Podcast Reflection #6: It's Elementary--Season 3, Show 6

For this reflection, I watched the visual "podcast" from It's Elementary. I was really surprised at first to see that it was run by kids but this made me all the more intrigued to keep watching. First off, the discuss what the ITBS test is. It stands for the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and is offered through the College of Education. It can be given to students K-8th as part of the Iowa statewide testing. It's a standardized test and a "norm reference test". It's actually given to students all over the U.S., not just in Iowa. It deals with reading, language arts, math, and science. It's given once a year to all 3rd-8th grade students. Next, they discuss how to get ready for this test. It's a test over what you've learned up to that point in your education. They talk about how they need their bodies prepared with rest so they can focus, how they need a good breakfast for energy and fuel, that they need to use the strategy of re-reading the question and looking at all of the possible answers yet picking the best answer. The next strategy is to rule out the answers that they know aren't the right and then choose the best one from the remaining. One of the last ones they discuss is to NOT RUSH!! Lastly, they discuss about how their teachers spent the day learning about formative assessments. Formative Assessments are assessments for learning and the information they use is for teachers to learn how to form or direct their instruction. Cassandra Erkins discussed how to grade students work in a way that the students will get the most from it. The last thing they discussed was parent-teacher conferences. Overall, I really enjoyed this podcast and I liked that it was run by kids. It was a little slow at points but their enthusiasm made it enjoyable to watch and listen to.