to finish this final project a week early so we can get some input and revise if needed. Please let me know when a good meeting time is for everyone. I usually work from 8 to 5 on the weekdays. I have added the example Courtney posted in the Webcourses. This will make it easier for everyone to access and work on. Please add whatever you want to the document. Then save it and repost it to the wiki with a file name of Final Project PartA - rev1. Each time a revision is done rename change it to rev2 and so on. It looks as if I will have some time to look at the project tonight.

From Eric May 31st 7:15pm: The table looks great and we have some great benchmarks to work with!

From Courtney May 31st 9:40 am: I just posted to webcourses. Please read. I attached an example of a Table of Test Specifications for a Unit on Geometry/Measurement and found Standards that go with the unit. I didn't fill in table with # of questions, type or time because I would like to know if we all agree with unit first. I am on my way out the door to continue painting the exterior of my house (fun, fun, fun) so I won't be able to sign-on at 3:30. I will be back online tonight.

From Justin May 30th 11:03AM: Would everyone like to get together via IM or maybe webmeeting if I am able to get it working tomorrow. I was thinking maybe around 3:30PM. Please let me know and if everyone is good with it I will try to set up something. In doing this we may be able to start getting stuff in document form.

From Courtney May 29th 5:32 pm: check out this site that gives us an idea of how to divide up curriculum into units for 5th grade math [] I personally like the topics covered in Unit 3 (Measurement/Data and Graphing), 5 (Multiplication and Division of Fractions and Decimals), and 7 (Ratio, Proportion, Percent, and Probability) the best. If we can get agree on a Unit topic, that would be a great starting point.

From Courtney May 29th 5:15 pm: I agree to do a criterion-ref test. If we do a more specific topic type test, we probably want to choose 2 or 3 SSS benchmarks that correlate and make a unit test. That way the test isn't too narrow (graphing only) and not so broad. I also just read through the instructions again and it says to make a test and describe the"course and specific unit of instruction the test will cover".

From Justin May 29th 2:34PM: I think it may be best to do a criterion-ref test since most tests given by teachers are this format anyway.

From Brandie May 29th 11:06am: I think I like the idea of a specific topic, and agree that graphing holds great possibilities for creating questions. The assessment could be used as end of year skill check sort of thing or really at any time in the year I suppose, but was thinking it would be great to have something like this to show parents for summer remediation or tutoring.

From Eric May 28th 10:25am: Are we looking to do a test on a specific topic (like graphing) or a end of the year type assessment? Just wanted to make sure before narrowing or expanding my search through the benchmarks

From Courtney May 27th 9:55 pm: Sorry for not posting sooner. I wanted to read all of the chapters first and take the objective exam so that I would have a better idea of what to say. I also teach math (high school) and agree that it might be best to pick a few of the benchmarks and design a test based on those. Eric thanks for the benchmarks! They opened up just fine. I like the benchmark on graphing because I see the opportunity to create both low and high-order level questions when dealing with graphs. I am going to print out the benchmarks and work on getting some possible objectives posted by tomorrow.

From Eric May 27th 8:55am: If we are looking at fifth grade mathematics education, here is a list of the Next Generation Sunshine State Standards: (let me know if it does not get pulled up, I am new at putting files onto the site). They have about 23 specific benchmarks, with the main ones being called the "big ideas". We can specifically focus on a couple benchmarks, or we can try and create a "end of the year" type test reviewing all. For the sake of the assignment, it might be easier to focus on 1 or 2 close related topics to develop easy test questions. Look over the file and let me know what you think!

From Brandie May 26th 11:00pm: Hello group, sorry to take so long to get on. I was wrapping up the school year the beginning of this week and have been adjusting to 'civilian' life. I teach English, but have no problem working with math content. So I guess the next thing we need to come up with is the actual meat of Part A. I was thinking that since FCAT currently tests mid-year and is not a true end of course summative assessment, it would be useful to develop a tool that does truly assess what students have learned by year end, so that the teacher the following year could administer a pre-test to see which students have had "summer slide". We could select the key instructional objectives that students must master to be prepared to learn the following year's material.

Part A should include: a. Brief description of context. b. Instructional objectives c. Table of test specifications (test blueprint)

From Justin May 25th 1:31PM: I guess the next step will be to decide what type of test and some objectives. Eric since you are a math teacher already here in the state you also have a good idea of the SSS stated in the directions. Any input from you will be great since you are in the field already. I too have to be out of town tonight through Friday I am not sure what internet access I will have as I am unaware of the arrangements my job has made for my stay, but I will have my laptop with me so I will do what I can. Please post any objectives/ ideas so we can try and compile what we can together and start making some headway on this project.

From Eric May 25th 11:00AM: I have no problems with doing math obviously being a math teacher - I also have no problem with working with the lower grades, as I feel that it the most important time for a student to get their basic skills in, and proper testing is key to this. Let me know what the next step is from here; on Friday I am leaving for a little mini break due to Memorial Day weekened, will have internet access on Friday-Sunday but limited at times. Look forward to getting this started!

From Justin May 25th 9:22AM: I am just putting this out as a suggestion, but I think that for the grade/age we should shoot for students in the 4th or 5th grade. I think maybe we should test on math skills because I know that Eric is teaching math or working on his Masters in math if I remember correctly from the introductions. I for one like math so this may be an easier topic for me to work with as well. Plus from what I have been reading it looks as if students in the US are falling behind in math and science compared to much of the world. Please let me know what you think about these ideas/topics if anyone else has any ideas please post them today so we can be thinking about them.

From Justin May 21st 10:24AM: I think it will be a good idea if we always put the From, Date, and Time so we can keep up with new posts. Everyone please start posting ideas, I will do my best to come up with some as well. This is all a little new to me because I come from the technical side being a Network Admin and it sounds like many of you are already in the teaching world. I will be looking to you all for a little guidance. I have created a page that has the final projects instructions on it.